Musicals / Dance Films 

are cinematic forms that emphasize and showcase full-scale song and
dance routines in a significant way (usually with a musical or dance performance as part of the film
narrative, or as an unrealistic "eruption" within the film). Or they are films that are centered on
combinations of music, dance, song or choreography. In traditional musicals, cast members are ones
who sing. Musicals highlight various musical artists or dancing stars, with lyrics that support the story
line, often with an alternative, escapist vision of reality - a search for love, success, wealth, and
popularity. This genre has been considered the most escapist of all major film genres. Tremendous
film choreography and orchestration often enhances musical numbers. See this site's extensive
compilation of the Greatest Musical Song/Dance Movie Moments and Scenes (illustrated)

Introduction:

With the coming of talking motion pictures, the musical film genre emerged from its roots: stage
musicals and operettas, revues, cabaret, musical comedy, music halls and vaudeville. They were
the last of the major film genres, because they were dependent on sound captured on film. (How
could a movie be "all-singing, all-dancing" without sound?) Musicals are often described as Broadway
on film, although many other forms of musicals have been made (e.g., rock 'n' roll movies and
disco/dance films). Recently, animated films (with musical soundtracks, such as Beauty and the
Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), The Lion King (1994), and Tarzan (1999)) have emerged as one of
the major musical forms, and many of them have won Best Original Song Oscars.

The Earliest Examples of Sound/Dance Films:

One of the earliest films with a famous dance sequence was The Four Horsemen of the
Apocalypse (1921), noted for Latin lover Rudolph Valentino's sensuous tango performed in a smoky
cantina while dressed in an Argentine gaucho costume. In 1926, Warner Bros. had produced Don
Juan (1926), the first full-length silent film released with a complete musical score synchronized on a
78 rpm Vitaphone soundtrack (with sound effects and an original score). The groundbreaking film
cleverly synchronized canned sound effects and dubbed music to the action.

Warner Brothers' Experiments with Sound:

Warner Bros. had launched sound and talking pictures, with Bell Telephone Laboratory researchers,
by developing a revolutionary synchronized sound system called Vitaphone. It was a short-lived
system sound-on-disk process developed in 1925 that became obsolete by 1931. This sound-on-disk
process allowed sound to be recorded on a 16" phonograph record (a fragile disk made of wax) that
was electronically linked and synchronized with the film projector. Each disc corresponded to one reel
of film, or about ten minutes. The process was first used for short one- and two-reel films, mostly
comedies and vaudeville acts.

The Jazz Singer (1927): A Landmark Film

With the coming of the talkies, the film musical genre naturally emerged with the first full-
length, revolutionary 'talkie' (with speech and song) that premiered in New York City at
the Warner Theatre on October 6, 1927. It was a "musical" of sorts - Warner Bros.' The
Jazz Singer (1927). Contrary to popular belief, it was not the first sound feature film,
since it was mostly silent, and it was not the first Hollywood musical (The Broadway
Melody (1929) holds that honor). It was also not the first instance of sound-on-film.

In reality, the landmark part-talkie singing film was an old-fashioned melodrama about

Jewish-bred 'jazz singer' Jakie Rabinowitz/Jake Robin (charismatic Broadway mega-star
Al Jolson). It featured seven songs (including "Blue Skies," "Toot-Toot-Tootsie," and
"Mammy" - famous for the image of Jolson on one knee holding out his arms to embrace
the audience), and a few lines of screen dialogue (including one long emotional homecoming speech
to Jolson's mother, played by Eugenie Besserer). After Jolson had sung his first song, "Dirty Hands,
Dirty Face", he delivered a portentous, spellbinding line that was ad-libbed and left in the film, before
singing his next song. His naturally-spoken words were the first ever heard in a full-length movie:
Wait a minute! Wait a minute! You ain't heard nothin' yet. Wait a minute, I tell ya, you ain't heard
nothin'! Do you wanna hear 'Toot, Toot, Tootsie!'? All right, hold on, hold on. (To the band leader)
Lou, Listen. Play 'Toot, Toot, Tootsie!' Three choruses, you understand. In the third chorus I whistle.
Now give it to 'em hard and heavy. Go right ahead!

In the next year - 1928, the hot star Al Jolson teamed up once more with Warner
Bros. for his only other big hit - director Lloyd Bacon's part-talkie, part-silent high-
grossing tearjerker The Singing Fool (1928). This follow-up film for Jolson was an
even bigger success and soon became the biggest-grossing film of all time - until   
Gone With the Wind (1939). In fact, this film was the one that really introduced the
public to the sound film. It was a sophisticated variation of the earlier hit in which
Jolson crooned seven songs, including: "Sonny Boy," "I'm Sittin' on the Top of the
World," "There's a Rainbow 'Round My Shoulder," and "It All Depends on You."
The first film-related hit record was Al Jolson's Sonny Boy, sung three times in
Jolson's second feature film.

Three more ground-breaking films featured Jolson at the end of the decade, although
none of them approached his earlier success. They were: Lloyd Bacon's Say It With
Songs (1929), director Michael Curtiz' Mammy (1930) - a melodrama with a few Irving Berlin songs
and Technicolor sequences, and Big Boy (1930).

Upheaval in the Industry:

The other major film studios (Paramount, Loew's, First National and UA) realized the expensive and
challenging ramifications of the sound revolution that was dawning, and that talkie films would be the
wave of the future. Most of the studios started to convert from silent to sound film production - a
tremendous capital investment. Thousands of existing theaters had to be rewired for sound. In 1927,
only 400 US theatres were wired for sound, but by the end of the decade, over 40% of the country's
movie theatres had sound systems installed. Many Hollywood actors/actresses lacked good voices
and stage experience, and their marketability decreased. By 1930, the silent movie had practically
disappeared, and by the mid-1930s, film industry studios had become sound-film factories. The
industry standard was becoming sound-on-film - a more practical alternative than sound-on-disk.

Most early musicals were crudely made, due to technical limitations, and often
just adaptations or photographed versions of recent stage hits. Broadway stars
were called in to become musical film stars. Broadway legend and popular
Ziegfeld Follies star Fannie (or Fanny) Brice (in her sound film debut) performed
some of her inimitable sketches and songs ("I'd Rather Be Blue Over You" and
the title song) in director Archie Mayo's and Warners' musical My Man (1928) -
one-third of which was silent. The studio thought she would be the female
equivalent of Al Jolson, but the film was not financially successful, and Brice (with
her Yiddish persona and atypical star look) was not an overnight success on film,
until her "Baby Snooks" character in the top-rated radio comedy series became
popular.

On stage, the Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein II Show Boat debuted in 1927 - it was the first
Broadway musical play, differing from previous musical revues (a series of musical numbers strung
together). In two years, Universal released the part-talkie film version Show Boat (1929)- the first of
many versions (James Whale's 1936 version with Paul Robeson - usually considered the best, and
George Sidney's 1951 version with Howard Keel) of the popular adaptation from Edna Ferber's book.

The First Genuine Musical: The Broadway Melody (1929)

The first genuine musical, fully integrating singing and dancing into a 'backstage

musical' plot was also MGM's first full-length musical, The Broadway Melody
(1929). It premiered in Hollywood in early February of 1929 at Grauman's Chinese
Theatre, and was the first widely-distributed sound feature. It was proudly
advertised as "All Talking - All Singing - All Dancing", and the popular film brought
in a profit of over $1.6 million. It was the first musical film - and the first sound film as well - to win an
Academy Award for Best Picture. The film inspired three more Broadway Melody films in the
following decade - in 1935 (the best of the series), 1937, and 1940. In 1929, it also inspired an
abundance of copycat imitators with similar 'backstage' or show-business-related plots.

The landmark musical, with songs composed by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown, starred Anita
Page (as Queenie) and Oscar-nominated Bessie Love (as older sibling Hank) as two sisters seeking
fame in the New York theatre - known as the Great White Way - while both were attracted to song-
and-dance man Charles King (as Eddie). The musical is outdated today and exhibits its clumsy
vaudevillian, stage-bound roots (with Jack Benny as master of ceremonies). However, it featured the
innovative use of two-colors in "The Wedding of the Painted Doll" sequence, a mobile camera, and
slangy dialogue. The film was also revolutionary for two sound engineering firsts:

 it used a pre-recorded soundtrack (for "The Wedding of the Painted Doll" sequence)
 it had post-production sound effects and editing

The pioneering sound film was produced by young production head Irving Thalberg, and its original
score was written by the team of Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed - the film's hit song was "You
Were Meant For Me." [Freed remained with MGM and eventually was responsible for some of the
studio's most successful and sophisticated musicals, beginning in the 1940s and continuing into the
1950s. Brown's and Freed's songs were later recycled into   Singin' in the Rain (1952).] Other
songs included "Give My Regards to Broadway" (George M. Cohan), "The Wedding Day of the
Painted Doll", "Love Boat," "Broadway Melody," "Boy Friend," and "Truthful Deacon Brown" (Willard
Robison).

The Boom in Musicals:

The 1930s were considered the beginning of the "Golden Age of the Musical" with a greater variety of
musical vehicles and stars. Musical arrangers, song-writers, conductors, and dance instructors hurried
to the West Coast to be part of the onslaught of 'talking' musicals. In particular, backstage musicals
became the rage during the Great Depression, encouraging the production of other imitators with
similar characters: a struggling stage producer, wise-cracking chorus girls practicing and on the
lookout for rich husband prospects, and the opening night opportunity for stardom for an
inexperienced chorus girl filling in for the leading lady. Paramount's Astoria, Long Island studios were
the earliest to master the musical genre. Some of the leading songwriters and lyricists, such as
Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and George Gershwin, began to write original screen
musicals or provide words and music. The studio associated with all-star extravaganzas and revue-
type productions was MGM.

MGM's follow-up film to its successful Best Picture entry in 1929 was Chasing
Rainbows (originally titled The Road Show) (1929), again bringing together stars
Bessie Love (as Carlie) and Charles King (as song-and-dance man Terry), with the
memorable tune "Happy Days Are Here Again" - the future Presidential campaign
song for Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932.

Musicals experienced a significant boom during the late 1920s and early 1930s,
many of them with Broadway stars lured westward to Hollywood. Eddie Cantor was
attracted to Hollywood from Broadway, where he made his first sound
film Whoopee! (1930), based on Flo Ziegfeld's 1928-1929 Broadway production
(with the same cast) and filmed almost intact.

Silent film stars Corinne Griffith, Colleen Moore, and others found themselves in sound films with
dialogue. Pretty red-headed Paramount star Nancy Carroll appeared in the part-talkie comedy Abie's
Irish Rose (1928) - making her the first Hollywood actress to sing and dance on a sound stage, and
also in the early sound musicals Sweetie (1929) and Honey (1930), among others. Portraying the
'girl-next-door', Carroll was notable as thefirst musical star to emerge within Hollywood.
Janet Gaynor's first all-talking film was Fox's popular early musical Sunny Side Up (1929), one of the
first musicals created directly for the screen (with a score by DeSylva-Brown-Henderson) - and
featuring the film debut of young 7 year-old Jackie Cooper. In the familiar Cinderella tale, Gaynor took
the role of working-girl heroine Molly and sang "I'm a Dreamer (Aren't We All?)", "If I Had a Talking
Picture of You", and the title song. Also, Gaynor was again teamed with her silent film romantic
partner Charles Farrell (they were known as "America's Favorite Lovebirds") for the first time in a
talkie. The finale's bizarre, erotic and uninhibited production number "Turn on the Heat," partly tinted
in Multi-color, has been considered the 'first purely cinematic' number of its kind - 36 chorines led by
flapper Jane Worth (Sharon Lynne), who were dressed as Eskimos, flung off their fur parkas when
their ice-bound set became a 'hot', palm-tree-dotted tropical island - and when it became too hot and
the island went up in flames, they jumped into the water in their skimpy summer suits.

Early Operettas:

Many of the first musical sound films were generally heavy-handed, stage-bound adaptations of
operettas that looked much like photographed stage plays. Thefirst all-talking, all-singing full-screen
operetta was Warners' and Roy Del Ruth's The Desert Song (1929) with some Technicolor
sequences, which was based on the 1927 operetta of the same name with music by Sigmund
Romberg and Oscar Hammerstein II. It starred John Boles as the Pimpernel-like Red Shadow - the
handsome masked bandit leader of the French Moroccan Riffs, and Carlotta King as heroine Margot.
Myrna Loy also starred in an early role as the exotic native girl Azuri. It was produced two more times
by Warner Bros, in 1944 and 1953.

RKO's first major production was the stage adaptation Rio Rita (1929), one of the first musical
spectaculars (filmed in black and white with one rare Technicolor sequence). Starring Bebe Daniels
as the Hispanic title character and John Boles as a Texas Ranger, it was a costly adaptation of
Florenz Ziegfeld's 1927 successful Broadway stage musical hit shown virtually whole. Two of its stars
from the original show, comics Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey, went on to later fame in the early
30s for the studio.

MGM's Best Picture-nominated musical comedy The Rogue Song (1930) was another Technicolor
musical adapted from the 1912 operetta Gypsy Love, starring ex-Met baritone Lawrence Tibbett in his
first screen role (Oscar-nominated as Best Actor) as Yegor - the dashing leader of an outlaw band
called The Robbing Larks. New Moon (1930) (remade in 1940 with Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson
Eddy), featured Metropolitan Opera soprano diva Grace Moore and ex-Met baritone Lawrence
Tibbett. [Moore's debut film was in MGM's musical A Lady's Morals (1930) as the 'Swedish
Nightingale' Jenny Lind.]

All-Star Revue Musicals:

Every studio in the late 20s produced lavish, star-studded musicals of the "all-
talking, all singing, and all dancing" variety that contained smorgasbord lineups of
specialty or vaudeville acts, comedy sketches, musical numbers, short dramas,
and other production numbers (some of which had color sequences). In many
cases, actors with no musical talent whatsoever were recruited into these musical
revue films that were essentially all-star spectacles.

One of the first "variety" shows was MGM's elaborate, Best Picture-
nominated The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929) noted for two highlight songs:
"While Strolling Through the Park One Day" and "Singin' in the Rain". Its star-
studded cast included Joan Crawford (singing and Charleston-dancing to "Gotta
Feelin' For You"), Marion Davies (performing "Tommy Atkins on Parade" and also
tap dancing), Bessie Love (performing "I Never Knew I Could Do a Thing Like That"), comedy
sketches from Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton (performing "Dance of the Sea" dressed as Neptune's
daughter) and Marie Dressler (singing "For I'm the Queen"), and other star performers. It was hosted
by Jack Benny and Conrad Nagel and was most notable for an early version of "Singin' in the Rain",
performed by Cliff Edwards (known as "Ukelele Ike") during a rainstorm in the two-color finale.
 Another was Warners' color film The Show of Shows (1929), that
featured comedienne Winnie Lightner singing the first renditions of"You
Were Meant For Me" (with Bull Montana) and "Singing in the Bathtub" - to
mock the song in MGM's film. It also starred Myrna Loy, John Barrymore,
comedian Ben Turpin, 'Eight Sister Acts' and more, and was hosted by
Master of Ceremonies Frank Fay. The film ended with a showstopper of
ten different dance troupes. Universal's King of Jazz (1930) featured a
spectacular array of stage-screen and radio stars. It was an unscripted
vaudeville revue of production numbers as a tribute and "scrapbook"
honoring and showcasing "King of Jazz" band leader Paul Whiteman (Himself). It opened with a
Walter Lantz cartoon (the first Technicolor sound cartoon ever made), then included the extravagant
"My Bridal Veil" production number, 500 cowboys with John Boles in the climax of "Song of the
Dawn", an early appearance of Bing Crosby as a Rhythm Boys band member singing "Mississippi
Mud," and the highlight - a 2-strip Technicolor version of George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue"
performed by the Paul Whiteman Band (emerging from inside a large baby-blue-colored grand piano).
The film ended with "The Melting Pot Medley" featuring dozens of costumed chorines.

