Remembering Them Well: Reviewing the Ten Best Picture Musicals!
Hello! The intent of this article was to have it published on the same weekend the 2025 Oscars were broadcast which, as you may have noticed, was almost two weeks ago at this point. My schedule got thrown off by the recent passing of our oldest cat, Cooper. He was a good boy, and the source of a lot of other delays you never knew about, due to his penchant for lying on my chest the second after placing my laptop into position. This article is dedicated to him.
Anyway, I still had a lot of fun putting this together, so I couldn’t stand not publishing it anyway, even if it is a bit stale at this point. Let’s just pretend it’s March 2nd, 2025 or so!
There may be no genre so closely tied to “old Hollywood” than the musical. Who doesn’t marvel at the wonder of movies like SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN, THE BAND WAGON or BRIGADOON to this day? Give your jaw from dropping to the floor watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers delight the audience? Even as the genre transitioned from the 60’s to the 70’s, movies like CABARET and ALL THAT JAZZ continued to move the format forward into the New Hollywood world. No style of film appeared to have more prestige than the musical.
It may surprise you, then, that not very many of them have been deemed Best Picture by the Motion Picture Academy. At least, it surprised me.
As of this writing, only 10 musicals have taken home the big prize at the Academy Awards. The hit rate isn’t as bad as it sounds; that’s 10 out of 97, so somewhere around 10% of the time, your Best Picture will be a musical. But there’s a ton of super-famous musicals that never made the cut. In fact, not one of the ones I listed in that opening paragraph ever managed to do it. If it weren’t for CHICAGO, there wouldn’t have been a musical Best Picture winner since Richard Nixon was in office. It’s been 23 years since CHICAGO’s big night.
For a while there, it sure seemed like that drought was going to be broken a couple of weeks ago. Both WICKED and EMILIA PEREZ had brief periods as strong Best Picture frontrunners (and “sort-of musical” A COMPLETE UNKNOWN always lurked as a dark horse contender). At the end of the day, Best Picture went to ANORA, ultimately the correct choice and no I am not taking questions on this just yet, thanks. So the musical will have to wait its turn for a little bit longer.
Until that time, I thought I’d take a look at the ten that did win Best Picture and see what they had to offer on either a first-time viewing or a rewatch, if they hold up, and if…well, if it seems like they deserve the legacy. So I did! Then I wrote about it!
THE BROADWAY MELODY (1929)
Directed by: Harry Beaumont
Starring: Charles King, Anita Page, Bessie Love
Written by: Sarah Y. Mason (continuity), Norman Houston, James Gleason (dialogue), Earl Baldwin (titles, uncredited)
Released: February 1, 1929 (premiere), June 12, 1929 (national)
Length: 101 minutes
Other Best Picture nominees: ALIBI, THE HOLLYWOOD REVUE OF 1929, IN OLD ARIZONA, THE PATRIOT
Also nominated for: Best Director (Beaumont), Best Actress (Love)
Synopsis: Hank and Queenie, two sisters who have developed a stage act, decide to try their chances in New York City, at the prodding of Hank’s boyfriend, songwriter Eddie. However, when Eddie begins to fall in love with Queenie, is the sister act in danger of collapsing under the bright lights?
It only took two years for a musical to snag an Academy Award for Best Picture. It also only took two years for the Academy to provide the Big Prize to a somewhat dubious recipient. Even in the old days, Best Pictures were really just best guesses!
THE BROADWAY MELODY is admittedly a tough watch nearly a hundred years later. There’s nothing really objectionable to its simple story of a pair of sisters and their attempts to make it on Broadway with their dual act (you’ll never believe it, but it turns out love and ambition stand in their way). The issue is that the movie is…well, creaky and boring, not exactly traits you look for when watching a musical. There are none of the spectacular dance sequences, or soaring ballads that you typically associate with the genre. The plot is also a little too tethered to reality to be as engaging as later musicals typically are; it’s one of those movies where everyone is actually singing songs in real life, as opposed to broadcasting their feelings to us with music.
Also, speaking of music, there just isn’t that much of it in BROADWAY MELODY! There are only seven in all, and they’re spread out unevenly. We come out hot, with the initial minutes introducing us to the title tune, which is alright! It gets sung again in the next scene, and then…things just begin to dry up after a while. We do get a couple of full-blown numbers by the end (the highlight being “Wedding of the Painted Doll”), but overall, it doesn’t really feel like a musical, where music and song is used to craft and shape a story.
There are some pieces of crucial context at play that may help raise THE BROADWAY MELODY’s standing: first, this is just kind of what musicals were like in the first few decades of the format, at least for the most part. THE BROADWAY MELODY resembles your average stage musical, and I suspect that’s largely by design. Most film musicals at the time intentionally emulated theatre aesthetics, leading to movies where stars like Maurice Chevalier and Jeannette MacDonald just turned to the camera and sang right at you. Ambition was soon to hit the genre; Busby Berkeley would choreograph his first film the year after THE BROADWAY MELODY, changing the film musical forever. But we weren’t there yet.
