With their lavish costumes and sets, ebullient song and dance numbers, and iconic movie stars, the musicals that mgm produced in the 1940s seem today to epitomize camp. Yet they were originally made to appeal to broad, mainstream audiences. In this lively, nuanced, and provocative reassessment of the mgm musical, Steven Cohan argues that this seeming incongruity between the camp value and popular appreciation of these musicals is not as contradictory as it seems. He demonstrates that the films extravagance and queerness were deliberate elements and keys to their popular success.

In...