I knew it off the top of my head. But don’t draw too many conclusions one way or the other.
I’ve been collecting albums of musicals since I was seven and first heard my parent’s cast album of Damn Yankees. I also have a garbage-can memory: I don’t have anything close to a photographic memory, but any song I kind of like, or phrase from a book, or whatever, gets stuck there taking up valueable neurons. It’s a blessing and a curse. Name a song from a musical. I can remember it clearly enough that I can generally remember how the orchestration rose or fell with the lyrics. I can most likely recite most of the lyrics (I may get verses in the wrong order), with the correct tempo.
What sucks is that I can’t sing even a little. I know how each note should sound and I can hear when someone’s wrong (it hurts…and I mean something close to physical pain, not just annoyance…to listen to Florence Foster Jenkins) but my vocal chords don’t do what my brain says. It pisses me off to no end that my own singing voice makes me cringe.
Fenris (just as an aside, I’ll mention that I can’t stand anything Barbra Striesand did after “What’s Up Doc”, and I think Liza Minnelli should have been horsewhipped for messing with Billie Holiday songs.)
Here are some of my favorites, although some of them I don’t know if they’d actually count. Anyway, here they are:
-Hello Dolly!- I love this one! I am really surprised that nobody has mentioned it!
-Seven Brides for Seven Brothers- The girl that plays Dorcas has a great singing voice. I also like all the gymnastics that the guys do in the dancing scene at the barn raising. (Frank does a lot of aerials and Gideon does a back tuck on the two planks) COOL STUFF!!
Sound of Music- 'nuff said!
-Oklahoma!- I generally like this one, but the dreaming part with the mirrors creeps me out. (I haven’t seen it in a long time so I could be making stuff up.)
-My Fair Lady- I would KILL for that dress Audrey Hepburn wore to the ball!
-The King and I- Yul Brenner did a great job with this movie.
-Thoroughly Modern Millie- It has Julie Andrews and Mary Tyler Moore. I am pretty sure that its a musical. I haven’t seen it in a while, but I really like it.
-Grease-I could watch this movie every day and never get sick of it.
-Cinderella- the Rogers and Hammerstien one. I haven’t seen it in ages, but I like it.
-Brigadoon- has anybody seen this? I am sure it is a musical. The first time I saw it was at the Calumet Theater, on stage. It was soooooo good!My mom also rented the video once or twice. Yet another one that I haven’t seen in a while.
Actually, Fenris, although Berkley got director credit for the movie, Kelly & Stanley Donen actually directed it (they get screen credit for staging the musical numbers). Ole Buz was unhireable at this point (too many martinis in the bathtub) so producer Arthur Freed took pity on him and hired Buz to “direct” the picture. I haven’t seen the movie in a while, but I’m pretty sure the numbers were not shot from the waist up.
My favorite musicals:
The Court Jester - “The pellet with the poison’s in the vessle with the pestle”. I always thought Danny Kaye was underrated as a musical performer.
Bells are Ringing - Judy Holliday’s last film. It has charming Comden/Green songs and Dean Martin. I always kinda had a crush on Dino!
Sun Valley Serenade - I agree with Eve, that John Payne was yummy! Besides, you can never go wrong with the Nicholas Brothers (dancing to “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” with a very young Dorothy Dandridge).
Summer Stock - Gene Kelly at his sexiest! And although Judy Garland obviously gained and lost quite a bit of weight during filming, her “Get Happy” number is one of the best she’s ever done.
Any of Deanna Durbin’s movies (especially her early ones directed by Henry Koster). That girl had a set of pipes on her that was unbelievable. And I never liked operatic singers before seeing her.
Okay, the verse of “On the Street Where You Live.”
A complete lack of vocal talent didn’t stop Rex Harrison or Richard Burton. Saw Burton in “Camelot” and I don’t know what was worse, his singing or his cartoony makeup.
And “What’s Up Doc” is the ONLY thing that will save Streisand’s or O’Neal’s lives when the Revolution comes.
As an aside, I’m looking it up because I lack fenris’s photographic memory and have only heard it once. But I found this fascinating site where I learned that NOT ONLY that the chorus is slightly different from how I remember it, but that it was ALSO written by Nat King Cole with lyrics by Dennis DeYoung, of Styx! And who says that information on the internet is inaccurate?
The “Music Man” is my top musical.Clever words,clever music and mostly good direction.Is it only me,but I see traces of Gilbert and Sullivan in this work.Harold Hill’s pieces are just like the “patter” songs of G and S.