The second thing to keep in mind is that THE BROADWAY MELODY was incredibly popular in its day. It may be hard to believe in the here and now, but think about it. If you had never seen a musical at all before, wouldn’t this seem that much more magical? We’re spoiled now, having heard the works of Rodgers and Hammerstein, of Lerner and Lowe. We’ve seen the visual mastery of Gene Kelly and Vincente Minnelli. But, in 1929, just seeing audio synced up to video was a modern marvel. To that end, THE BROADWAY MELODY was the first sound film that received a national distribution. It’s exceedingly likely this was the first talkie most moviegoers at the time had ever seen.
Given all of that, it really isn’t all that surprising that it was the second ever Best Picture. It doesn't hurt that its competition was relatively weak, but even if it hadn’t been, THE BROADWAY MELODY probably would have stood a good chance. Hollywood likes glitz, and tends to reward it when the opportunity presents itself.
THE GREAT ZIEGFELD (1936)
Directed by: Robert Z. Leonard
Starring: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Luise Rainer
Written by: William Anthony McGuire
Released: March 22, 1936 (premiere), April 8, 1926 (national)
Length: 176 minutes
Other Best Picture nominees: ANTHONY ADVERSE, DODSWORTH, LIBELED LADY, MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN, ROMEO AND JULIET, SAN FRANCISCO, THE STORY OF LOUIS PASTEUR, A TALE OF TWO CITIES, THREE SMART GIRLS
Also won for: Best Actress (Rainer), Best Art Direction (Seymour Felix)
Also nominated for: Best Director (Leonard), Best Original Story (McGuire), Best Art Direction (Cedric Gibbons, Eddie Imazu, Edwin B. Willis), Best Film Editing (William S. Gray)
Synopsis: Florenz Ziegfeld is a sideshow barker in partnership with a carnival strongman. Ziegfeld chases greater ambitions after his brief success bottoms out, and he quickly becomes a successful Broadway producer off his dual eyes for talent and marketing gimmicks. We follow the highs and lows of his career and personal lives, with particular focus on his two marriages. We’re also provided a look at the numbers that made up his famous “Ziegfeld Follies” shows.
When you scroll through reviews of THE GREAT ZIEGFELD on Letterboxd (which is, as we all know, the only home for objective film criticism), you see a lot of common complaints: it’s boring, it’s overlong, the songs drag…you get the idea. It seems to be a typical example of an early Oscars whiff, the kind of flick that got rewarded in its day for its fawning portrayal of an early entertainment entrepreneur, only to be eventually buried by the sands of history. And THE GREAT ZIEGFELD undeniably has some early musical creakiness to it: like THE BROADWAY MELODY, the songs are basically all staged on a stage, under the context of “putting on a show”.
So it surprises me to say…I think I ultimately liked ZIEGFELD more than the average modern viewer. Maybe it’s just lowered expectations at play, but I really didn’t hate this. Yeah, three hours is too much, and it too often leans into cornball schmaltz in order to sell the drama; the ending scene of Ziegfeld croaking in his apartment* after reflecting on his various “Follies”, his last words being “more steps…higher, higher!” all feels like a parody of an old-timey biographical blockbuster. But ZIEGFELD generally maximizes the many talents at its disposal. Powell is actually quite engaging as the titular Ziegfeld; he doesn’t have to sing a note, but he does have the arguably tougher job of being the larger-than-life figure at the center of the entire 176-minute behemoth. His ease on camera with Myrna Loy (who plays second Ziegfeld wife Billie Burke) won’t surprise anyone who’s seen a THIN MAN flick, but the big showcase performance belongs to Luise Rainer, the first Ziegfeld wife, Anna Held. She pops in a way that nobody else in THE GREAT ZIEGFELD quite does, and the Academy seemed to agree; Rainer would become the first performer to win an acting Oscar for a musical.
*Oh, spoilers, I guess.
Also, the technique behind staging of big numbers has clearly improved tenfold since THE BROADWAY MELODY. There’s lots of great little numbers throughout, but the show stopping sequence (at least for me) is “A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody”, a nearly ten-minute piece of staging where the camera keeps climbing up the ramp of this giant cake structure. As the structure turns, more performers are revealed: opera soloists, dancers in spats and coat tails, pianists banging on ivories built into the sides of staircases. It’s 100% excess from start to finish, and it’s great, at about as close as you can get to traveling back in time and watching The Ziegfeld Follies yourself. Or at least I presume. I wasn’t there.
The best thing THE GREAT ZIEGFELD does is deploying some major talents, playing themselves and showing off what they can do. The big two are Ray Bolger, who would soon be immortalized as the Scarecrow in THE WIZARD OF OZ, and radio/stage star Fannie Brice. Bolger is typically great in all his bouncy, flexible, expressive glory*, but Brice was the real revelation for me. I realized that I’m not sure I had ever been exposed to her before, not even in the Streisand iteration? She’s phenomenal, and so unlike anybody else that was working at the time (or, frankly, now). This in and of itself added a lot of value to my ZIEGFELD viewing experience.