Other "variety" or "revue musicals" included: Fox's Movietone Follies of 1929 (1929), and the best of
the entire lot -- Paramount's and female director Dorothy Arzner's Paramount on Parade (1930) - a
patchwork from eleven different directors of twenty numbers (and eleven songs). It featured Nancy
Carroll (with "Dancing to Save Your Sole" performed inside and on top of a shoe with rubber-legged
dancer Al Norman), Maurice Chevalier in three sequences (including singing "All I Want is Just One
Girl" while patrolling a Parisian park as a gendarme, and "Origin of the Apache" danced in a bedroom
slapstick-style), Clara Bow (dressed as a sailor singing "I'm True to the Navy Now"), George Bancroft,
Kay Francis, William Powell, Warner Oland, Ruth Chatterton (performing "My Marine") and many
more; the film's Technicolor finale was titled "Rainbow Revels" with the chorus and Chevalier
appearing as chimney sweeps and singing "Sweeping the Clouds Away". The only major Paramount
star not included in the film was Jeanette MacDonald.

Early Musical Directors: Ernst Lubitsch

A few of the more notable early musicals were from German emigre director
Ernst Lubitsch, who had already established a reputation as a director of
sophisticated, risque romantic/sex comedies in the silent era. He was adept at
effectively integrating songs into his narratives involving sexual indiscretions and
liaisons. One of his major innovations was to shoot his pictures without sound (it
would be dubbed in later), thereby giving him more freedom of camera
movement. He also introduced the world to the wonderful pairing of French
cabaret star Maurice Chevalier and soprano Jeanette MacDonald.

His first sound and musical film was at Paramount, The Love Parade (1929/30).
Lubitsch skillfully used sound and smoothly avoided making it stage-bound and
over-acted like many of the early talkies. It was one of the first movie musicals
that integrated songs into the narrative story. The film featured the delightful
pairing of red-haired singer Jeanette MacDonald (in her first film, debuting as the
frustrated Queen Louise of Sylvania) and French entertainer and the film's sole
star Maurice Chevalier in his second sound picture (as womanizing military attache Count Alfred
Renard and MacDonald's consort/prince). The film included such delightful songs as "Dream Lover," a
duet of the title song, and the entertaining "Anything to Please the Queen." It received six Academy
Award nominations for Outstanding Production, Best Actor (Maurice Chevalier), Best Director, Best
Cinematography, Best Interior Decoration and Best Sound Recording.

Over the next three years, Lubitsch went on to direct three more musical comedies, collaborating
again with Jeanette MacDonald and Maurice Chevalier:

1. Monte Carlo (1930), set in the Riviera, starred Jeanette MacDonald (opposite Jack
Buchanan) and contained the famous sequence of her singing "Beyond the Blue Horizon"
2. The Smiling Lieutenant (1931/32), an amusing and enchanting romantic comedy starred
Maurice Chevalier (as Lt. Nikolaus 'Niki' von Preynan, an Austrian lieutenant in the Viennese
 military) in addition to Claudette Colbert (as Franzi, the violin-strumming leader of an all-girls'
band) and Miriam Hopkins (as uptight Princess Anna) - it was a charming Viennese-flavored
operetta (based upon the 1907 3-act operetta A Waltz Dream by Oscar Straus) - and a box-
office hit (and Best Picture nominee). One of its more memorable songs was the honky-tonk
piano-accompanied "Jazz Up Your Lingerie," while Hopkins burned her underwear in the
fireplace.
3. One Hour With You (1931/32) (with uncredited co-director George Cukor) was a re-named
remake of Lubitsch's earlier silent film comedy The Marriage Circle (1924); it was now a
impudently witty romantic comedy-sound musical; the sex romp with some infidelity again
paired Jeanette MacDonald with Maurice Chevalier as husband and wife (threatened by vamp
Genevieve Tobin), with their duet: "What a Little Thing Like a Wedding Ring Can Do." (It was
nominated for Best Picture, but lost to Grand Hotel (1932))

For his last musical, Lubitsch brought MacDonald and Chevalier together again, at MGM, for one of
the greatest, most lavish operettas ever filmed, The Merry Widow (1934). It was loosely based on
Franz Lehar's 1905 operetta, with a Rodgers and Hart score, and won the Academy Award for Best
Art Direction (Cedric Gibbons and Frederic Hope).

Early Musical Directors: King Vidor

One of the early landmark musical films was King Vidor's and MGM's melodramatic
musical Hallelujah! (1929). It was King Vidor's first talkie and only musical. And it
was the first all-black feature film in the sound era with a soundtrack composed of
various spirituals and traditional songs, such as "Swing Low, Swing Chariot" and
"Swanee River." It was a risky film to make, given its questionable box-office
potential, and the fact that it was shot mostly on location in Memphis. [Vidor was
already known for his great silent films, including The Big Parade (1925) and   The
Crowd (1928).]

It was also the first film with a dubbed, asynchronous soundtrack added later in the

studio in Hollywood - a technological, post-production advancement. Although the
film contained some racial stereotypes, over-done acting, and primitive techniques, it
remained a powerful tale of murder and redemption in the Deep South, regarding
black man Zeke (Daniel Haynes) who was led to commit manslaughter and murder within a love
triangle involving seductive temptress Chick (Nina Mae McKinney) and her lover from the past Hot
Shot (William E. Fountaine).

Early Musical Directors: Rouben Mamoulian

In the early 1930s, director Rouben Mamoulian was most adept at stylizing
musicals, using various devices in his pictures, such as slow motion (to
create dreamy interludes and imaginary settings), a moving camera, swift
transitions between scenes, a double-channel soundtrack with overlapping
dialogue, and reversed films. Mamoulian's directorial debut (and his first
sound film) was titledApplause (1929). It was an inventive, refreshingly-
realistic, seamy, sordid and grim melodrama of backstage life, with rough
dialogue, unattractive characters, and an uncompromising tragic ending
regarding a mother-daughter relationship. It was one of the earliest talkies
to feature Broadway's legendary 1920s musical star Helen Morgan (in her
screen debut) as fading, self-destructive burlesque (singer-stripper) queen Kitty Darling, unswervingly
devoted to her convent-educated daughter April (Joan Peers).

Mamoulian's Lubitsch-inspired romantic musical Love Me Tonight (1932) from Paramount (with a

Rodgers and Hart score) is considered among the greatest, most innovative musicals of the 1930s. It
set the pattern for future seamlessly integrated musicals. The stars wove witty dialogue and songs
together that advanced the plot. This charming and sparkling film featured the ever-popular,
effervescent stars Jeanette MacDonald as melancholy, frustrated and bored countess Princess
Jeanette, Maurice Chevalier as tailor Maurice Courtelin mistaken for a baron Maurice Courtelin, and
Myrna Loy as man-hungry Countess Valentine, in a tale set in Paris. The film opened with a
'symphony of noises' sequence, capturing the rhythms and sounds of Paris awakening -- (i.e.,
pavement-sweeping, rug-beating, boot-making, cobblestone-tapping, smokestack-churning, and bell-
ringing), while Chevalier sang "That's the Song of Paree"; he also was linked to MacDonald for their
classic rendition of "Isn't it Romantic?" - the catchy tune was passed through time and space (from
Chevalier's 'Tailleur' shop to people in the street, and into the countryside on a train, and then into
MacDonald's country chateau where she was singing on her open balcony) and linked together by
different characters (a shop customer, a taxi driver and his composer customer, soldiers on the train
that emerged marching, and a gypsy violinist).Of the nine staged musical numbers, other songs
included the title song "Love Me Tonight" with the song ending with the duo in split-screen - appearing
as if they were in the same bed, the lilting Rodgers and Hart tune "Lover" (sung by MacDonald in her
carriage to her horse), and Chevalier's trademark impertinent serenade song to MacDonald titled
"Mimi" ("You know I'd like to have a little son of a Mimi by and by!").

Resurgence of Musicals:

Warner Bros. was the studio that produced the first talking picture in 1927,
the first movie operetta (The Desert Song (1929)), and the firstcolor musicals.
The first all-color (actually two-strip Technicolor) sound musical was Warners'
and director Alan Crosland's backstage musical On With the Show! (1929) -
advertised as "the first 100%, Natural Color, All-Singing Production" - with a plot
similar to the later release,   42nd Street (1932/33). Director Edmund
Goulding's big-budget musical Reaching for the Moon (1930), starring Douglas
Fairbanks (in one of his few sound pictures) and Bebe Daniels, was to be
the first musical to feature an all-Irving Berlin song score, but the studio
eliminated all of them except "When the Folks High-Up Do the Mean Low-
Down", performed by a young Bing Crosby, June MacCloy and Bebe Daniels.
The studios began to fear that audiences were becoming exhausted by the
number of songs in films.

The second full-length color sound feature film ever made was Warners' ambitious and successful
Technicolor musical The Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929) by director Roy Del Ruth. It featured a
number of popular variety stage stars, including talented dancers, singers, and comedians. It was
famous for "Tip-Toe Through the Tulips With Me" and "Painting the Clouds with Sunshine" by Nick
Lucas, who also starred in the film. It was a remake of the silent, non-musical comedy film about
chorus girls, The Gold Diggers (1923) - and it was followed by Mervyn LeRoy's musical remake The
Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933). [In all, Warner Bros. made five Gold Diggers pictures, four of which
were made in the 1930s. See more below.]

By 1932, however, Hollywood studios had glutted the public's tired appetite and their overexposed
song-and-dance epics (often sacrificing plot and character development) went into a commercial
decline, coinciding with the height of the Great Depression. There were approximately 60 musicals in
1929, and over 80 in 1930, but by 1931, there were only 11. Audiences bypassed many of the musical
films that were being cranked out, and preferred to watch other genre creations, such as the
early gangster films: Public Enemy (1931) and Little Caesar (1930), the comedy film Min and Bill
(1930), or the Best Picture-winning western filmCimarron (1931). The novelty of sound had worn off
and the popularity of musicals suffered. For example, MGM's star-studded, over-produced Hollywood
Party (1934) with a host of writers and directors, originally titled Hollywood Revue of 1933, was
basically a disaster. It had a mish-mashed plot, and starred such diverse actors as Laurel and Hardy,
Jimmy Durante, Lupe Velez, Polly Moran, Frances Williams, and The Three Stooges.

The Landmark Film: 42nd Street

The musical genre was really sparked, fortunately, when the Warners studio stole
director and dance choreographer Busby Berkeley away from United Artists. (Earlier
in the decade, Berkeley was hired by Sam Goldwyn as dance director on four Eddie
Cantor films (one each year), where he began to display his talents. In Whoopee!
(1930), his debut film, Berkeley's first number was "Cowboys," partly crooned by 16
year-old Betty Grable, and the film also contained the first evidence of Berkeley's
trademark "top shot" in "Song of the Setting Sun". In his next filmPalmy Days (1931), Berkeley
continued to demonstrate his visual ingenuity by having the Goldwyn Girls use placards to form a train
at the end of the hit tune "My Honey Said Yes, Yes." And in The Kid From Spain (1932), Berkeley
brought on criticism for his 'peeping tom' views of chorines' silhouettes behind a translucent screen.
Finally, in Roman Scandals (1933), he exhibited further excesses, with his "No More Love" sequence
in which long blonde-haired slave girls were chained nude to a wall.)

The Warners film that breathed new life into the musical form was Darryl Zanuck's executive
production of director Lloyd Bacon's   42nd Street (1932/33), another lively backstage drama that
chronicled the hard work of a manic Broadway director (Warner Baxter) behind the making of a
musical comedy - where life (whether as a director or chorus girl) depended upon the success of the
opening show. The Warner Bros.' 'putting on a show' film (with two Oscar nominations for Best Picture
and Best Sound, with no wins) also featured two fresh new juvenile stars, Ruby Keeler (as a chorus
girl) and tenor Dick Powell, and it starred Ginger Rogers as veteran showgirl Anytime Annie.

Berkeley made screen history in this milestone-grandfather of spectacular musicals, with scores of
chorus girls, large extravagant musical 'production numbers' and sumptuous art deco sets, surrealistic
imagery, optical effects, zoom lenses, escapist musical numbers, fast-paced timing and rhythmic
editing, and wise-cracking dialogue. Berkeley was aided by the penned tunes of Harry Warren (and
co-writer Al Dubin), who contributed "Shuffle Off to Buffalo", "Young and Healthy", and the climactic
title song "42nd Street". [Songwriter/composer Warren also worked on Berkeley's other 1933 films,
and wrote some of the best-remembered musical songs ever created.]

Busby Berkeley - Master Musical and Dance Choreographer:

It was the first real look at the imaginative choreography of former Broadway dance director Busby
Berkeley, a transplant from Broadway musical-directing. He was the first to truly realize that a filmed
musical was totally different from a staged musical, with the camera becoming an integral participant
with the choreography. He was becoming known for his trademark sensual, kaleidoscopic patterns of
carefully-positioned, often scantily-clad chorus girls with props photographed from above (his "top
shot"), from swooping cranes, from the trench below the stage, or from cameras placed on specially-
designed tracks to capture audacious camera movements. Abstract, shifting geometric patterns,
screen compositions, and props in his highly-stylized 'moving pictures' included giant flowers, neon
violins, and waterfalls.

In most of these unique films, emphasis was on large extravagant (sometimes outlandish) musical
numbers and sets. He used his chorus girls not as individuals but as parts of large, attractive
geometric patterns moving with precise choreography. The images could be animated tiles in vast,
ever-shifting mosaics, fanciful geometric patterns or cascading designs. Often, he would use his
legendary cinematic "top view" shot to capture the kaleidoscopic views. He dressed the girls up in
preposterous costumes, sometimes as coins or musical instruments, or the chorus girls would wear
next to nothing but wisps of gauze. He also introduced the 'chorine close-up' shot.