If you saw Burton in Camelot, you saw him in the theater. I thought the clown-makeup was purely a phenomenon of the wretched Harris movie. The photos I’ve seen of Burton in the Broadway show didn’t show him with the makeup.
Re: “On the Street Where You Live”: The verse? Which part is the verse? The beginning bit about
I have often walked
Down this street before
But the pavement always stayed
Beneath my feet before
All at once am I
Sev’ral stories high
Knowing I’m on the street where you live
or the middle bit about
And oh! The towering feeling
Just to know, somehow, you are near
The overpowering feeling
That any second you may suddenly appear
Assuming that’s a genuine question, yes, he did, and it is a fantastic version. Very mellow, as you might expect. OTOH, Holly Cole’s version (off her Blame It On My Youth album) is…well, different. Not one of her better efforts.
Speaking of Fantasia, how many people have seen Bruno Bozzetto’s parody, Allegro non troppo? Okay, the intermediate bits are in Italian, but the cartoons are excellent, the parodies clever (the evolution scene, set to Ravel’s Bolero, is hilarious), and some of the other scenes are quite poignant. A must-rent for Fantasia fans.
Okay, after reading Redboss’ strong recommendations of the Fred Astaire/Cyd Charisse THE BAND WAGON, I went out and rented the sucker.
Good god, what were they thinking? Was this supposed top be some sort of Post-Apocolyptic Musical for the Noir Age? While the plot made fun of the artsy-fartsy types and their hanging of “cultcha” on good ol’ song-and-dances entertainment, the musical direction went on to do the same damn thing IN the film!
Okay, there were a couple of good songs…but nearly every musical number was truncated or presented as a snippet! The “Triplets” thing was just embarrassing, as was “Louisiana Hayride.” And that whole “Girl Hunt” number…Christ, it went ON and ON, with no music to speak of…
But the instrumental version of “Dancing in the Dark,” with Fred and Cyd wordlessly duetting in Central Park; THAT was a keeper. Gorgeous.
I can vaguely remember the lines rhyming “farce” with “move your bloomin’…”, but that’s about it for me.
OTOH, I can remember “There’s a bunch of birds in the sky/And some deer just went running by/ The snow’s clean and white over earth rich and brooooooooown…” [sub]No no no…go away…[/sub]
The Bandwagon your ass, indeed—the whole film is made worthwhile by “I Guess I’ll Have to Change My Plan,” the soft-shoe number with two of the greatest song-and-dance men ever, Fred Astaire and Jack Buchanan.
. . . And no one who wants to live to see tomorrow will say a word against Jack Buchanan while I’M in the room, geddit?
When she mentioned how her aunt bit off the spoon,
She completely done me in.
And my heart went on a journey to the moon,
When she told about her father and the gin.
And I never saw a more enchanting farce
Found it, too. And to think Jeremy Brett, the REAL Sherlock Holmes (although those can be fighting words here!), played Freddie in the movie. Did Marnie Nixon do his singing, too?
Whoops, for a second there I thought you were talking about the number Astaire did early on with Leroy Daniels, a very talented African-American dancer who happened to be playing a (cough) shoe shine boy.
Well, “Guess I’ll Have to Change my Plan” was okay…but seeing as it fell between “Louisiana Hayride” and “Triplets,” the effect was somewhat diminished. I had to jack my jaw all the way up from the tabletop only to let it fall again when Astaire and Buchanan and Charisse appeared in those baby bonnets.
Oh, wait, there was one other thing I liked…the way every time Astaire and Buchanan and Nanette Fabray burst into a dance routine, Oscar Levant would sidle off-screen and not re-appear until the dancing stuff was safely over.
Although there have been a couple of votes for White Christmas, I don’t believe anyone’s mentioned the first movie the song appeared in, the spectacular and superior Holiday Inn, where Der Bingle gets to be all “aw shucks” and gets the girl, while sparring with that cad, Fred Astaire, who sings and dances his tuxedo off. Fred dancing with firecrackers on the Fourth of July? Fred “Putting on the Ritz”? What could be better?
Other (more modern) votes:
The Sound of Music (I could look at Christopher Plummer all day)
Victor/Victoria
South Park
Oy . . . He knows who Leroy Daniels is (and even knows he’s an American citizen of direct African descent!), but can’t tell the difference between Cyd Charisse and “No Nose Nanette?”