*Although it should be mentioned he appears in blackface in one number, if that sort of thing is something you’d like to know ahead of time.
Still, it’s hard to defend it as the Best Picture of 1936, especially when MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN, one of maybe a handful of “classic Hollywood” movies the average person could even name, was on the board. Again, though, it’s important to note that this movie was a fairly big deal at the time, and was even a source of pride for MGM. And I don’t mean to keep pulling the “novelty” card but…big musical biographies were still kind of a novelty! Maybe William Powell should have considered hosting SNL and doing some Follies numbers if MGM wanted ZIEGFELD to stand the test of time. Alas.
GOING MY WAY (1944)
Directed by: Leo McCarey
Starring: Bing Crosby, Barry Fitzgerald, Frank McHugh, James Brown, Gene Lockhart, Jean Heather
Written by: Frank Butler, Frank Cavett
Released: May 3, 1944 (New York premiere), August 16, 1944 (Los Angeles premiere)
Length: 126 minutes
Other Best Picture nominees: DOUBLE INDEMNITY, GASLIGHT, SINCE YOU WENT AWAY, WILSON
Also won for: Best Directing (McCarey), Best Actor (Crosby), Best Supporting Actor (Fitzgerald), Best Writing (Screenplay) (Butler, Cavett, based on a story by McCarey), Best Writing (Original Motion Picture Story) (McCarey), Best Music (Song) (“Swingin’ on a Star”, music by James Van Heusen, lyrics by Johnny Burke)
Also nominated for: Best Actor (Fitzgerald; yep, he was nominated twice!), Best Cinematography - Black and White (Lionel Lindon), Best Film Editing (Leroy Stone)
Synopsis: St. Dominic’s Church, led by Father Fitzgibbon, appears to be on its last legs, and is on the verge of foreclosure. Only their new parish, Father O’Malley, can save them now. While he does so, he also befriends the young neighborhood toughs, and mentors a runaway, who can sing like an angel. Is there anything he can’t do?
The first time I saw GOING MY WAY, I felt a fair bit underwhelmed by it. Maybe it’s because it’s often portrayed as something it kind of isn’t, which is a musical that’s just perfect for Christmas time. And, yes, it’s sort of a musical, in the sense that the main character is a singing priest, and music is a presence throughout. However, just like the first two entries on this list, if you’re expecting a standard musical as we understand it now (big splashy opening song, impressive dance moves, 11:00 number), it’s going to fall short. It’s also not really a Christmas movie, even by my normally very loose standards. Yes, Father O’Malley sings “Silent Night”, but it’s so obviously only because they were trying to fit Crosby’s big defining hit into the movie. I think it’s Christmas when GOING MY WAY concludes, but that’s about it!
No, what GOING MY WAY is, is an optimistic feel-good post-war salve. It’s overly sweet, with its heart definitely on its sleeve. Crosby’s Father O’Malley is one of those saintly figures, a guy who always knows just what to say or what to do in order to soothe any given conflict. This is actually possibly why I still don’t fully jive with the film, even on a rewatch: our main character is too on top of things. Although there’s a lot at stake within the film (the dignity of Father Fitzgibbons, the souls of kids like Tony Scaponi and Carol James, the fate of the church itself), you’re never really worried about the outcome, since O’Malley never misses a beat. There are plenty of movies from this era with saccharine-sweet mentalities; hell, one of my favorite films of all time is IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE. But, there, George Bailey is a deeply conflicted man, who constantly struggles to do the right thing (even though he always does). Not Chuck O’Malley; he’ll fix it with a song and a wink.
That all said, I enjoyed GOING MY WAY a great deal more this go-around, if only because I’m able to accept it for what it actually is, as opposed to what it usually gets advertised as. I think the character of Fitzgibbons is especially strong, and played beautifully by Barry Fitzgerald. The theme of trying to evaluate when your time has passed, and when it’s appropriate to hold on to old ways, is one that gets only more potent as one goes through life. Also, as straight-forward as O’Malley is, Crosby plays him so effortlessly, he practically floats through the movie. It’s also worth noting that GOING MY WAY launched a massively popular song, “Swingin’ on a Star”, which seems extraordinarily relevant for a “musical” film.
At the end of the day, I still prefer this movie’s follow-up, THE BELLS OF ST. MARY. But maybe I didn’t appreciate the original enough the first time around. Yeah, it did end up beating DOUBLE INDEMNITY for Best Picture, the clearly superior film. But, given the state of the world at that time, was there anything really wrong with believing a priest (and a cool one at that! O’Malley also likes baseball and uptempo piano playing. Woah!) could save the world just by being nice?
AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (1951)
Directed by: Vincente Minelli
Starring: Gene Kelly, Lesli Caron, Oscar Levant, Georges Guetary, Nina Foch
Written by: Alan Jay Lerner
Released: October 4, 1951 (New York), November 11, 1951 (nation-wide)
Length: 113 minutes
Other Best Picture nominees: DECISION BEFORE DAWN, A PLACE IN THE SUN, QUO VADIS, A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE
Also won for: Best Writing (Story and Screenplay) (Lerner), Best Music (Scoring of a Musical Picture) (Johnny Green, Saul Chaplin), Best Art Direction (Color) (Cedric Gibbons and E. Preston Ames [Art Direction], Edwin B. Willis and F. Keogh Gleason [Set Decoration]), Best Cinematography (Color) (Alfred Gilks, Ballet Photography by John Alton), Best Costume Design (Color) (Orry-Kelly, Waler Plunkett, Irene Sharaff)
Also nominated for: Best Director (Minelli), Best Film Editing (Adrienne Fazan)
Synopsis: Struggling artist, and WWII veteran, Jerry Mulligan has settled in Paris with his friends, former prodigy concert pianist Adam Cook, and French singing sensation Henri Baurel. Trouble emerges when Jerry falls in love with Henri’s girlfriend, Lise Bouvier. Who will she choose? And will she choose in time, or will Jerry end up going with his suitor, the beautiful Milo Roberts?
Now we’re talking.
AN AMERICAN IN PARIS is easily the first musical film in this list to conduct itself as a musical (even if it’s secretly a dance movie). Songs aplenty! Beautiful colors! High drama! Fun characters! A romance in the middle of it all! And at the movie’s center is Gene Kelly, who was likely at his absolute peak as a Hollywood legend in 1951. Needless to say, he’s spectacular, his ease moving in front of a camera completely unrivaled by perhaps anybody who’s done so before and since. It struck me watching AMERICAN IN PARIS how spoiled audiences at the time must have been (or, looked at another way, how starved we currently are now). He was a one-of-one, with no current contemporary.
But the rest of the (surprisingly small) cast is just as great! Levant is perfect as the wry piano prodigy Adam, and both Guetary and Foch play their roles as respective romantic third wheels just right. As for Leslie Caron, it is absolutely possible that her opening bit, an introductory series of dances showing off the different sides of Lise’s personality, is one of the finest “first scenes” of a performer’s careers. There may be others, but, you know…keep ‘em to yourself.
It’s all the more remarkable that AN AMERICAN IN PARIS set the template for MGM dominance when you consider how odd its format really is. I always forget, for instance, that it’s technically a Gershwin jukebox musical (decades before that term was ever really introduced). It doesn’t really hurt the movie in any significant way*, but the usage of pre-existing American standards clears the way for Kelly to focus on what really made the film special: its all-in approach to dance, culminating in a still-stunning nearly-twenty minute ballet finale that probably did as much to popularize the art form as anything else. Kelly’s dancing is the star of the show here, as well it should be.
*And it seems relevant that it was all put together by a guy named Alan Jay Lerner, a name you’ll be seeing a lot of before this article is done.
As you can see from the list above, AN AMERICAN IN PARIS dominated the Academy Awards that year against some pretty stiff competition. Its win over STREETCAR may irk many (although it feels almost impossible to directly compare such completely opposite pieces of art), but it’s hard to balk at its victories for too long. AN AMERICAN IN PARIS is ambitious, charming, expertly crafted…the exact kind of movie musical that should be feted. If they were still being made, I’d feel certain they would be feted in the here and now.
GIGI (1958)
Directed by: Vincente Minelli
Starring: Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier, Louis Jordan, Hermione Gingold, Eva Gabor
Written by: Alan Jay Lerner
Released: May 15, 1958
Length: 115 minutes
Other Best Picture nominees: AUNTIE MAME, CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, THE DEFIANT ONES, SEPARATE TABLES
Also won for: Best Directing (Minelli), Best Writing (Screenplay - Based on Material from Another Medium) (Lerner, from the novella by Colette), Best Music (Scoring of a Musical Picture) (Andre Previn), Best Music (Song) (“Gigi”: Music by Frederick Lowe, Lyrics by Lerner), Best Art Direction (Art Direction: William A. Horning and E. Preston Ames; Set Decoration: Henry Grace and F. Keogh Gleason), Best Costume Design (Cecil Beaton), Best Cinematography (Color) (Joseph Ruttenberg), Best Film Editing (Adrienne Fazan)
Synopsis: Gaston Lachaille has become bored with his upper-crust existence, to the bewilderment of his uncle, the Honore Lachaille. In an attempt to liven things up, the Honore sets Gaston up with a courtesan, Gigi, who must first be taught how to be a lady. Then, something unexpected happens: Gaston and Gigi genuinely fall in love.
Another Vincente Minelli joint!
It’s been long enough that it’s extremely easy (even understandable) to forget now, but GIGI had accomplished an Oscars feat only matched or surpassed by two others in the sixty-plus years since. It was nominated for nine Oscars, and managed to win all nine of them, from less glitzy ones (Best Art Direction) to two of the biggest (Best Director and Best Picture). THE LAST EMPEROR would do the same in 1988, and THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING would do them both two better, winning all 11 of a possible 11 in 2004. An interesting list, and hallowed company.
Unfortunately, in the modern day, GIGI tends to get painted with a broad brush, with viewers clocking the stated age difference between the title character and her eventual suitor, Gaston Lachaille, and chalking this up as so much pedophilic smut, the type that all old movies must have been actively about. I mean, look, there’s Maurice Chevalier right at the top singing about how he thanks heaven for little girls! He wants to fuck young women, and brags about how marriage is for suckers! Just what was everybody thinking back then???