Berkeley produced many more distinctive musicals during the Depression-afflicted 1930s for Warner
Bros. In fact, Berkeley alone choreographed three films for WB in 1933 (*). [Note: These three films all
featured performers Dick Powell, Ruby Keeler, Guy Kibbee, Lorena Layson, Renee Whitney and Pat
Wing. They also featured songs written by Al Dubin and Harry Warren, and conducted by Leo F.
Forbstein.] Each movie attempted to outdo the previous extravaganza in exotic, erotic flamboyance (in
chronological order):

  42nd Street (1933) *

 Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) *
 Footlight Parade (1933) *
 Roman Scandals (1933)
 Fashions of 1934 (1934)
 Dames (1934)
 Gold Diggers of 1935 (1935)
 Gold Diggers of 1937 (1936)
 He introduced spectacular musical numbers (often non-integrated into the narrative)
with stylized action, astonishing sets, and huge lavish dance numbers for the Gold
Digger series. Mervyn LeRoy's blockbuster Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) (a remake
of the Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929) which itself was a remake of the silent
film Gold Diggers (1923) about chorus girls), was one of Berkeley's purest fantasies
for the Depression Era. It featured a young, coin-clad Ginger Rogers in the opening
production number leading a chorus line of showgirls garbed in more gold-coin
costumes singing "We're in the Money" (with one verse in Pig Latin). In another
scene, Berkeley undressed his pretty chorus girls entirely behind screens,
backlighting them so that the audience could see all they had to offer in silhouette. In
another romantic scene "The Shadow Waltz", neon-lighted violins formed geometric
designs on the screen with girls dressed all in white. The film ended with the social
commentary of the finale's downbeat number: "Remember My Forgotten Man"
accompanied by the singing of Joan Blondell.

One of Berkeley's greatest extravaganzas in the same year was another Lloyd
Bacon collaboration: Footlight Parade (1933), in which Ruby Keeler and Joan
Blondell co-starred with a lively yet crazed Broadway musical producer (James
Cagney). The film has many classic numbers including "Shanghai Lil" and the
underwater/fountain sequences in "Honeymoon Hotel". The most incredible and
showy of all sequences of musical fantasy in Berkeley's films was the 15 minute
production number "By a Waterfall". It included a revolving wedding cake fountain
and an elaborate aquacade of 100 bathing-suited girls, performing kaleidoscopic
patterns in the water and reflecting their images in a pool, climaxing in a huge human
fountain.

Dames (1934) included Berkeley's inventive, staged choreography in a title

production number (Harry Warren's and Al Dubin's love song "I Only Have Eyes For
You") in which gigantic, precision-fit jigsaw puzzle pieces on the backs of dancing chorus girls came
together to form a large picture of the face of Ruby Keeler. The 'backstage musical' film also featured
showgirl Mabel Anderson (Joan Blondell) solo-singing "The Girl at the Ironing Board".

The visually-stunning Gold Diggers of 1935 (1935), not only production-designed but directed by
Berkeley, featured one of the finest examples of Berkeley's inventiveness. He traced the experiences
of a chorus girl through a day and night, culminating with her death fall from a Manhattan balcony. In
another sequence titled "The Words Are In My Heart", pretty chorus girls playing long rows of two-
dozen separate white pianos were merged together into one huge piano. He accomplished this
spectacular feat by having his stagehands invisibly dressed in black while they wheeled the pianos
around on stage. The film climaxed with Berkeley's large-scale dancing number "Lullaby of
Broadway". The inventive, show-stopping, tap-dancing climactic finale - a film within a film - of a day
in the life of the Great White Way of New York, started with an opening shot (in a dark frame) of a lit,
approaching, disembodied, singing, and upturned face (singer Wini Shaw's face) followed by a
famous dissolve (into an aerial shot of Manhattan) - and then told a mordant and cautionary tale of life
(and death by falling from a skyscraper balcony) in the hedonistic night-time city.

The era of extravagant Gold Diggers/Berkeley numbers began its decline shortly after the mid-30s,
due to production cuts and enforcement of the Production code that forbade some of Berkeley's
sublimated sexual images. The famed director/choreographer was restricted to only two production
numbers in Lloyd Bacon's Gold Diggers of 1937 (1936), featuring the ten-minute final musical
number "All's Fair in Love and War", nominated for Best Dance Direction. It featured Joan Blondell
leading a chorus of 104 women dressed in white military uniforms (against a shiny black floor) as they
tapped their way through a series of military formations and flag-wavings with Berkeley's trademarked
geometric patterns. By the time the last Gold Diggers film was released, Gold Diggers in Paris
(1938), Rudy Vallee had replaced Dick Powell (who had starred in the previous three Gold
Digger films), and the budgets for Berkeley's numbers were drastically cut and scaled down.

MGM's 'Singing Sweethearts': Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy

MGM studios also contributed to the resurgence of musicals in the 1930s, filming a
number of "singing sweethearts" or "America's sweethearts" films teaming baritone
Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald singing romantic duets in remade operettas
with bittersweet romantic themes. After Jeanette starred in Paramount's film version
of the operetta The Vagabond King (1930) as heroine Katherine with co-star Dennis
King as the roguish poet Francois Villon, and in the Ernst Lubitsch/Paramount
production of One Hour With You (1932), she appeared in Rouben
Mamoulian's/Paramount's musical fairytale Love Me Tonight (1932) (with a star-
making role for Myrna Loy) featuring a Rodgers and Hart score. She also starred in
MGM's The Merry Widow (1934) with Maurice Chevalier, and then was successfully
and profitably paired with Nelson Eddy. They starred in eight films together from
1935 to 1942:

 Naughty Marietta (1935)

 Rose Marie (1936) (with the song "The Indian Love Call" known for its phrase, "When I'm
calling you-oo-oo")
 Maytime (1937)
 The Girl of the Golden West (1938)
 Sweethearts (1938)
 Bitter Sweet (1940)
 New Moon (1940)
 I Married an Angel (1942)

Nelson Eddy's debut was in the revised operetta Naughty Marietta (1935). Their best remembered
(and most commercially successful film together) was Rose Marie (1936). Maytime (1937), a 1937
box-office champion was a beautiful, bittersweet love story featuring the famed duo reprising the oft-
repeated "Will You Remember?" Their film Sweethearts (1938), MGM's first Technicolor feature,
demonstrated the effectiveness of color - its color cinematography won an Oscar.

MGM Dancing Star Eleanor Powell:

Another of the musical stars on the MGM studio lot during the 1930s was former
Broadway performer and glamorous tap dancer Eleanor Powell, who starred in a
number of popular musical films. Over her long career, she danced with the likes of
Fred Astaire. The best of her films were the following (notice that they included
three Broadway Melody films):

 The Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935) - a bit role, but Powell's first
association with MGM; Powell played opposite Robert Taylor, and
supporting cast members Jack Benny and June Knight; this film, the best in
the series, was one of the few sequels to be nominated for Best Picture
 Born to Dance (1936) featuring Powell in her first lead film role tap-dancing
on board an Art-Deco battleship
 the expensive, over-produced Rosalie (1937) featuring a Cole Porter score and co-star
Nelson Eddy
 The Broadway Melody of 1938 (1937), a film in which Powell's dance solos were
overshadowed by a young Judy Garland (her original name was Frances Gumm, in her first
feature film appearance) singing and dancing with Buddy Ebsen and singing the classic "You
Made Me Love You" to a photograph of Clark Gable ("Dear Mr. Gable")
 Honolulu (1939), in which Powell performs a hula-style tap dance, and also a stair-tapping
tribute - in blackface - to Bill "Bojangles" Robinson
 The Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940), one of Powell's best, with a six-minute, film-ending
tap-dance with Fred Astaire to Cole Porter's tune "Begin the Beguine"
 Lady Be Good (1941), with George Gershwin songs
 Ship Ahoy (1942)
 Sensations of 1945 (1944) - Powell's final starring film

1936's Best-Picture Winning Biopic Musical:

Another lavish musical from MGM during the 1930s was The Great Ziegfeld (1936),
the second Oscar-winning musical. It was the epic musical biography of
impresario/showman Florenz Ziegfeld (starring William Powell, Luise Rainer, and
Myrna Loy), that also featured actual Follies stars as themselves, such as Fannie
Brice, Will Rogers, and Eddie Cantor. The three-hour, over-rated Best Picture
Academy Award winning film, defeated other worthy Best Picture nominees A Tale
of Two Cities (1936) and Dodsworth (1936) in a year in which Astaire-
Rogers' Swing Time (1936) was not nominated for the top award. Gargantuan
numbers and songs included: "Won't You Come Play With Me?," "It's Delightful to be
Married," "If You Knew Susie," "Shine on Harvest Moon," "A Pretty Girl is Like a
Melody," "You Gotta Pull Strings," "She's a Follies Girl," "You," and "You Never
Looked So Beautiful." Luise Rainer also won the first Oscar statuette awarded to an
actress in a musical, for her role as Ziegfeld's stage star Anna Held - for a memorable telephone
scene.

Goldwyn's Musicals with Eddie Cantor:

Broadway comedian Eddie Cantor starred in six musical comedies independently produced by
Samuel Goldwyn in the 30s, including:

 Whoopee! (1930) - from Flo Ziegfeld's Broadway spectacular, with the hit songs: "My Baby
Just Cares For Me" and "Makin' Whoopee"
 Palmy Days (1931)
 The Kid From Spain (1932)
 Roman Scandals (1933) - probably the best of the group
 Kid Millions (1934)
 Strike Me Pink (1936)

Shirley Temple at 20th Century Fox:

Besides MGM, other studios had their own musical attractions, and merchandising
'cash cows.' One of the biggest money-making, musical super-stars of the mid-
1930s was Twentieth Century Fox's talented, naturally-acting, charming child
attraction Shirley Temple. The diminutive, curly-topped sensation earned a special
Oscar in 1934 "in grateful recognition to her outstanding contribution to screen
entertainment." Although her films went into decline by the late 30s as she got
older, she achieved legendary film status in such films as:

 Baby Take A Bow (1934) - her first starring vehicle

 Bright Eyes (1934) - one of Shirley's best, with her classic rendition of "On
the Good Ship Lollipop"
 Little Miss Marker (1934)
 Curly Top (1935) - with Shirley as a resident of an orphanage, and noted for her phrase: "Oh,
my goo'ness!" - [this phrase was referenced in the latter film Annie (1980)]
 The Little Colonel (1935) with her famous staircase dance sequence with 56 year-old
vaudevillian and musical stage star Bill "Bojangles" Robinson; has a short Technicolor finale
 The Littlest Rebel (1935) - a Civil War era film, the finale includes a 'challenge dance'
against Bill Robinson
 Captain January (1936) including the delightful song/dance number "At The Codfish Ball"
with Buddy Ebsen
 Dimples (1936) - famous for Shirley's convincing re-enactment of Little Eva's death scene
in Uncle Tom's Cabin
 Poor Little Rich Girl (1936) - a remake of Mary Pickford's 1917 film, co-starring Alice Faye
 Stowaway (1936) - as a character named Ching-Ching, orphaned and stranded in Shanghai,
China who stowaways on a ship bound for San Francisco; known for Shirley's frequent
spouting of wise 'Charlie Chan' sayings, and her wonderful rendition of "You've got to S-M-I-L-
E, To be H-A-Double-P-Y"
 Heidi (1937) - includes a dream sequence set in Holland with the singing of "In My Little
Wooden Shoes"
  Wee Willie Winkie (1937) - directed by John Ford and set in India
 Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1938) with 10 year-old Shirley performing a medley of many
of her earlier hit songs, "On the Good Ship Lollipop," "When I'm With You," and more
 Little Miss Broadway (1938)
 The Little Princess (1939) - her first Technicolor feature film

Alice Fay and Betty Grable at 20th Century Fox:

For adult audiences, Fox's singer/dancer and musical performer Alice Faye starred in such hits as:

 Sing, Baby, Sing (1936)

 You're a Sweetheart (1937) - Faye's only film for Universal
 On the Avenue (1937) featuring Irving Berlin songs
 In Old Chicago (1938)
 Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938), a large-scale Irving Berlin backstage musical with Don
Ameche, Tyrone Power and young Ethel Merman - director Henry King's Best Picture-
nominated film was the first all-star epic musical to feature classic Irving Berlin songs (28
songs including "Heat Wave", "Now It Can Be Told" and Jack Haley's rendition of "Oh How I
Hate To Get Up In the Morning," among others) and set the pattern for musicals into the
1940s; the film won the Best Score Oscar for Alfred Newman's musical direction
 Rose of Washington Square (1939), with song classics "California Here I Come," "Toot Toot
Tootsie Goodbye," "I'm Just Wild About Harry," and "My Man"
 Tin Pan Alley (1940), an enjoyable costume picture starring Alice Faye and Betty Grable as a
pair of singing sisters, won the Best Score Academy Award
 Hello Frisco, Hello (1943) - starring Faye (singing "You'll Never Know") and co-star John
Payne
 The Gang's All Here (1943) - this was Faye's final starring role in a musical, director Busby
Berkeley's only film for Fox, and the one noted for Carmen Miranda's fruit-laden hat and the
song "The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat"

After Alice Faye, Twentieth Century Fox found a successor in the person of blonde
bombshell Betty Grable for much of the 40s decade and into the mid-50s. They
capitalized on her popular and shapely "million dollar legs" made famous in WWII pin-
ups showing her mostly in a rear-view image. Grable appeared in many nonsensical,
Technicolor extravaganzas including the musical comedy Moon Over Miami
(1941) with Carol Landis and supporting player Charlotte Greenwood, Footlight
Serenade (1942) with Victor Mature, Springtime in the Rockies (1942) with
supporting Brazilian player Carmen Miranda, Coney Island (1943), Pin-Up Girl
(1944) - a title that capitalized on her earlier fame, and the hit film The Dolly Sisters
(1945). Fox's Technicolored State Fair (1945), with Jeanne Crain and Dana
Andrews, was the only Rodgers & Hammerstein musical written directly for the
screen. Its tune, "It Might As Well Be Spring" won the Oscar for Best Song.

June Allyson:

MGM's 'girl-next-door' star was June Allyson who made her film debut in Best Foot Forward (1943).
Later she starred in MGM's war-time musical revue Two Girls and a Sailor (1944), and in three roles
she portrayed James Stewart's wife: in The Stratton Story (1949), in Universal's Big Band musical
biography The Glenn Miller Story (1954) (considered her best role), and in Strategic Air Command
(1955).

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers: The Greatest Dance Duo

The resurgence of musicals for RKO in the 1930s featured the cinematic artistry of the
seemingly effortless and carefree, graceful, energetic and inspired dance team of Fred
Astaire and Ginger Rogers - the most enduring, best-loved and complementary stars
of the era. Katharine Hepburn was quoted as saying about them, "He gave her class,
she gave him sex." In a unique musical courtship, the earthy Rogers matched Astaire's
nimble dancing vitality with her own brand of wise-cracking humor and talent. In many of the films,
they engaged in a 'challenge duet' of dancing skills and abilities (i.e., "Isn't It a Lovely Day (To Be
Caught in the Rain)" in   Top Hat (1935) or "They All Laughed" in Shall We Dance (1937)). Their
screwball comedy musical/dance films often seamlessly integrated the musical numbers into the
storyline - often one of chance meetings, mistaken identities, breakup or misunderstanding, and
reconciliation.

Astaire, arguably the greatest dancer in film history and an import from Broadway, was the creative
and revolutionary force behind the choreography and cinematography. He didn't fit the profile of a
studly, good-looking actor, but he changed forever the way in which the camera moved in musicals.
Musical numbers would now be filmed in long takes with minimal camera movements and cuts, and
Astaire also insisted that his full-figure had to be captured in the camera frame. The fact that long
dance sequences would be filmed in only one or two takes meant that the dance routines had to be
performed flawlessly - or repeated. Film technicians designed a so-called "Astaire dolly" that could
move on wheels and capture his whole body from a low-angle.