This surface level analysis misses, of course, the fact that Chevalier’s little prayer eventually gets rejected, with Gaston realizing the Honore represents what he could easily become. Yeah, there’s a lot to unpack about the ultimate solution being to marry Gigi; the difference between having a teen courtesan and a teen bride is probably socially non-existent in 2025. But GIGI isn’t set in 2025, it’s set in 1900 France, where high society customs and expectations were sadly different. Besides, the thematic significance of Gaston choosing to wed instead of jumping from girl to girl until the grave should be obvious. It’s what the whole movie is about. This all felt fairly apparent, at least to me.
Anyway. In 1958, the bigger slight against GIGI was its evident similarity to MY FAIR LADY, the more popular (and, admittedly, superior) Lerner & Loewe show about a girl being groomed to become prim and proper until love intervenes. In the years after, the two shows would keep entangling themselves; Leslie Caron replaced Audrey Hepburn in the lead role of GIGI as the show jumped from stage to screen, which somewhat mirrors Hepburn famously replacing Julie Andrews in the film version of MY FAIR LADY. All you needed was Andrews replacing Caron in, like, CAMELOT or something and the circle would have been complete.
Speaking of Caron, she’s the other thing people knock GIGI for. I see a lot of people knock her as boring, or even actively holding the movie back. And, look, it’s hard not to imagine the universe where a just-to-about-to-enter-her-absolute-career-prime Hepburn didn’t turn this down; she undoubtedly would have made this an inarguable classic. But Caron isn’t boring! I do think I prefer her work in AN AMERICAN IN PARIS, but I still found her to be quite fun in GIGI, a good counterpoint to the ennui-laden performance by Louis Jordan. I submit the possibility that her performance is perceived less than others due to the script’s ultimate focus on Gaston’s struggle against the purposelessness of French elitism. That focus made sense to me, but could be jarring to expect a movie called GIGI to ultimately highlight…well, Gigi.
Regardless, I further submit that, for the first time in this project, the star of the show is actually the score, more specifically, the lyrics. Every song is just drenched in clever lyric after clever lyric, satisfying rhyme after satisfying rhyme. Chevalier* is heavily featured in my two favorites: an early duet with Jordan (“It’s a Bore”) where the Honore and Gaston debate just how exciting life really is:
*By the way, it delighted me to see a late-career Chevalier performance that begins with him singing directly to the camera, as if nothing had changed in the thirty-plus years since his filmography began.
“Don't you marvel at the power/of the mighty Eiffel Tower/knowing thеre it will remain evеrmore?/Climbing up to the sky/over ninety stories high?”
“How many stories?”
“Ninety!”
“How many yesterday?”
“Ninety!”
“And tomorrow?”
“Ninety!”
“It's a bore.”
The other, a late-show duet between Chevalier and Hermoine Gilgold, provides two memories of a date that occurred decades before:
“We met at 9”
“We met at 8”
“I was on time”
“No, you were late”
“Ah yes, I remember it well
We dined with friends”
“We dined alone”
“A tenor sang”
“A baritone”
“Ah yes, I remember it well”
It’s fun! The ear loves to hear it! The Academy clearly agreed, leading the way for GIGI’s then-unprecedented dominance, something MGM was clearly proud of. Allegedly, the day after the Oscars, all phone calls to the studio were answered with “Hello, M-GIGI-M!” This was later mirrored a couple of years ago when calls to the studio behind the 2022 Best Oscar champion were answered with, “Hello, A-EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE-24!”
WEST SIDE STORY (1961)
Directed by: Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins
Starring: Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, George Chakiris, Rita Moreno, Russ Tamblyn
Written by: Ernest Lehman
Released: October 18, 1951
Length: 152 minutes
Other Best Picture nominees: FANNY, THE GUNS OF NAVARONE, THE HUSTLER, JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG
Also won for: Best Director (Wise & Robbins), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Chakiris), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Moreno), Best Music (Scoring of a Motion Picture) (Saul Chaplin, Johnny Green, Sid Ramin, Irwin Kostal), Best Sound (Gordon E. Sawyer, Fred Hynes), Best Art Direction (Color) (Art Direction - Boris Leven; Set Decoration - Victor A. Gangelin), Best Cinematography (Color) (Daniel L. Fapp), Best Costume Design (Color) (Irene Sharaff), Best Film Editing (Thomas Stanford)
Also nominated for: Best Writing (Story and Screenplay - Based on Material From Another Medium) (Lehman)
Synopsis: If you’ve ever seen Romeo & Juliet, you basically have the idea. Just replace the Montagues and the Capulets with the Sharks and the Jets. Oh, you haven’t seen Romeo & Juliet? Oh, okay. Two star-crossed lovers from rival New York street gangs must find a way to bring their two groups together–or pay the ultimate price. You really should see Romeo & Juliet, by the way.
A Robert Wise (co) joint!
It’s very possible that WEST SIDE STORY is my favorite movie. That possibility is, in part, due to the fact that West Side Story is my favorite musical.
Even if the original show weren’t a tremendous work of art, I would still love it due to its association with a very specific summer in my life. In 2005, the year before I graduated high school, I took on an internship with the local repertory musical theater. It wasn’t to perform; they saved those slots for LA and NY actors who were magically always available in the middle of the summer. No, it was to do unpaid labor*, either in the warehouse, or in the costuming department or, if you were really really lucky, as a part of the stage management team. This was a cush gig because a) the woman who ran it was super nice, b) you didn’t have to lift heavy things in 100-degree heat and c) you frequently got to know the actors pretty well.
*The joke would eventually be on them; two summers later, I went back and did the exact same program, but this time for $180 a week! That constituted the vast majority of the money I ever made in show business.
All this to say, I was able to help stage-manage the week they did West Side Story. Not only did this serve as my introduction to the Bernstein-Sondheim collaboration, I got to immerse myself in the production for seven days straight (plus a week of rehearsals prior to). Surround myself with the score. And Jesus, what a score. One of the all-time “oops, all legends” batch of music and lyrics, it’s possible that every single song in West Side Story has been immortalized in the general zeitgeist one way or another. “Maria.” “I Feel Pretty.” “Tonight.” You’d have to be actively dodging popular culture to not know at least one line or melody from any of those. Hell, even the mambo was used in a GAP commercial back when we were kids. The orchestrations are gorgeous, the lyrics are witty, the voices are full of character…it’s a perfect show.
Here’s the thing, though. The 1961 WEST SIDE STORY movie actually improves the stage production. By a significant amount.
For one, it makes one of the all-time great song swaps in the history of film adaptation. The jokey and light “Gee, Officer Krupke”, initially serving to cover a costume and set change in the stage version, gets moved to Act 1, where it can be the amusing commentary on the criminal justice system that it is, instead of an awkward comedy number deep into Act II, when shit has already gone down. In its place goes “Cool”, the best number in the show (and the greatest scene in the film), which now becomes this simmering pot, ready to explode. It’s genuinely difficult to go back to the stage version’s song order, even if it has a specific function.
For second…there’s a legitimate argument to be made that WEST SIDE STORY is better on color celluloid than the stage.. My wife and I were fortunate enough to see the movie on a big screen last summer, and just having the ability to see stuff like the mambo dance-off (the greatest scene in the film) and the subsequent Tony-Maria ballet on actual film..it’s enough to make you cry. Every single color on a given character’s costume, or on the wall of a given set, on down to the intermission and overture cards…made to evoke some sort of emotional response from you. And it does. That’s the movies, baby!
Lastly, WEST SIDE STORY 1961 gives us Rita Moreno, putting in a performance that resulted in maybe the most earned Oscar in the history of the Academy. She’s all over this movie; I don’t know if she literally has the most screen-time, but it actively feels like it. Her single greatest achievement is almost certainly the “America” sequence (the greatest scene in the film). It’s a terribly difficult number, with choreography and notes that frequently live on the off beats. She never slips, never reveals to us the complications of the scene. She’s just perfect. This isn’t to take away from the tremendous talent surrounding her; George Chakiris is equally effortless, as are the cadre of dancers and characters sharing the scene. But Moreno just has that…quality, that god-given thing. She dominates “America”, and does the same in every scene before or since. If there’s a better Best Supporting Actress winner out there, I’d love to hear it.
So it goes with the movie itself. WEST SIDE STORY deservedly triumphed over fairly stiff competition at that year’s Oscars (mostly at the expense of THE HUSTLER, another personal favorite). I’ve only seen about half of the almost one hundred Best Picture winners, but there are only a few I would rank above WEST SIDE STORY (off the top of my head, only LAWRENCE OF ARABIA and THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI come to mind). Yes, I’m severely biased, but…when you’re a Jet, you’re a Jet all the way.
MY FAIR LADY (1964)
Directed by: George Cukor
Starring: Audrey Hepburn, Rex Harrison, Stanley Holloway, Wilfred Hyde-White, Jeremy Brett
Written by: Alan Jay Lerner
Released: October 21, 1964
Length: 173 minutes
Other Best Picture nominees: BECKET, DR. STRANGELOVE, OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB, MARY POPPINS, ZORBA THE GREEK
Also won for: Best Directing (Cukor), Best Actor (Harrison), Best Music (Scoring of Music - Adaptation or Treatment) (Andre Previn), Best Sound (George Groves), Best Art Direction (Color) (Art Direction - Gene Allen and Cecil Beaton; Set Decoration - George James Hopkins), Best Cinematography (Color) (Harry Stradling), Best Costume Design (Color) (Beaton)
Also nominated for: Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Holloway), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Gladys Cooper), Best Writing (Screenplay - Based on Material From Another Medium) (Lerner, from his My Fair Lady and George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion), Best Film Editing (William Ziegler)
Synopsis: Professor Henry Higgins makes a bet: that he can turn poor, crass flower vendor Eliza Doolittle into a classy socialite through the power of proper English. Will he succeed? And what happens if he does?