The RKO Films of Astaire and Rogers:

Here is a summary listing of the dance couple's nine films together at RKO over a six-year period from
1933 to 1939 - only two of them were nominated for Best Picture (*):

 Flying Down to Rio (1933)

 The Gay Divorcee (1934) *
  Top Hat (1935) *
 Roberta (1935)
 Swing Time (1936)
 Follow the Fleet (1936)
 Shall We Dance (1937)
 Carefree (1938)
 The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939)

Beginning at RKO, in the first of their nine films there, they co-starred (billed fourth
and fifth in secondary roles) in Flying Down to Rio (1933) in only one dance
number. The film was known for its memorable airplane wing-dancing chorus girls
scene and their debut dance number - the sensual 18-minute, show-stopping
"Carioca." (Their first film together was also the first time Astaire/Rogers had been
teamed with choreographer Hermes Pan.) Then, after being recognized as possible
stars (as a dancing playboy and sweet but spunky dancing partner), they were top
billed in the next year's excellent The Gay Divorcee (1934), playing their
traditionally-remembered elegant and sophisticated dancing roles, exhibited in two
classic Cole Porter numbers: the dance-song number "The Continental" (it won an
Oscar for Best Song) and "Night and Day." In 1935, they were second-billed in their
fourth film - the light-hearted Roberta (1935) (directed by William Seiter) with a
nominated Best Song contender "Lovely to Look At" by Jerome Kern.

The Three Best Films of Astaire/Rogers:

The famous dance team's three best films in the series are considered to be:

 the quintessential and very successful   Top Hat (1935), a tale of mistaken identities and
romantic misunderstandings set in London and on the Italian Riviera, featuring Irving Berlin's
superb songs (i.e., "It's It a Lovely Day (to Be Caught in the Rain)" and "No Strings"), their
memorable dreamy duet "Cheek to Cheek" number with Rogers in an ostrich-feathered dress
(that shed during the routine), the dance "The Piccolino", and Astaire's signature solo number
"Top Hat, White Tie, and Tails"
  the magical Swing Time (1936) featuring their poignant duet "Never Gonna Dance," Astaire's
blackface solo dance "Bojangles of Harlem," the romantic "Waltz in Swing Time", and the light
courtship dance "Pick Yourself Up"

 Shall We Dance (1937) their seventh film together in four years, featuring Gershwin music
and their classic tap duet "They All Laughed"; also with a delightful roller-skating routine

They also teamed up to dance together in Follow the Fleet (1936) with an Irving Berlin score (the
highlight was their dramatic duet "Let's Face the Music and Dance"), and in the screwball musical
comedy Carefree (1938) with three Irving Berlin duets - and featuring Astaire's and Roger's first and
only on-screen kiss. Their last RKO picture together was the musical biopic The Story of Vernon and
Irene Castle (1939), culminating with Astaire's death in its conclusion. After a ten year absence from
the screen, the legendary pair of Astaire and Rogers was reunited for their tenth and final film in
MGM's inferior reunion film - The Barkleys of Broadway (1949), their only Technicolored film, with
the memorable number "You'd Be Hard to Replace", a reprise of "They Can't Take That Away From
Me," and Astaire's dance solo "Shoes With Wings On." Amazingly, Astaire and Rogers
were never nominated for an Academy Award for any of their musical performances/roles, although
Rogers presented Astaire with an Honorary Oscar in 1950.

Astaire's Other Dance Films:

Astaire continued to star in musicals for other studios and with other dance/film
partners. After Fred Astaire left RKO for MGM to make The Broadway Melody of
1940 (1940), the only film in which he tap-danced with Eleanor Powell (to Cole
Porter's "Begin the Beguine"), he later made two wonderful musicals with Bing
Crosby for Paramount:

 Holiday Inn (1942) in which Crosby relaxingly croons "White Christmas" for

the first time and Astaire dances with Marjorie Reynolds - the film was later
remade as White Christmas (1954)
 Blue Skies (1946) featuring Irving Berlin music and Astaire's classic "Puttin'
On the Ritz"

Both of Astaire's marvelous romantic musicals for Columbia with a ravishingly-

beautiful Rita Hayworth in the early 1940s have been under-rated - Hayworth was probably Astaire's
best dance partner after Ginger Rogers. They were first paired together in You'll Never Get Rich
(1941)featuring Cole Porter songs, and then in You Were Never Lovelier (1942). Their dancing was
as good as the best Astaire-Rogers romantic duets. Astaire also starred in Vincente
Minnelli's Yolanda and the Thief (1945) and the Irving Berlin musical Easter Parade (1948) with

In Royal Wedding (1951), Astaire performed two memorable numbers: his hat and coat stand-rack
routine, and his famous "wall and ceiling walk" dance number in his hotel room during "You're All the
World To Me". He also performed many song and dance numbers with Jane Powell, including the
dance duet "Open Your Eyes" and "How Could You Believe Me When I Said I Love You (When You
Know I've Been a Liar All My Life)?" [Keenan Wynn's famous number in the film was"What a Lovely
Day For a Wedding".] Much later, Astaire danced with Audrey Hepburn in one of the best musicals of
the 1950s, the gorgeously visual Funny Face (1957) - a film also directed by Stanley Donen.

Paramount and Columbia in the 1930s:

Paramount Studios' contributions to the musical genre in the 1930s included their musical The Big
Broadcast (1932) (and its three sequels) with radio stars George Burns and Gracie Allen and their
popular crooner Bing Crosby in one of his earliest film roles, singing his future theme song: "When the
Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day." The three sequels, all following the same pattern of the
first entry with music and a lineup of stars were:

 The Big Broadcast of 1936 (1935)

 The Big Broadcast of 1937 (1936)
  The Big Broadcast of 1938 (1937) - notable for Bob Hope's feature film debut, and the
singing of his future theme song, "Thanks for the Memories"

Crosby also crooned in other films for Paramount in the 30s and into the 40s:

 Mississippi (1935)
 Pennies From Heaven (1936) (for Columbia Studios)
 Sing You Sinners (1938)
 Going My Way (1944), a Best Picture winner, with the songs "Swingin' On a Star" (Best Song
Oscar winner) and the title song "Going My Way"; and the film's equally-popular sequel The
Bells of St. Mary's (1945)

Columbia Studios, under the direction of Harry Cohn, made very few musicals in the 1930s, although
they did produce One Night of Love (1934) from director Victor Schertzinger, with Metropolitan
Opera diva Grace Moore in her best screen role. The film scored six major Oscar nominations
(including Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Film Editing and Best Director), with two wins for Best
Sound and Best Score.

Deanna Durbin at Universal:

Universal Studios capitalized on (or exploited) the popularity of their young,

classically-trained, teenaged soprano singer Deanna Durbin, who first appeared at
14-15 years of age in Three Smart Girls (1936) as a matchmaker for her divorced
parents. [The film received three Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.] Durbin
sang "My Heart is Singing" and "Someone to Care for Me." The sweet-faced young
star made five more Univeral features under the direction of Henry Koster, helping to
save the studio from bankruptcy.

 the entertaining musical comedy 100 Men and A Girl (1937) - the winner of
the Academy Award for Best Score
 the highly-successful, lighthearted sequel Three Smart Girls Grow Up
(1939), with Durbin singing the hit wedding song "Because"
 in the romance-musical First Love (1939), 18 year-old Durbin received her first, brief on-
screen kiss (from young actor Robert Stack)
 Spring Parade (1940), with the Oscar-nominated song "Waltzing in the Clouds"
 It Started With Eve (1941), nominated for Best Musical Score
 and the musical romance Hers to Hold (1943) (aka Three Smart Girls Join Up) - the
second follow-up film to her first film

In 1938, she also appeared in Mad About Music (1938) and in the teen musical comedy That
Certain Age (1938) tailored especially for her singing of classical songs (of Mozart, Verdi, Liszt, and
Tchaikovsky) alongside Leopold Stokowski. She also sang the Oscar-nominated song "My Own." She
was awarded a 1938 special Oscar "for bringing to the screen the spirit and personification of youth."
Her first adult role was in Can't Help Singing (1944), a Technicolor Western musical (and her only
film made in color) - marking the start of her decline as a singing star. However, she introduced
Jerome Kern's Oscar-nominated song "More and More."

Musicals in the Late 30s and 40s Post-War Period:

Musicals really came into full flower in the late 1930s and into the 1940s, with an
increased demand for escapist entertainment during World War II and bigger budgets
for the musical genre. The 1940s inaugurated the heyday of elaborate MGM musicals
in technicolor. Color was also being introduced into the major productions. MGM's
most popular fantasy musical was the artistic, classic Technicolor masterpiece   The
Wizard of Oz (1939), starring an appealing and young emerging star Judy Garland as
Dorothy in a magical land and dreaming "Over the Rainbow." [Garland was recognized
earlier for her singing of "Dear Mr. Gable/You Made Me Love You" in The Broadway
Melody of 1938 (1937).]
Even Disney's   Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), the first full-length animated feature,
was also the first animated musical - with the title character occasionally singing within the film. Its
songs included the tuneful "Heigh-Ho" and "Some Day My Prince Will Come." Although not technically
a musical, the visually-brilliant masterpiece   Fantasia (1940) blended together animation and
classical music.

As in other film genres (such as the western and gangster films), darker undertones emerged in some

musicals in the post-war period, such as in director Michael Curtiz' Technicolored musical comedy My
Dream is Yours (1949), a Warner Bros' film starring Doris Day (in her second film). In its story about
a tormented romance (similar to A Star is Born), the film demonstrated how personal relationships
between performers were sacrificed for their careers (single war-widowed mother Martha Gibson
(Doris Day) was told: "Two careers in one family is one too many. We'll concentrate on mine, huh?" by
egotistical and conceited popular radio crooner Gary Mitchell (Lee Bowman)).

Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland: Teen Stars in the 40s

One of MGM's top musical teams in the 1940s was composed of all-American kids
Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, successfully paired together in a total
of ten feature films during their careers, either in:

(1) a series of musicals, most of which were specifically-designed Mickey-Judy

vehicles known as "backyard musicals" (a group of teenagers would put on their own
musical show against insurmountable odds) often directed and/or choreographed by
Busby Berkeley (Garland and Rooney were paired in seven films (# - the seven
musical films were in 1937, 1939, 1940, 1941, 1943 (2), and 1948))

(2) a series of 16 official Andy Hardy films from 1937 to 1958 (numbered below), in
which they appeared three times together (* - the three Andy Hardy films co-starring
Garland and Rooney were in 1938, 1940, and 1941):

 (1) A Family Affair (1937)

 Thoroughbreds Don't Cry (1937)# - the first pairing of Rooney and Garland in a romantic
comedy/drama
 (2) You're Only Young Once (1937)
 (3) Judge Hardy's Children (1938)
 (4) Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938)* - the pair's first Hardy film and probably the best in the
series
 (5) Out West with the Hardys (1938)
 (6) The Hardy's Ride High (1939)
 Babes in Arms (1939)#, d. Busby Berkeley, a "backyard musical" debuting producer Arthur
Freed (Rooney received his first and sole Best Actor Oscar nomination for a musical film)
 (7) Andy Hardy Gets Spring Fever (1939)
 (8) Judge Hardy and Son (1939)
 Strike Up the Band (1940)#, d. Busby Berkeley, a "backyard musical"
 (9) Andy Hardy Meets Debutante (1940)* - the second Hardy film for Garland
 (10) Andy Hardy's Private Secretary (1941)
 (11) Life Begins for Andy Hardy (1941)* - Garland's third and final Hardy film
 Babes on Broadway (1941)#, d. Busby Berkeley, a "backyard musical"
 (12) The Courtship of Andy Hardy (1942)
 (13) Andy Hardy's Double Life (1942)
 Girl Crazy (1943)#, d. Busby Berkeley, a "backyard musical". Includes a reprise of Ethel
Merman's Broadway hit, partially choreographed by Berkeley in a scene where Garland sings:
"I Got Rhythm" in white buck-skin
 Thousands Cheer (1943)#, featuring a guest-starring appearance of the two performers
(although not together)
 (14) Andy Hardy's Blonde Trouble (1944)
 (15) Love Laughs at Andy Hardy (1946)
 Words and Music (1948)# - with Garland and Rooney reunited and singing "I Wish I Were In
Love Again"
  (16) Andy Hardy Comes Home (1958) - the last in the series

There was also an 18 minute Andy Hardy short subject, titled Andy Hardy's
Dilemma (1938). MGM also presented a number of Judy Garland showpieces - she
was the young queen and top star of the musical in the 40s. Aside from her films with
Mickey Rooney, she also performed inLittle Nellie Kelly (1940), Ziegfeld Girl
(1941), a film with extravagant dance numbers, co-stars Lana Turner and Hedy
Lamarr, and hundreds of beautifully-costumed Ziegfeld Girls, one of which was Judy
Garland. And she also appeared in Busby Berkeley's For Me and My Gal (1942)with
Gene Kelly in his film debut, the light-hearted musical comedy The Harvey Girls
(1946) (in which she sings "On the Atchison Topeka"),The Ziegfeld Follies
(1946), Till The Clouds Roll By (1946) (appearing as Marilyn Miller and singing
"Look For the Silver Lining"), Easter Parade (1948) with Fred Astaire, and In the
Good Old Summertime (1949), a musical remake of The Shop Around the Corner
(1940) with Van Johnson.

Garland's best role and fresh singing (of Hugh Martin-Ralph Blane hits including "The Boy Next Door,"
and "The Trolley Song") were showcased in MGM's nostalgic period musical   Meet Me in St. Louis
(1944) for war-time movie-goers, where she was directed by her future husband Vincente Minnelli.
The story, about a middle-class family in a turn-of-the-century, Mid-western World's Fair city, was
based on New Yorker stories by Sally Benson. Songs and dances in the film were performed in
natural circumstances by many of the characters as a way to further the plot, and to reveal the
characters and their emotions, such as Garland's "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas"). Garland's
swan song film at MGM was Summer Stock (1950) in which she again co-starred with Gene Kelly
and sang "Get Happy" - in drag.

Musical Biographies: Show-Biz Figures and Big Band Musicians

The musical-film biographies of show-biz figures and big band musicians (and their
music) was a major sub-genre of all the studios in the 1940s-50s (mostly), in the
following:

 song writer and troubadour Stephen C. Foster (Don Ameche) in Swanee

River (1939)
 the rousing and patriotic Warners' production of   Yankee Doodle Dandy
(1942), starring the indefatigable James Cagney (who won a Best Actor
Academy Award) as the hoofing showman George M Cohan
 Irish song composer Ernest R. Ball (Dick Haymes) in Irish Eyes Are Smiling
(1944)
 the idealized career and timeless music of American composer George Gershwin in
WB's Rhapsody in Blue (1945), starring Robert Alda, and with an appearance by Al Jolson
singing "Swanee"
 the fictionalized, show-business life story of vaudeville and Broadway stage performer Al
Jolson in Columbia's The Jolson Story (1946), starring Larry Parks (who lip-synched to
Jolson's songs); its popularity led to the sequel Jolson Sings Again (1949)
 composer Cole Porter (Cary Grant) in Michael Curtiz' Night and Day (1946)
 the musical biography of songwriter Jerome Kern in MGM's Till The Clouds Roll By (1946)
 the big-band superstars Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey in UA's The Fabulous Dorseys (1947)
 the composer-songwriters Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart in MGM's Words and Music
(1948)
 WB's The Eddie Cantor Story (1953) about the bug-eyed entertainer (Keefe Brasselle)
 the biopic of American composer Sigmund Romberg (Jose Ferrer) in MGM's Deep in My
Heart (1954)
 the stories of musicians Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman respectively in Universal's The
Glenn Miller Story (1954) (with James Stewart) and The Benny Goodman Story
(1955) (with Steve Allen in his film debut)
 New York's pianist and bandleader Eddy Duchin (Tyrone Power) in Columbia's The Eddy
Duchin Story (1956)
  country music songwriter and performer Hank Williams, Sr. (George Hamilton) in the musical
biopic Your Cheatin' Heart (1964)

Musical Biographies: Classical Composers

Classical composers were also featured in Hollywood films, such as the following:

 A Song to Remember (1943), Columbia's biography of the Polish composer

Frederick Chopin, starring Cornel Wilde, Paul Muni and Merle Oberon as
novelist George Sand
 MGM's Song of Love (1947), about young German composer Johannes
Brahms (Robert Walker) and musician Robert Schumann (Paul Henreid) and
his wife (Katharine Hepburn)
 Sun Valley Serenade (1941) and Orchestra Wives (1942), two Glenn Miller
big band films of the 40s
 Song Without End (1960), (an Oscar-winning film for "best musical
arrangement"), a biopic about Franz Liszt starring Dirk Bogarde
 The Music Lovers (1970), Ken Russell's musical biography of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
 Immortal Beloved (1994), with Gary Oldman as Ludwig von Beethoven

Sonja Henie:

20th Century Fox produced brassy Americana features that capitalized on the figure skating abilities
of Norwegian champion skating star Sonja Henie. She was featured in a number of ice-follies style
films in the late 30s and early 40s, including:

 Thin Ice (1937)

 My Lucky Star (1938)
 Sun Valley Serenade (1941)

Esther Williams' Swimming Musicals:

One of the biggest MGM stars of the 1940s was swimmer Esther Williams who found
ingenious ways to appear in musicals in a bathing suit. She was featured with other
perfectly-choreographed chorus girls in many imaginative and absurd situations
centering around water. She starred in synchronized swimming routines or ballets in
various swimming musicals, including:

 Bathing Beauty (1944), with Red Skelton

 On an Island With You (1948), with Peter Lawford
 Neptune's Daughter (1949), with Red Skelton
 Million Dollar Mermaid (1952), a highly fictionalized biography of early film
swimming star Annette Kellerman, featuring Busby Berkeley-choreographed
water-ballet sequences
 Easy to Love (1953)
 Jupiter's Darling (1955) - her last film with MGM

Flag-Waving Musicals and Americana:

Composer Irving Berlin was the master of the patriotic song, including his 1938 hit tune "God Bless
America", and the "Song of Freedom" in Holiday Inn (1942). Flag-waving war-time musicals to build
morale during the war years included:

 Paramount's patriotic revue Star-Spangled Rhythm (1942), in which Betty Hutton sang: "I'm
Doing It For Defense," various cast members sang: "On the Swing Shift," and Bing Crosby
sang "Germans, Italians, and Japs Can't kick us off our Rand-McNally maps" in "Old Glory" -
while in front of Old Glory and a plaster Mount Rushmore
  also Paramount's variety war-time musical The Fleet's In (1942), with Johnny Mercer lyrics,
and the feature film debut of Betty Hutton
 MGM's flag-waving Thousands Cheer (1943), from director George Sidney, with a revue
finale and Gene Kelly's memorable "Mop Dance" 
 Columbia's Cover Girl (1944), with Rita Hayworth as a Brooklyn nightclub singer (her singing
was dubbed) and choreographer/actor Gene Kelly (the film won the Best Scoring of a Musical
Picture Oscar), with Kelly's astonishing "Alter Ego" dance sequence, and the song "Make
Way For Tomorrow"
 Pin Up Girl (1944), with Betty Grable
 Four Jills in a Jeep (1944), with Kay Francis, Carole Landis, Martha Raye, and Mitzi Mayfair
playing themselves

Semi-documentary movie versions of USO shows featuring singing, dancing,

comedy, patriotic speeches, multitudes of stars, magic and other forms of
entertainment included:

 Stage Door Canteen (1943) - UA's Broadway-star-studded extravaganza

with six bands and 50 stars, featuring Ethel Merman singing "Marching
Through Berlin"
 This is the Army (1943), from director Michael Curtiz, with Kate Smith
belting out "God Bless America", Ronald Reagan in an early role, and
Irving Berlin's song "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up In the Morning"
 WB's Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943)
 Universal's Follow the Boys (1944)
 Hollywood Canteen (1944), another morale-booster from director Delmer
Daves, with a parade of Warner Bros' stars from the West Coast, to 'answer' the film of a year
earlier; Roy Rogers sang Cole Porter's "Don't Fence Me In," and Kitty Carlisle sang the
Oscar-nominated song "Sweet Dreams Sweetheart"

In the war years, there were also two, rare studio-made musicals starring Hollywood's top black
entertainers:

 Cabin in the Sky (1943), MGM's all-black musical directed by Vincente Minnelli (his first
feature film), featuring Lena Horne
 Fox's Stormy Weather (1943), featuring many top black entertainers of the time - Lena
Horne, Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson, Dooley Wilson, Cab Calloway, Fats Waller and others

MGM - The Top Studio for Musicals: Arthur Freed

By the end of the 1930s, MGM was emerging as a revolutionary new force in Hollywood musicals
(and dominated the musical genre in terms of Academy Awards). MGM producer Arthur Freed was
originally a skilled lyricist/songwriter from the earliest days of the musical talkies at MGM. He had
come to Hollywood to write the score for The Broadway Melody (1928/29), and then had played a
key role as Associate Producer for   The Wizard of Oz (1939) (and had spotted Judy Garland's
talent early on). During the 40s and 50s over a period of twenty years, Freed produced for MGM some
of the greatest landmark musical films in the history of the genre, and worked with some of
Hollywood's most talented musical film directors and stars.

With his sharp eye for quality and freshness, his promotion of new, integrated musical forms (to make
song and dance numbers a more natural part of the story), and the choice of skilled directors for
his Freed Unit (e.g., Vincente Minnelli, Busby Berkeley, and Stanley Donen imported from Broadway,
also Rouben Mamoulian and Charles Waters), dance/directors (Gene Kelly), choreographers (Michael
Kidd, Robert Alton, Nick Castle, Fred Astaire and Hermes Pan), musical directors (Andre Previn), and
dazzling stars (Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Cyd Charisse, Debbie Reynolds, Fred Astaire, Frank
Sinatra, Leslie Caron and June Allyson among others), Arthur Freed created musical fantasy worlds
on screen - and some of the greatest musicals ever made.
 The 50 Top-Grossing MGM Musicals 
(produced by the Freed Unit - in red)
1. That's Entertainment (1974) 26. Two Sisters From Boston (1946)
2. Victor/Victoria (1982) 27. This Time For Keeps (1947)
3. The Unsinkable Molly Brown
28.   Singin' In The Rain (1952)
(1964)
4. Gigi (1958) 29. Thousands Cheer (1943)
5. I'll Cry Tomorrow (1955) 30. Bathing Beauty (1944)
6. High Society (1956) 31. Two Girls and a Sailor (1944)
7.   Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) 32. Fiesta (1947)
8. Show Boat (1951) 33. Words and Music (1948)
9. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
34. Deep in My Heart (1954)
(1954)
10. The Wonderful World of the
35. Neptune's Daughter (1949)
Brothers Grimm (1962)
11. Till the Clouds Roll By (1946) 36. Maytime (1937)
37. Take Me Out to the Ball Game
12. Anchors Aweigh (1945)
(1949)
38. In the Good Old Summertime
13. The Great Caruso (1951)
(1949)
14.   An American in Paris (1951) 39. On An Island With You (1948)
15. Thrill of a Romance (1945) 40. The Barkleys of Broadway (1949)
16. Easter Parade (1948) 41. The Broadway Melody (1929)
17. Annie Get Your Gun (1950) 42. The Great Ziegfeld (1936)
18. Easy to Wed (1946) 43. Sweethearts (1938)
19. The Harvey Girls (1946) 44. Girl Crazy (1943)
45. That's Entertainment, Part 2
20. Love Me or Leave Me (1955)
(1976)
21. San Francisco (1936) 46. On the Town (1949)
22. Holiday in Mexico (1946) 47. Three Little Words (1950)
23. A Date With Judy (1948) 48. Million Dollar Mermaid (1952)
24. The Singing Nun (1966) 49. Les Girls (1957)
25. Ziegfeld Follies (1946) 50. The Duchess of Idaho (1950)

Other Arthur Freed-Produced Musicals for MGM 

(a sampling)
Babes in Arms (1939) Pagan Love Song (1950)
Strike Up the Band (1940) Royal Wedding (1951)
Babes on Broadway (1941) The Band Wagon (1953)
For Me and My Gal (1942) Brigadoon (1954)
 Cabin in the Sky (1943) It's Always Fair Weather (1955)
The Clock (1945) Kismet (1955)
Yolanda and the Thief (1945) Silk Stockings (1957)
The Pirate (1948) Bells Are Ringing (1960)

Vincente Minnelli: Great Musical Director

Under Freed's guidance, Minnelli directed Cabin in the Sky (1943), his debut Hollywood film and the
first all-black musical in many years. (That same year, another one of the greatest all-black musicals
of all-time was released, Stormy Weather (1943), a revue starring the ravishing Lena Horne -- who
sang what would become her signature tune, the title song Stormy Weather.  Other performers
included Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, the Nicholas Brothers, Cab Calloway, Babe Wallace, Katherine
Dunham, Ada Brown, Dooley Wilson and Fats Waller. Ironically, the scenes of Cabin in the Sky's
star Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson were deleted in Stormy Weather!)

Arthur Freed's unit also produced Minnelli's Yolanda and the Thief (1945), an
exotic, charming fantasy about a con man (Fred Astaire) who convinces a rich,
virginal, South American heiress that he is her guardian angel. One of Minnelli's
most lavish films was The Ziegfeld Follies (1946), with scores of MGM stars
(Lucille Ball, William Powell, Judy Garland, Fanny Brice, Lena Horne, Red Skelton,
and more), a Ziegfeld-style stage revue of musical numbers, and comedy. The film
included Astaire and Kelly appearing together in their only duet ever. Another
Minnelli-directed film was The Pirate (1948), set on a remote Caribbean island with
Gene Kelly as a pirate wooing a lonely woman. Garland co-starred and sang Cole
Porter's hit tune "Be A Clown" with Kelly.

Under the guidance of MGM producer Freed, Vincente Minnelli (with Michael Kidd
as choreographer) also directed the big-scale classic The Band Wagon (1953), an
extravagant film that marked a pinnacle for musicals. It starred Fred Astaire as a
fading Hollywood movie star interested in a Broadway comeback as a sparkling, song-and-dance
man, opposite partner Cyd Charisse. The musical featured the well-recognized hymn to show
business - "That's Entertainment." The duo performed "Dancing in the Dark" in Central Park and the
"Girl-Hunt Ballet" final production number, a film-noiric satire of Mickey Spillane's pulp novels (with the
characters of a private eye and dangerous femme fatale siren in a sparkling red dress). Astaire also
danced with a black shoeshine boy in "Shine on My Shoes."

Gene Kelly: MGM's New Musical Dance Star

Freed was responsible for bringing a new musical star from Broadway to Hollywood in the early 40s -
the dynamic, ballet-oriented, Irish-American Gene Kelly. As a dancer, Kelly brought an imaginative
freshness and athletic-style, muscular vitality to a number of films, projecting a very different down-to-
earth persona from the sophisticated, suave and stylish tap dancing of Fred Astaire who often wore
top hats and tails. His first major role, in a stage production of Pal Joey, brought him a Hollywood
contract.

In Kelly's film debut, he was teamed with director Busby Berkeley, playing a song-
and-dance man opposite co-star Judy Garland in MGM's For Me and My Gal
(1942). He was successful in Columbia's Techni-colored Cover Girl (1944) opposite
Rita Hayworth, particularly when he danced with his own reflection in "Alter Ego."
And then in MGM's Best Picture-nominated Anchors Aweigh (1945) in the post-war
years, Kelly (with his sole Best Actor nomination in his career) performed a dance
with a scene-stealing Jerry, the cartoon mouse from "Tom and Jerry" - and the film
co-starred a young and thin Frank Sinatra who crooned Styne-Cahn tunes. As
mentioned earlier, Kelly also performed a song-and-dance duet with Fred Astaire
(their sole dance together) in The Ziegfeld Follies (1946). The Pirate
(1948) featured Kelly's singing and acrobatic, graceful dancing opposite Judy Garland, accompanied
with a Cole Porter score - its most famous dance sequence was "Be a Clown."

Teamed with co-director Stanley Donen for the first time (they directed three MGM post-war
musicals), Kelly made his directorial debut with On The Town (1949), an energetic dance/musical
that took the musical out of the wall-bound studio and on location into New York City. The adapted
Leonard Bernstein stage show was a story about three on-leave sailors (Kelly, Sinatra, and Munshin)
looking for romance during a 24-hour shore leave. Some of the film's production numbers included the
opening "New York, New York", "The Miss Turnstiles Ballet", and "Prehistoric Joe." Stanley Donen
also directed MGM's Royal Wedding (1951), a story inspired by star actor Astaire's real-life story,
and featuring Astaire's two famous solos: a 'tap-dance on the ceiling' routine, and a hat-rack duet.

There were two musicals that won the Academy Award for Best Picture in the 1950s,
and both were the works of Freed's and MGM's remarkable musical production unit,
and directed by Vincente Minnelli. Kelly expressed his amazing appeal and
choreography in MGM's trademark film,   An American in Paris (1951), a classic,
Award-winning Best Picture film (over   A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and A
Place in the Sun (1951)) about the romance between an American painter (Gene
Kelly) and a French girl (Leslie Caron). It featured George and Ira Gershwin music
and a climactic, 17-minute, half-million-dollar 'dream ballet' - one of Freed's
pioneering inventions. The musical won five other Oscars (Best Screenplay, Best
Score, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design), and
Kelly was awarded an honorary Oscar for "his brilliant achievements in the art of
choreography on film."

Freed's other Best Picture award winner was another Minnelli-directed film, MGM's adaptation of
Colette's story of Gigi (1958). The story within this original film musical was about a shy Paris
courtesan (Leslie Caron) who was courted as a wife by a wealthy Parisian playboy/patron named
Gaston (Louis Jourdan). [Leslie Caron's other major musical hit was in the title role as the
charming Lili (1953), a film that became the basis for the 1961 Broadway musical hit Carnival.] The
visually-enjoyable, Parisian-flavored film was actually filmed in the City of Lights and used the talents
of the composers (Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe) and the costume designer (Cecil Beaton) of
the play My Fair Lady. Gigi set a new record by winning nine Oscars in all the categories in which it
was nominated - one more than any other film had received up to that time (  Gone With the Wind
(1939), From Here to Eternity (1953), and   On the Waterfront (1954) each had received eight
Oscars). Maurice Chevalier received an Honorary statue, and Vincente Minnelli became
thefirst director to win an Oscar for a musical. [The win was Minnelli's second nomination as Best
Director and first and only Best Director win. His first nomination was for another 50s musical,   An
American in Paris (1951).]