My Fair Lady walks an incredibly fine line.
I had forgotten how abrasive its main characters can be. Henry Higgins is an obvious buffoon, a man who uses his clear intellect to craft another human being into someone he considers “proper” and “correct”, mostly just to see if he can. Eliza Doolittle is a nice girl (just ask her), but she spends the entire first half speaking in a sharp, crass Cockney accent, the kind that all bad actors default to when cast in the local Dickens fair. Her father, Alfred, is a proud deadbeat, a guy who is only too happy to go to his broke daughter, hat in hand, but makes it clear she’s not to receive any handouts from him. As for Colonel Pickering, it’s not even clear what he does around here, besides hype up his boy Higgins. This is all done with clear intent, but without the exact right cast, My Fair Lady could be unwatchable.
When it comes to the 1964 film adaptation, though, all four characters are charming at worst, and totally captivating at best. This is because…well, they have the exact right cast. It helps that two of the four are played by their originating actors (Harrison as Higgins, Holloway as Alfred), and Hyde-White is able to hold his own as Pickering. As for the titular fair lady, despite all the controversy that stemmed from Hepburn getting cast over originating actor Julie Andrews, as well as the fact that Marni Nixon did the singing (both things looming large enough to keep her from being nominated at that year’s Oscars)..I think Hepburn’s pretty fucking great.
It’s probably largely self-evident, but to be clear: Eliza Doolittle is a fucking tough role, maybe an impossible one. You have to be able to be two extremes, both a rough street urchin and the classiest woman to ever exist. Hepburn pulls off both quite comfortably! The “classy” part shouldn’t be surprising to anybody who’s ever seen a picture of Audrey Hepburn, but I think people sleep on the “Street urchin” aspect of her performance. Again, Eliza spends the first hour of this screaming and not knowing what a fucking bathtub is. If you’re not really careful, it can be easy to grow tired of Eliza really fast*. But you can’t ever really get annoyed with Hepburn. It’s easier to focus on Eliza’s hopes and desires, and why she would put up with being crafted by a jerk like Higgins (who, again, is so delightfully played by Rex Harrison that you kind of revel in how up his own ass he is).
*I suspect many who have sat through poor community theatre performances of My Fair Lady have.
I am certain that Andrews was the ideal person for Eliza, and if we were in the universe where MY FAIR LADY was meant to be her screen debut, she would have been dead-on perfect. They also probably wouldn’t have had to dub her voice, either. But, we’re not, and they did. Neither the casting nor the dubbing are really Hepburn’s fault, either. I have no idea how many people are really still fired up about this sixty years later, but it’s a controversy that still seems to hang over the movie to this day, and it’s a shame.
A scan of the 1964 Best Picture nominees reveals a brutal murderer’s row; between this, DR. STRANGELOVE, and MARY POPPINS alone, all masterpieces and cultural reference points in entirely different ways, it’s difficult to say what the worthy Best Picture winner truly is. But MY FAIR LADY remains a thrilling watch, if only to remind yourself, “oh yeah, this is where that comes from”. Much like WEST SIDE, I promise you that if you think you’re unfamiliar with anything in MY FAIR LADY, you are very likely mistaken. If nothing else, the fact that Seth MacFarlane heavily patterned the voice for Stewie after Harrison’s famous speak-singing style has to count for something.
THE SOUND OF MUSIC (1965)
Directed by: Robert Wise
Starring: Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer, Richard Haydn, Charmaine Carr, Peggy Wood, Elanor Parker
Written by: Ernest Lehman
Released: March 2, 1965
Length: 174 minutes
Other Best Picture nominees: DARLING, DOCTOR ZHIVAGO, SHIP OF FOOLS, A THOUSAND CLOWNS
Also won for: Best Director (Wise), Best Music (Scoring of Music - Adaptation or Treatment) (Irwin Kostal), Best Sound (James Corcoran and Fred Hynes), Best Film Editing (William H. Reynolds)
Also nominated for: Best Actress (Andrews), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Wood), Best Art Direction (Color) (Art Direction - Boris Leven; Set Decoration - Walter M. Scott and Ruby Levitt), Best Cinematography (Color) (Ted. D. McCord), Best Costume Design (Color) (Dorothy Jeakins)
Synopsis: Offbeat nun-to-be Maria has been made the governess of the house of Captain von Trapp, a widower left to raise seven children. Through the power of song, confidence, and joy, Maria is able to melt the icy heart of Captain von Trapp and establish the family as a singing novelty act. But, the von Trapps have a bigger issue to deal with: the rise of Nazism in Austria.
Another Robert Wise joint!
THE SOUND OF MUSIC is an intimidating movie to speak on. It’s such a ubiquitous part of musical history that it’s legitimately hard to imagine a time when it didn’t exist. It’s been a staple in American households since before I was born, and has managed to become an uncommon holiday tradition for many, despite not being a holiday movie really at all. What is there to say about a movie you’ve seen countless times?