The Greatest Musical Ever:

By most accounts, the greatest musical ever produced (co-directed by Kelly and
Donen and produced by Freed), a comic, satirical spoof of the dawn of the Hollywood
sound era, was MGM's   Singin' In The Rain (1952). It included Kelly's now-classic
solo dance of the title song in the rain, Donald O'Connor's energetic, acrobatic,
slapstick dance/song "Make 'Em Laugh," the Kelly/O'Connor duet of "Moses
Supposes," and a remarkable "Broadway Melody" ballet sequence in the finale (with
Kelly dancing with Cyd Charisse). It is one of Hollywood's best-loved films, with Kelly
as silent film star Don Lockwood, and Jean Hagen as dumb, squeaky-voiced actress
Lina Lamont, but it was ignored by the Academy Awards (with only two Oscar
nominations for Best Supporting Actress for Jean Hagen, and Best Scoring of a
Musical Picture). The film's setting was during the disruptive transitional period
between silent films and the coming of the talkies. It captured the confusion caused by
the introduction of talking-film technology in Hollywood, and its often disastrous effects upon silent era
performers.

More Musicals in the 50s:

Gene Kelly's third and last musical with director Stanley Donen was the cynical and odd It's Always
Fair Weather (1955) about three WWII soldier friends who reunited after ten years and discovered
that they didn't have anything in common. The film was memorable for the scene in which Kelly and
his co-stars danced down the street with trash-can lids on their feet.

A 50s-decade Warner Bros. film (directed by George Cukor) that resembled the
classic Freed-produced musicals at MGM but with a melodramatic edge was the oft-
filmed classic romantic tragedy-drama   A Star Is Born (1954) - a remake of a
1937 non-musical, tearjerker film version with Janet Gaynor and Fredric March. It
told the poignant story of aging, but alcoholic and self-destructive Hollywood
actor/mentor Norman Maine (James Mason) on the decline as he sabotaged the
show business career of his loving partner. The 1954 film starred Judy Garland (as a
band singer turned movie star - Garland's sole Best Actress nomination in her
career) and capitalized on her acting and singing talents (especially in "The Man
That Got Away" and the "Born in a Trunk" sequence), marking the peak of her
career.

Paramount's and director Stanley Donen's gaudily-colorful Funny Face (1957), with

Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn (in her first major musical and singing her own songs!), was a
filmed version of the 1927 George Gershwin Broadway musical, with tunes including the title song,
"S'wonderful", "How Long Has This Been Going On" and "He Loves and She Loves". Although the
film was a box-office disappointment, and the leads were miles apart in age, the film is still considered
a musical favorite.

The Demise of the Cinematic Musical:

In the 1950s and early 60s, when the studio system started its demise and the public again grew tired
of a long succession of musicals, the expensive-to-produce, risky screen musicals were among the
first genre to be discarded. Television was making inroads and grabbing the film-attending public. And
many of the biggest musical stars were approaching their swan-song years, such as Fred Astaire,
Gene Kelly, and Frank Sinatra. Some Hollywood musicals had to be made cheaply, such as Top
Banana (1953) starring Phil Silvers in the film version of his Broadway hit, and shot on location at
NYC's Winter Garden Theatre. Other musicals such as MGM's and Minnelli's Brigadoon (1954),
WB's Damn Yankees (1958) with Gwen Verdon, and Paramount's Li'l Abner (1959) (both lesser
renditions of their 1956 Broadway hits), were examples of the decline of the musical feature film
during the 1950s.

Disney's Animated Musicals:

Not to be overlooked, Disney Studios produced many classic animated musicals in the 50s with hand-
drawn animation and great scores, including:

 Cinderella (1950)
 Alice in Wonderland (1951)
 Peter Pan (1953)
 The Lady and the Tramp (1955)
 Sleeping Beauty (1959)

The Rise of Big-Budget Screen Adaptations of Broadway Hits:

During the age of television (and song-and-dance variety shows), the Hollywood
studios played it safe. Most musicals were lifted directly from established Broadway
smash-hits on the "Great White Way" - and adapted into film versions for the big
screen. Classic Broadway hits that opened on the silver screen in the 50s
included Annie Get Your Gun (1950) with Betty Hutton and Howard Keel in the
lead roles, the colorfulShow Boat (1951), MGM's Kiss Me Kate (1953) - a musical
version of The Taming of the Shrew with Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson [and
the only musical ever filmed in 3-D], and the breathlessly entertaining barn-raising
dancing of MGM's and Stanley Donen's Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) (sensationally
choreographed by Michael Kidd, especially in the "Challenge Dance" sequence). This Best Picture
nominee, with completely original songs, later became a Broadway musical in the 70s.

In addition, there were other great hits in the 50s and 60s:

 Frank Loesser's Guys and Dolls (1955), that substituted Frank Sinatra and Marlon Brando
for the original musical talent
 Fox's and collaborators Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! (1955), derived from the
smash 1943 Broadway musical of the same name
 Carousel (1956), adapted from the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein Broadway musical of the
same name
 The King and I (1956) with Yul Brynner in an Oscar-winning, Best Actor role as the King of
Siam and Oscar-nominated Deborah Kerr (with singing dubbed by ghost vocalist Marni Nixon)
 Gypsy (1962), with Natalie Wood miscast in the title role of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee
 director Joshua Logan's and Fox's South Pacific (1958), based on another popular Rodgers
and Hammerstein Broadway musical
 the superior The Music Man (1962) from Warners, with Robert Preston reprising his greatest
Broadway role as charlatan Professor Harold Hill; future TV child star (The Andy Griffith
Show and Happy Days) and Oscar-winning director Ron Howard appeared as the insecure,
stuttering boy Winthrop
 MGM's The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964), with Debbie Reynolds

Best Picture-Winning Musicals in the 60s:

From 1958 to 1968, there were five musical Best Picture winners out of eight
nominees. Four musicals in the decade of the 1960s adapted for the screen won the
Academy Award for Best Picture. All four were based on Broadway hits, but with a
distinct difference - each one involved a major cast change:

 UA's   West Side Story (1961), from Best Director-winning co-directors

Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise, with ten Academy Awards from eleven
nominations, was the Romeo-and-Juliet inspired 1957 hit Broadway musical
with spectacular choreography (especially in the film's opening), hit songs
including the exhilarating "America" (performed on a rooftop), and "Maria" with
music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Its romantic tale
featured star-crossed young lovers: Puerto Rican Maria (Natalie Wood
replacing Carol Lawrence, with singing dubbed by Marni Nixon) and American Tony (Richard
Beymer replacing Larry Kert, with singing dubbed by Jim Bryant) associated with competing
juvenile gangs in Manhattan's Upper West Side

 Warners' and Lerner's and Loew's musical play My Fair Lady (1964), with twelve nominations
and eight Oscars, was directed by the legendary George Cukor and based upon George
Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and the 1956 stage production. It was about a Cockney street
urchin named Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn replacing Broadway star Julie Andrews, with
singing again dubbed by Marni Nixon) who was transformed by linguist Henry Higgins (Rex
Harrison) into a proper lady; Cukor won his sole Best Director Oscar with his fifth nomination,
and all three British cast members (Stanley Holloway, Gladys Cooper, and Rex Harrison)
were nominated in acting categories, with Harrison the winner as Best Actor; Audrey Hepburn
was conspicuously absent from the nominees; My Fair Lady (1964) defeated another Best
Picture-nominated musical, Mary Poppins (1964) - see below

 Rodgers and Hammerstein's and producer/director Robert Wise's most

successful work - 20th Century Fox's romantic musical/dramaThe Sound of
Music (1965) based on Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse's 1959
Broadway hit about a romance between a nun-turned-governess (Julie
Andrews) and a widower (Christopher Plummer) with seven children, with
ten nominations and five Oscars, featured an unforgettable Julie Andrews
(replacing Broadway star Mary Martin) in the lead role, singing melodic
 Rodgers and Hammerstein songs (including the lively "Do-Re-Mi" and lyrical "Edelweiss").
The sweet, somewhat sentimental film was set in 1938 Salzburg, Austria and shot with
beautiful views of the Alps and the city.

[The Sound of Music (1965) surpassed   Gone With the Wind (1939) to become
the biggest money-making box-office hit to date (and the biggest, most profitable box-
office musical of all time.) It saved 20th Century Fox from going into bankruptcy after
their lavish spending on the disastrous Cleopatra (1963). The film won five Oscars -
Best Picture, Best Director (Robert Wise), Best Sound, Best Musical Score, and Best
Film Editing. (Julie Andrews starred a year earlier, with her film debut and a Best
Actress-winning role, in the marvelous childrens' film Mary Poppins (1964), with 13
Academy Awards nominations and five wins, that blended animation and live action
and was filled with delightful Disney songs, including Oscar winner "Chim, Chim
Chiree".) And Andrews would go on to star in the 1920s musical spoof Thoroughly
Modern Millie (1967), and reteamed with director Wise in the box-office failureStar!
(1968), a biography of stage musical comedy star Gertrude Lawrence.]

 Columbia's Oliver! (1968), the British film adaptation of the classic Charles Dickens tale
about an orphan boy in 19th century England, with eleven nominations and five wins, whose
major musical competitor was director William Wyler's and Columbia Studios' Funny Girl
(1968), with eight nominations and one win (Best Actress for Barbra Streisand in her screen
debut in the role of Fanny Brice)

All of the directors of the Best Picture-winning musicals in the 60s were long-overdue recipients of a
Best Director Oscar:

- co-directors Jerome Robbins (with his sole nomination) and Robert Wise (with his second
nomination) for   West Side Story (1961)
- director George Cukor (with his fifth nomination) for My Fair Lady (1964)
- director Robert Wise (with his third nomination) for The Sound of Music (1965)
- director Carol Reed (with his third nomination) for Oliver! (1968)

The Demise of the Musical in the Late 60s and 70s: Flops and Failures

The adaptation of stage material for the screen remained the predominant trend in
Hollywood with extravagant, lavish productions that attempted to duplicate the
successes of the 60s, in films such as: Bells Are Ringing (1960), Bye Bye Birdie
(1963) - the first Broadway musical to include rock songs, Richard Lester's A Funny
Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966) based on Stephen Sondheim's
1964 Broadway show (with Zero Mostel), director Norman Jewison's Fiddler on the
Roof (1971) based on the stories of Sholem Aleichem about changing times and the
life of a Ukranian milkman's family in pre-revolutionary Russia - and one of the
longest-running Broadway musicals of all time, Man of La Mancha (1972) and more.
However, by the end of the 1960s and early 70s, musicals were virtually extinct and
had significantly diminished in popularity.

For a few decades (until the 80s), major musicals, whether adaptations or original
productions, seemed to have disappeared or fared poorly at the box-office, and were regarded as
insipid and overblown. A number of disappointing flops and sometimes disastrous films spelled an
end to the large-scale film musical:

 Universal's Flower Drum Song (1961), inspired by Rodgers and Hammerstein's 1958

Broadway hit about the clash of East-West romantic/marital customs, and set in San
Francisco's Chinatown
 the overlong and below-average box-office failure Billy Rose's Jumbo (1962), one of the last
lavish musicals from MGM, a circus film musical starring Jimmy Durante (in his last non-
cameo role), Doris Day (in her last musical) and Martha Raye, and with an Oscar-nominated
Musical Score, including the Rodgers and Hart song "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World"
 Warner Bros.' $15 million flop Camelot (1967), with non-musical lead actors Vanessa
Redgrave and Richard Harris
 20th Century Fox's Doctor Doolittle (1967), another overlong and expensive flop, with Rex
Harrison (as Doctor Doolittle) 'talking to the animals' - it astonishingly received nine Oscar
nominations (including Best Picture) and only two wins (including the Oscar-winning "Talk To
The Animals")
 the unusual, uninspiring dramatic musical satire about corporate America - How to Succeed
in Business Without Really Trying (1967), adapted from Frank Loesser's Tony Award-
winning Broadway musical from 1961
 20th Century Fox's and director Robert Wise's $12 million Star! (1968), a biopic of Gertrude
Lawrence and a disastrous film for Julie Andrews, with seven nominations and no wins
 Finian's Rainbow (1968)
 MGM's disastrous Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), with two nominations (including a Best Actor
nomination for Peter O'Toole!)
 Hello, Dolly! (1969), another Fox financial disaster, directed by Gene Kelly, with seven
nominations (including Best Picture) and three wins; a young Barbra Streisand was miscast
as the titular matchmaker Dolly Levi, who replaced the stage originator Carol Channing; it was
noted for Louis Armstrong's performance of the title song
 Paramount's Paint Your Wagon (1969), an adaptation of Lerner and Loewe's 1951 western-
musical about the California gold rush, from director Joshua Logan, with one nomination (for
Nelson Riddle's Best Score), featuring action/western stars Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood
playing against-type as singing gold prospectors, in numbers such as "Wand'rin' Star' and "I
Talk to the Trees"!
 director/choreographer Bob Fosse's Sweet Charity (1969) with Shirley MacLaine - adapted
from the 1965 Broadway musical
 On a Clear Day, You Can See Forever (1970), directed by Vincente Minnelli
 Song of Norway (1970) - a musical biography of Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg
 Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971), with only one nomination, for Best Score
 Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), an appealing animated musical similar to Mary
Poppins (1964)
 The Boy Friend (1971) - a Ken Russell parody of Busby Berkeley's musical and visual
extravaganzas, starring 70's model Twiggy - with disappointing results
 1776 (1972)
 Man of La Mancha (1972) - a disastrous adaptation of the hit Broadway musical (with Peter
O'Toole and bosomy Sophia Loren)
 Lost Horizon (1973) - often rated as one of the worst films ever (a remake of Frank Capra's
non-musical Lost Horizon 1937)), with a Burt Bacharach score and a tone-deaf all-star cast
(including Peter Finch and John Gielgud)
 The Little Prince (1974) - the 1943 French novella by Antoine de Saint Exupéry was
transformed into Lerner's and Loew's disappointing musical (their final collaboration together)
 Mame (1974) - with comedienne Lucille Ball in the lead role
 the innovative and original film from Fox, At Long Last Love (1975), Peter Bogdanovich's
homage to musicals of the 30s, although it was a disaster at the box-office due to its lack of
sparkle, dull screenplay and miscasting - it was a failed attempt to have Cole Porter songs
recorded live by his miscast cast
 Lisztomania (1975), British director Ken Russell's bizarre musical biography with The Who's
Roger Daltry as composer Franz Liszt
 New York, New York (1977) - director Martin Scorsese's failed tribute to 1940s musicals,
with stars Robert De Niro and Liza Minnelli
 A Little Night Music (1978), the commercially-failed film version of Stephen Sondheim's
Broadway stage musical starring Elizabeth Taylor, with two nominations and one win - Best
Score
 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978) - this rock musical featured a soundtrack of
Peter Frampton and The Bee Gees masquerading as The Beatles
 director Richard Fleischer's poorly-acted The Jazz Singer (1980) - a third version (the
second remake of the classic film) with popular singer Neil Diamond in the lead role, and
Laurence Olivier as his father
 director Robert Altman's very quirky Popeye (1980), critically-assailed, with Robin Williams as
the comic-book sailor man with bulging arms
  Herbert Ross' original and somewhat somber Pennies From Heaven (1981), with stars Steve
Martin and Bernadette Peters lip-synching to their songs, reproduced some of Busby
Berkeley's spectacular production numbers of the 30s - with little box-office success
 director John Huston's big-budget, all-star Annie (1982), adapted from the 1977 hit Broadway
musical, misused the talents of Carol Burnett, Bernadette Peters, and Albert Finney
 The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982) - another Broadway musical adaptation from
the 1978 stage production
 Francis Ford Coppola's One From the Heart (1982), a stylized musical romance two years in
the making - the director's biggest flop and financial gamble due to its experimental nature
 the awful musical romance Yes, Giorgio (1982), with opera star Luciano Pavarotti
 Richard Attenborough's A Chorus Line (1985), a heavy film version of Michael Bennett's
longest-running Broadway musical, was a less-than sparkling and misguided rendition, with
the cut of the classic popular song "Hello Twelve, Hello Thirteen, Hello Love", replaced with a
song written for the film - the Oscar-nominated "Surprise, Surprise"
 Taylor Hackford's White Nights (1985), highlighted only by the tap dancing of Gregory Hines
and of Soviet ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, and the Oscar-winning Lionel Richie song
"Say You, Say Me"

Younger directors experimented with re-creating the splendor of 1930s musicals, with limited success,
as mentioned above:

 director Peter Bogdanovich's stinker - the embarrassing At Long Last Love (1975) - starring
his miscast then-girlfriend Cybill Shepherd and Burt Reynolds and others 'singing' sixteen
Cole Porter standard tunes!
 director Robert Altman's country-western music classic   Nashville (1975)
 Martin Scorsese's big-band era musical New York, New York (1977), a tragic, romantic
musical starring Robert De Niro and Liza Minnelli

Best Picture-Nominated Musicals in the 1970s:

Hollywood musicals generated 50 Academy Award nominations in the 70s. There

were only three musicals nominated for Best Picture in the 1970s, and none of them
won the top Oscar. Two of them, directed by dynamic choreographer-director-
screenwriter Bob Fosse, received high praise for their cinematic innovation, bold
approach and dramatic quality:

 director Norman Jewison's Fiddler on the Roof (1971), with eight

nominations and three wins (Best Cinematography, Best Score and Best
Sound), was adapted from the 1964 stage production
 the award-winning, striking, stylish Cabaret (1972) set in pre-Nazi Germany,
from director Bob Fosse, with Liza Minnelli (in a tragic-comic role as sexually-
ambiguous night-club singer Sally Bowles) and Joel Grey. Cabaret was originally a 1966
Broadway musical; with ten nominations and eight Academy Awards; Fosse won the Best
Director Oscar over Francis Ford Coppola (nominated for the Best Picture winner   The
Godfather (1972))
 and Fosse's experimental, semi-autobiographical All That Jazz (1979) featured Roy Scheider
in the lead role as gifted but driven, hard-drinking and self-indulgent New York choreographer
Joe Gideon ("It's show time, folks"); it ended with an exhausted Fosse's open heart surgery
staged as a musical, reminiscent of the extravagant numbers during Busby Berkeley's era;
the highly-praised film garnered nine nominations and four Oscars - it was one of
thefew Oscar-nominated musicals that originated on the screen rather than on Broadway. [It
would be another 22 years for the next live-action musical to be nominated for Best Picture:
Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge (2001)]

Rock 'N' Roll Films:

Inventive rock 'n' roll films and rock musicals were becoming a popular musical sub-
genre. The original musical film was becoming an endangered species, pushed out by rock 'n' roll
songwriters and new tastes among the record-purchasing public. The first mainstream feature film to
use rock music (Bill Haley's Rock Around the Clock) - during the opening credits - was in Richard
Brooks' Blackboard Jungle (1955). Soon after, Rock Around the Clock (1956) featured disc jockey
Alan Freed and the group Bill Haley and His Comets (singing the title song) and many others (such as
the Platters, and Freddy Bell and The Bell Boys) - it was the first film entirely dedicated to rock 'n' roll.
It was quickly followed by two more similar films featuring Alan Freed (as Himself) -- Don't Knock the
Rock (1956) and Rock, Rock, Rock (1956). Both films argued that rock-and-roll was a new, fun, and
wholesome type of music.

The rock and roll music of the 50s was on display, along with big-bosomed star Jayne Mansfield as a
talentless, dumb blonde sexpot in writer/director Frank Tashlin's satirical comedy The Girl Can't Help
It (1956). It was the first rock and roll film to be taken seriously, with 17 songs in its short 99 minutes
framework. Great rock and roll performers included Ray Anthony, Fats Domino, The Platters, Little
Richard and his Band (featured in the title song), Gene Vincent and His Bluecaps, Eddie Cochran
(with his screen debut) and others. American youth wanted to hear their popular groups in the films of
their choice.

Elvis 'The Pelvis' Presley: The King of Rock 'N Roll

The hip-swiveling king of rock 'n' roll, singer Elvis Presley broke into films, making a
total of thirty-three films in his career from the mid-50's to 1970. Although most of
them were forgettable, formulaic, low-budget, sappy 'boy-meets-girl' pictures
sprinkled with hit songs, Jailhouse Rock (1957) captured the real magnetism of the
music star. He was also featured as an actor in many money-making films after
signing his first film deal in 1956. His screen debut was in Paramount's Civil War
drama Love Me Tender (1956) (originally titled The Reno Brothers), with a #1 single
hit song ballad. Jailhouse Rock (1957) is generally acknowledged as his most
famous and popular film, but he also appeared in Loving You (1957) (noted for his
first screen kiss) and in director Michael Curtiz' King Creole (1958) as a New
Orleans teen rebel (acclaimed as one of his best acting roles) before the decade
ended. His induction into the Army in 1958 was a well-publicized event. After his
Army stint, he also starred in G.I. Blues (1960), in Don Siegel's western Flaming
Star (1960) (with only two songs) as a half-breed youth, in the southern
melodrama Wild in the Country (1961), and in other formulaic 60's films (i.e., Blue Hawaii
(1961), Kid Galahad (1962), and his biggest box-office hit Viva Las Vegas (1964)). By the 70s, his
film roles had deteriorated, and although he returned to stage performances and revived his singing
career, he was physically on the decline until his death in August, 1977 of heart disease and drug
abuse.

The Beatles:

The Beatles' improvisational and imaginative first film was producer Richard Lester's A Hard Day's
Night (1964), made at the peak of "Beatlemania" popularity. It captured a surrealistic day and a half in
the lives of the "Fab Four" Beatles from Liverpool, and heralded a new kind of musical. Their music
was also featured inYellow Submarine (1968), an animated musical feast. Two great rock
documentaries focused on the life of singer/writer Bob Dylan: D.A. Pennebaker's Don't Look Back
(1967) followed his 1965 tour of England, including appearances by Joan Baez and Donovan, and
Martin Scorsese's No Direction Home (2005)focused on the first six years of Dylan's career.

Jim Henson's The Muppets:

Puppetmaster Jim Henson's loveable creatures, the Muppets (from Sesame Street and The Muppet
Show (1976-1981)), including Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, and a host of others, crossed over to
family-oriented feature films in the late 70s. Inevitably, these profitable films in the original trilogy
included energetic and silly musical numbers:

 director James Frawley's The Muppet Movie (1979), with the Oscar-nominated "Rainbow
Connection" song
 The Great Muppet Caper (1981), Henson's feature film directorial debut film
  director Frank Oz's The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984)

A Revival of Dance Pictures:

Dance pictures were revived in the late 1970s by director John Badham's classic
urban drama/dance film Saturday Night Fever (1977) that starred John Travolta
(with the film's sole nomination for Best Actor) as a vulgar, blue-collar Brooklyn paint-
store clerk - transformed into a pulsating, white-suited disco king Tony Manero who
struts across a dance floor of rainbow-colored squares. The famous disco film
featured a popular Bee Gees soundtrack (un-nominated by AMPAS!). Dance
champion Denny Terrio and choreographer Lester Wilson trained Travolta, who was
a teen idol and starring on TV's Welcome Back, Kotter (as Vinnie Barbarino), to
swivel his hips on the dance floor. The film, costing about $3.5 million, made almost
$300 million for Paramount Studios. [The film's lesser sequel was Sylvester
Stallone's Staying Alive (1983).]

The next year, Travolta co-starred with Australian singer Olivia Newton-John in
Randal Kleiser's popular, spirited, nostalgic 50s film Grease (1978) with smutty dialogue - it was a
former 1972 hit Broadway musical that brought two big hit songs: "Summer Nights" and "You're The
One That I Want", to the charts. (The film's only nomination was Best Song for "Hopelessly Devoted
to You.") It was about two lovers, Australian transfer student Sandy (Newton-John) and American
greaser Danny Zucko (Travolta), who enjoyed a summertime romance but had to adapt to new roles
back in their high school cliques, the T-Birds and the Pink Ladies. Its popularity made it one of the
highest grossing movie musicals ever. Patricia Birch's lesser sequel,Grease 2 (1982), her debut film
as director (she had choreographed the original film) maintained the same locale, Rydell High School,
but brought a new cast including Michelle Pfeiffer and Maxwell Caulfield. Olivia Newton-John's follow-
up film to Grease was a disaster -- the musical roller disco fantasy Xanadu (1980), in which she
starred as a Greek muse in Los Angeles alongside co-star Gene Kelly (in an attempted comeback).

In response to Grease, independent film producer Roger Corman provided the low-budget Rock 'n'
Roll High School (1979) with a soundtrack by The Ramones.A Western-style Saturday Night
Fever film, James Bridges' Urban Cowboy (1980), with popular young stars John Travolta and Debra
Winger, featured Houston honky-tonks, mechanical bull-riding in bars, blue-collar cowboys, and
country music dancing (including the Cotton-Eyed Joe). Alan Parker succeeded with the dance
musical Fame (1980), a story of eight struggling young dancers in New York High School for the
Performing Arts - so popular that it helped launch a television show - and it received six Academy
Award nominations and two wins (Best Score and Best Song).

Adrian Lyne's slick Flashdance (1983) was the immensely popular, highly kinetic, music-video style
film - with an Oscar-winning title song by Irene Cara. It featured 19 year-old Jennifer Beals in her first
starring role as Alex - a day welder in Pittsburgh and night dancer in a men's club who aspired to
successfully audition for ballet school. Herbert Ross' energetic rock/dance film Footloose (1984) was
also a culturally-significant film with a pounding, hit soundtrack (that featured Kenny Loggins' Oscar-
nominated hit single of the title song, and a second nominated Best Song "Let's Hear It For the Boy").
It starred John Lithgow as a strict minister and Kevin Bacon as the illegal and defiant dancer in town.
Singer Prince (in his first starring film) played "The Kid" in the feature-length music videoPurple Rain
(1984), and succeeded in having the #1 movie, album, and single simultaneously. The sleeper hit,
feel-good teen-oriented dance/romance film Dirty Dancing (1987) with Jennifer Grey and Patrick
Swayze provided nostalgia, great dance routines, sexy young stars, and a coming-of-age story set in
the Catskills in 1963. The film sparked a short-lived revival of the sexy Latin dance - the lambada -
with such exploitative films as Joel Silberg's Lambada (1989), and The Forbidden Dance (1990),
starring Laura Elena (Martinez) Herring (the first Latina to win Miss USA - in 1985).

A Revival of Musical (Rock and Roll) Biopics:

A number of musical biopics were released in this time period, to remember the lives of various
popular musical artists and important figures, such as:
  American Hot Wax (1978) - in tribute to influential rock DJ Alan Freed, who promoted the
popularity of R&R in the 1950s
 The Buddy Holly Story (1978) - with Oscar-nominated Gary Busey as the 50's singing rock
hero from Lubbock, Texas with his group The Crickets, in this film with an Oscar-winning
Adapted Musical Score; the film concluded with 22 year-old Holly's tragic plane crash in
February, 1959 ("...and the rest is rock 'n' roll")
 This is Elvis (1981) - a documentary on the life of Elvis Presley
 La Bamba (1987) - with Lou Diamond Phillips as rock singer Ritchie Valens (with songs in the
film performed by Los Lobos), who died tragically with Holly in the 1959 plane crash
 John Lennon in Imagine: John Lennon (1988), a music-video collection of tracks from
Lennon's Imagine album
 Great Balls of Fire (1989) - named after Jerry Lee Lewis' 1957 hit song; a biopic starring
Dennis Quaid as the controversial rocker who married 13 year-old second cousin Myra
(Winona Ryder)

Biopics of Musical Singers:

Both Diana Ross and Bette Midler were Best Actress-nominated for their lead roles (based
respectively on the lives of legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday and tragically burned-out rock star
Janis Joplin) in Lady Sings the Blues (1972) and director Mark Rydell's The Rose (1979). Director
Michael Apted's Coal Miner's Daughter (1980) with Best Actress-winning Sissy Spacek was a quasi-
musical/biopic about country music singer Loretta Lynn. Patsy Cline (portrayed by Best Actress-
nominated Jessica Lange) was also remembered with Sweet Dreams (1985), as was Jim Morrison
(portrayed by Val Kilmer) in Oliver Stone's The Doors (1991), Tina Turner (portrayed by Oscar-
nominated Angela Bassett) in What's Love Got to Do With It? (1993), Bobby Darin (portrayed by
Kevin Spacey) in Beyond the Sea (2004), and country singer Johnny Cash (portrayed by Joaquin
Phoenix, with Oscar-winning Reese Witherspoon as wife June Carter) in Walk the Line (2005).

Religious-oriented Musical Films and Other Musical Hits:

A run of hippie/religious musicals (or rock operas) included Godspell (1973) - adapted from the
successful Broadway musical by composer Stephen Schwartz, Norman Jewison's Jesus Christ
Superstar (1973) (with an Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice score), and Milos Forman's subversive
version of Broadway's Age-of-Aquarius hippie stage hit Hair (1979), with its popular tunes "Aquarius"
and "Good Morning Starshine." Shortly later came Andrew Lloyd Webber's Broadway production
of Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in 1982 (later made into a film in 1999) - an
adaptation of the biblical account in Genesis 37-46.

One of the most enduring cult musicals of all time was The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) -
adapted from a 1973 stage production. It was a bizarre midnight movie favorite that built a reputation
for audience participation during screenings.

Rock Musicals:

The three best films that documented the counter-cultural era of the 60s and 70s
were the concert picture rockumentaries:

 Woodstock: Three Days of Peace & Music (1970), the three-hour long
epic of the four-day 1969 upper state New York rock concert
 Gimme Shelter (1970), chronicling the Rolling Stones' late 1969
appearance at a violent free concert at Altamont
 The Last Waltz (1978), Martin Scorsese's film of The Band's final concert
appearance with other musical guests

Tommy (1975) was highlighted with music by The Who. Technically, director Alan
Parker's visually impressive and highly-stylized rock musicalPink Floyd: The Wall
(1982) wasn't a true musical but a very long music video. The mockumentary This is
Spinal Tap (1984), director Rob Reiner's debut film, was a marvelous satire-spoof on the subgenre of
rockumentaries - it followed the career and US concert tour of a fictional British heavy-metal band
called Spinal Tap.

Cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth's and director Jonathan Demme's Stop Making Sense (1984),
featuring the influential rock band Talking Heads, was considered by many critics as the best rock
concert film of all-time, featuring lead singer/guitarist David Byrne. The film won the National Society
of Film Critics' Best Documentary Feature Award - a rare occurrence for a concert film. In its
documentation of the group during three nights in December, 1983 at Hollywood's Pantages Theater,
the film was notable for being the first made entirely with direct-to-digital audio techniques. It captured
many memorable moments without intrusive upstaging by the photography (it was basically devoid of
audience shots, quick-cuts, artificial lighting, etc.), including Byrne's solo performance of "Psycho
Killer" on a bare stage in the film's opening, played with an acoustic guitar to the simple
accompaniment of a portable boom box (providing synthetic percussion drumming).

Animated Musicals from Disney Revived:

Animated musical blockbusters from Disney's studios also succeeded with high-quality feature films
that kept musical scores alive. They proved to be more popular than live-action efforts (such
as Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), Pete's Dragon (1977), and others). Alan Menken was
instrumental in leading the songwriting and storytelling for a number of Disney animations in the
1990s, as were pop stars (such as Elton John, Phil Collins, and Sting):

 The Little Mermaid (1989), based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale with the popular
songs "Part of Your World," "Kiss the Girl," the Oscar for Best Original Score (Alan Menken)
and Best Song-winning "Under the Sea"
 Beauty and the Beast (1991), the classic French romantic fable (from Jean Cocteau's
1948 La Belle et La Bete) that was the first Best Picture-nominated animated musical feature
film, with the Oscar for Best Original Score (Alan Menken), a Best Song-winning title tune,
and two other Best Song nominees including "Belle" and "Be Our Guest"; its success was
recreated when it was adapted into a Broadway show
 Aladdin (1992), with the Oscar for Best Original Score (Alan Menken), the Best Song-winning
"A Whole New World", and Robin Williams as the voice of the Genie
 The Lion King (1994), with a pop music score by Elton John and Tim Rice, including the
Oscar for Best Original Score (Hans Zimmer), the Best Song-winning "Can You Feel the Love
Tonight," also "Circle of Life" and "Hakuna Matata"; later in 1997 became a Broadway hit
musical
 Pocahontas (1995), with Academy Awards for Best Original Score (Alan Menken, Stephen
Schwartz) and Best Song-winning "Colors of the Wind"
 The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), inspired by Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre
Dame, with songs composed by Alan Menken (Oscar nominated for Best Original Score) and
Stephen Schwartz
 Hercules (1997), a Disneyfication of the myth of Hercules, with the Academy Award-
nominated Best Original Song "Go the Distance"
 Mulan (1998), nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Music Score
 Tarzan (1999), with songs by Phil Collins, including the Best Song-winning "You'll Be In My
Heart"
 The Emperor's New Groove (2000), Academy Award-nominated for Best Song "My Funny
Friend and Me" (performed by Sting)

Dreamworks' attempted to compete with the Disney animated musicals with Prince of Egypt (1998),
and won the Academy Award for Best Song (Stephen Schwartz) for "When You Believe." Another
unbelievably tasteless animated musical was director Trey Parker's independent South Park: Bigger,
Longer and Uncut (1999), a spin-off based upon a cable-TV series with foul-mouthed characters - it
had an obscene title song ("Blame Canada") that was nominated for Best Original Song.

Modern Day Musicals: The 80s and After

Pink Panther-director Blake Edwards' Victor/Victoria (1982) with a Henry Mancini score featured the
director's wife Julie Andrews in a 1930's Parisian story "of a woman pretending to be a man
pretending to be a woman." [In 1996, Victor/Victoria was transformed into a Broadway musical,
again directed by Edwards and starring Andrews.] Barbra Streisand's directorial debut film Yentl
(1983), the story of a young Jewish woman disguised as a boy, won only one Oscar (Best Original
Song Score) from its five nominations. And the 1984 Best Picture Oscar victor, Amadeus (1984), was
a drama/musical about child prodigy Mozart. An off-Broadway musical was successfully adapted into
Frank Oz's cartoonish film version Little Shop of Horrors (1986) - originally based on horror film
director Roger Corman's 1961 low budget cult favorite.

Arnold Glimcher's The Mambo Kings (1992) celebrated Latin American music with its story of two
Cuban brothers Nestor and Cesar Castillo (Antonio Banderas and Armand Assante) in a NYC mambo
band in the early 1950s. Martin Brest's dramatic Scent of a Woman (1992), with a Best Actor-winning
role for Al Pacino as blind, irascible army veteran Frank Slade, was most notable for his passionate
tango scene with Donna (Gabrielle Anwar). Australian director Baz Luhrmann's first film, Strictly
Ballroom (1992) told the story of ballroom dancer Scott Hastings (Paul Mercurio) and his Hispanic
partner Fran (Tara Morice) who refused to follow the conventional rules of a Dance Federation during
the film's final Pan-Pacific dance competition. Although The Mask (1994) was basically a fanciful
comedy, the film featured a memorable dance routine ("Cuban Pete") by the mild-mannered, geeky
bank teller (Jim Carrey) while wearing his magical mask to successfully woo the beautiful Tina Carlyle
(Cameron Diaz in her screen debut).

Live-action musicals seemed to almost fade in the 1990s. There was only one successful live-action
musical in the 90s - director Alan Parker's musical dramaEvita (1996), adapted from the 1976 theater
version by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, with Madonna (singing the Oscar-winning Best
Original Song "You Must Love Me"). There were just a few other musicals to be mentioned in the 90s:

 Woody Allen's engaging musical comedy Everyone Says I Love You (1996), with
inexperienced, non-singing stars such as Goldie Hawn (memorably singing "I'm Through With
Love" next to the Seine), Edward Norton, and Alan Alda belting out songs
 the dramatic musical biography of Tejano recording artist Selena (1997) with pop-star diva
Jennifer Lopez in the lead, breakthrough role

The New Millennium:

It would take the new millennium to bring more well-received musicals, but the first few struggled to
find audiences: Kenneth Branagh's Shakespeare-inspired musical comedy Love's Labour's Lost
(2000), Lars von Trier's dramatic musical Dancer in the Dark (2000) with Bjork, and John Cameron
Mitchell's rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001). Baz Luhrmann's eye-catching and
dazzling, Best Picture-nominated Moulin Rouge (2001) (the first live-action musical to be nominated
for Best Picture since All That Jazz (1979)), and choreographer Rob Marshall's debut feature film and
razzle-dazzle film Chicago (2002) (at $171 million) proved that adaptations of modern stage musicals
(a rock-opera bio in this case) or inventive fantasy musicals were still possible. Marshall's film was a
musical drama and a screen adaptation of the 1975 Broadway hit musical Chicago from John Kander
and Fred Ebb, originally directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse, and revived on Broadway in
1996. It garnered six Oscars from its thirteen nominations, including Best Picture. It was
the firstmusical since Oliver! (1968) to win the top award. To reflect the hip-hop fad at the time, white
rapper Eminem starred in Curtis Hanson's 8 Mile (2002).

However, the trend could be short-lived, due to the total box office failures of stage-to-screen
adaptations of such acclaimed and popular Tony-winning musicals as Joel Schumacher's The
Phantom of the Opera (2004) (at $51.2 million), Rent (2005) (at $29.1 million) and the get-rich-quick
scheming of theatrical con-men in The Producers (2005) (at $19.4 million), as well as other notable
musical flops, such as From Justin to Kelly (2003) (starring American Idol singers Justin Guarini and
Kelly Clarkson), Beyond the Sea (2003), Camp (2003) and the Cole Porter biopic De-Lovely (2004).

Director Bill Condon's Dreamgirls (2006) (at $103.1 million) was a lavish and vibrant screen
adaptation of Michael Bennett's popular 1981 Broadway musical about a trio of Motown-style soul
singers The Dreams, in a thinly veiled roman a clef of the real Motown singing group The Supremes.
It acquired eight nominations but came away with only two wins: Best Supporting Actress (Jennifer
Hudson), and Best Sound Mixing, even though it won at the Golden Globes awards as the Best
Musical or Comedy. Hairspray (2007) (at $119 million) - the song-and-dance adaptation of the
Broadway smash hit, with stars Nikki Blonsky and John Travolta in early 1960s Baltimore, became
one of the few movie musicals that grossed over $100 million, joining Chicago (2002), Dreamgirls
(2006), and Grease (1978). However, it received no Oscar nominations, although it did have three
Golden Globe nominations. Also, Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd (2007)(at $52 million), with Johnny
Depp as a Victorian-era vengeful barber, was recognized with three Oscar nominations (and only one
win). In some respects, the entire musical genre wasn't being blamed for the decline in big-screen
movie musicals, only individual films.

Greatest Early Musicals - Dance Films:

The Jazz Singer (1927) 
Applause (1929) 
The Broadway Melody (1929) 
Hallelujah! (1929) 
The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929) 
The Love Parade (1929) 
Show Boat (1929) 
Show of Shows (1929) 
Whoopee! (1930) 
The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) 
Love Me Tonight (1932)   (# 10) 
Flying Down to Rio (1933) 
Footlight Parade (1933)   (# 18, and other Busby Berkeley production
numbers) 
 42nd Street (1933)   (# 13)   
Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)   
Hallelujah, I'm a Bum (1933) 
Dames (1934)   
The Gay Divorcee (1934) 
The Merry Widow (1934) 
Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935) 
Curly Top (1935) 
Gold Diggers of 1935 (1935)   
The Little Colonel (1935) 
Naughty Marietta (1935) 
Roberta (1935) 
 Top Hat (1935)   (# 15) 
Born to Dance (1936) 
Follow the Fleet (1936) 
The Great Ziegfeld (1936) 
Rose Marie (1936) 
Show Boat (1936)   (# 24) 
Swing Time (1936)   (# 12) 
Three Smart Girls (1936) 
High, Wide and Handsome (1937) 
Maytime (1937) 
One Hundred Men and a Girl (1937) 
Shall We Dance (1937) 
 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) 
Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938) 
Sweethearts (1938) 
 The Wizard of Oz (1939)   (# 3)   (# 1) 
Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940) 
Down Argentine Way (1940) 
  Fantasia (1940) 
Pinocchio (1940) 
Strike Up the Band (1940) 
Lady Be Good (1941) 
Sun Valley Serenade (1941) 
You'll Never Get Rich (1941) 
Ziegfeld Girl (1941) 
Holiday Inn (1942) 
 Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)   (# 18) 
Cabin in the Sky (1943) 
The Gang's All Here (1943) 
Girl Crazy (1943) 
Stage Door Canteen (1943) 
Stormy Weather (1943) 
 Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)   (# 10)   (# 9) 
Anchors Aweigh (1945) 
Rhapsody in Blue (1945) 
Yolanda and the Thief (1945) 
Blue Skies (1946) 
The Jolson Story (1946) 
Easter Parade (1948) 
The Pirate (1948) 
The Red Shoes (1948, UK) 
Summer Holiday (1948) 
In the Good Old Summertime (1949) 
On The Town (1949)   (# 19)   (# 13) 
Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949) 
Annie Get Your Gun (1950) 
Summer Stock (1950) 
 An American in Paris (1951)   (# 9)   (# 11) 
Royal Wedding (1951) 
Show Boat (1951) 
 Singin' In The Rain (1952)   (# 1)   (# 3) 
The Band Wagon (1953)   (# 17)   (# 6)
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) 
Kiss Me Kate (1953) 
Brigadoon (1954) 
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)   (# 21)   (# 24) 
 A Star Is Born (1954)   (# 7)   (# 16) 
White Christmas (1954) 
Guys and Dolls (1955)   (# 23) 
Kismet (1955) 
Oklahoma! (1955) 
Carousel (1956) 
High Society (1956) 
The King and I (1956)   (# 11) 
Funny Face (1957) 
Les Girls (1957) 
Jailhouse Rock (1957) 
The Pajama Game (1957) 
Pal Joey (1957) 
Silk Stockings (1957) 
Damn Yankees (1958) 
Gigi (1958)   (# 22) 
South Pacific (1958) 
Porgy and Bess (1959)

Greatest Astaire/Rogers Musicals - Dance Films: 

Flying Down to Rio (1933) 
The Gay Divorcee (1934) 
 Top Hat (1935) 
Follow the Fleet (1936) 
Swing Time (1936) 
Shall We Dance (1937)

Other Greatest Musicals - Dance Films: 

Bells Are Ringing (1960)   West Side Story (1961)   (# 2)   (# 2) 
Gypsy (1962) 
The Music Man (1962)   (# 23) 
Bye Bye Birdie (1963) 
A Hard Day's Night (1964, UK)   (# 7) 
Mary Poppins (1964)   (# 6)   (# 5) 
My Fair Lady (1964)   (# 8)
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964, Fr.) 
The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964) 
Viva Las Vegas (1964) 
The Sound of Music (1965)   (# 4)   (# 19) 
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966) 
Camelot (1967) 
The Jungle Book (1967) 
Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) 
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) 
Funny Girl (1968)   (# 16)   (# 20) 
Oliver! (1968) 
The Producers (1968) 
Hello, Dolly! (1969) 
Paint Your Wagon (1969) 
Sweet Charity (1969) 
On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970) 
Woodstock (1970) 
Fiddler on the Roof (1971) 
Cabaret (1972)   (# 5)   (# 4) 
Man of La Mancha (1972) 
Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) 
 Nashville (1975) 
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
New York, New York (1977) 
Saturday Night Fever (1977) 
Grease (1978)   (# 20)   (# 14) 
All That Jazz (1979)   (# 14) 
Hair (1979)
The Blues Brothers (1980) 
Fame (1980) 
Pennies From Heaven (1981) 
Annie (1982) 
Grease 2 (1982) 
Victor/Victoria (1982) 
Flashdance (1983) 
Yentl (1983) 
Footloose (1984) 
This is Spinal Tap (1984) 
A Chorus Line (1985) 
Little Shop of Horrors (1986) 
Dirty Dancing (1987) 
Beauty and the Beast (1991)   (# 22)   (# 21) 
The Commitments (1991) 
Strictly Ballroom (1992, Aust.) 
The Lion King (1994) 
Shall We Dance? (1995, Jp.) 
Evita (1996) 
Selena (1997) 
Dance With Me (1998) 
South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut (1999)   (# 8) 
Dancer in the Dark (2000) 
Moulin Rouge! (2001)   (# 25) 
Chicago (2002)   (# 12)   (# 17) 
The Phantom of the Opera (2004) 
The Producers (2005) 
Dreamgirls (2006) 
Once (2006)   (# 25)
A Prairie Home Companion (2006) 
Hairspray (2007)   (# 15) 
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)
High School Musical 3: Senior Year (2008)
Mamma Mia! (2008)