Well, you’d have to ask that question to somebody else, because I had never actually seen THE SOUND OF MUSIC.
It’s true! I think I had seen the stage adaptation, and I was obviously familiar with the Rodgers & Hammerstein score, so baked into everyday life that it is (they play “My Favorite Things” countless times on the radio around Christmas despite, again, not being a Christmas song!). I even hate-watched the Carrie Underwood-starring live broadcast on NBC, years before it was cool to turn your nose at Carrie Underwood. But I never actually sat down and watched the 1965 original.
And, look, it largely speaks for itself! It serves simultaneously as a star vehicle for Andrews (coming off a Best Actress win for MARY POPPINS the year before), as well as a statement on the unacceptability of facism*. In a lot of ways, it’s the perfect family film: high-class entertainment from perhaps the most beloved star at the time of its making, with a sobering lesson baked into its narrative for both the kids and adults gathered around the movie screen or television set.
*A soft reminder for you all to never let anybody tell you movies never used to be political.
As mentioned, the score is maybe the most well-known of its kind, the song roster chock full of melodies recognizable to just about anybody even vaguely paying attention to anything around them at any point. BUT! Even if you had never heard “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria” or “The Lonely Goatherd” or “Edelweiss” or “My Favorite Things” or or or or…I think the songs would still have a tremendous impact, considering how steeped in that famous R&H brand of character focus, where every line, every syllable communicates what you need to know about the movie’s central figures (hell, has there been a better introduction to a lead than Maria’s opening title song belt?).
Another point to THE SOUND OF MUSIC’s legacy: it’s the uncommon three-hour movie that feels like it completely flies by. Every scene is intentional, with no real fat one could possibly trim, if you were even compelled to. This, along with a multitude of other factors, is almost certainly why it walked away with five Academy Awards (neck and neck with fellow Best Picture nominee DOCTOR ZHIVAGO). It’s only a gut feeling, but THE SOUND OF MUSIC certainly feels like easily the movie most recognizable to the average person. And, again, it’s about how Nazis are scum! What else could you possibly want?
OLIVER! (1968)
Directed by: Carol Reed
Starring: Ron Moody, Oliver Reed, Mark Lester, Jack Wild, Shani Wallis
Written by: Vernon Harris
Released: September 26, 1968
Length: 153 minutes
Other Best Picture nominees: FUNNY GIRL, THE LION IN WINTER, RACHEL RACHEL, ROMEO & JULIET
Also won for: Best Directing (C. Reed), Best Music (Score of a Musical Picture - Original or Adaptation) (Johnny Green), Best Sound (Shepperton Studio Sound Dept), Best Art Direction (Art Direction - John Box and Terence Marsh; Set Decoration - Vernon Dixon and Ken Muggleston)
Also nominated for: Best Actor (Moody), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Wild), Best Writing (Screenplay - Based on Material from Another Medium) (Harris, based off the Lionel Bart play and Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist), Best Costume Design (Phyllis Dalton), Best Film Editing (Ralph Kemplen)
Synopsis: If you’ve ever read Oliver Twist, you know the story of OLIVER! You haven’t? Damn, okay. A boy escapes his cruel orphan and finds himself in a gang of pickpockets in the middle of London. He must keep his distance from the brutal criminal Bill Sikes if he has any chance of finding himself a decent, warm home. Hey, that reminds me, have you seen Romeo & Juliet yet?
OLIVER! has been handed somewhat of a raw deal in terms of legacy.
As you can see from the above, the 1968 Dickens musical adaptation did very well for itself at the Academy Awards. However, by the end of the 1960s, the movie musical’s popularity peak had already come and gone, and it wasn’t going to be too long before the New Hollywood movement of the 1970’s would begin thriving. By OLIVER!’s release, movies like BONNIE AND CLYDE and THE GRADUATE had already started making the old studio system look creaky. Thus, people have the habit of looking back at OLIVER!’s great Oscar run as the last gasp of an old guard, trying desperately to cling to the past.
On the whole, this isn’t entirely inaccurate; the Academy has never been quick to embrace popular trends. And when you look at the nominees that year and see seminal works like 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and BULLITT only sparingly represented, it’s clear that there was a willful ignorance as to the tide change right around the corner. But I do think this is an uncharitable way to look at OLIVER!, as it paints it as a tired and old-hat, maybe even actively bad, movie.
It’s not! It’s old-fashioned, admittedly, and the British-soaked score and book don’t exactly reinvent the wheel, the way previous Best Picture musical winners like AN AMERICAN IN PARIS and WEST SIDE STORY had. But there’s such confidence embedded in its presentation, likely stemming from director Carol Reed, who was nearing the end of his decades-long career (he would only release two more movies after this). There’s also something to be said for taking British pros and letting them go nuts in a family movie.
As it happens, OLIVER! highlights at least two British pros. The first is the great Oliver Reed*, who gets to sink his teeth into villain Bill Sikes, an antagonist who just gets to be bad the whole time, without any pesky “redemption arc” to speak of. Reed would go on to make a whole career out of bringing 100% to every role he ever played, no matter the type of movie; he was just as comfortable being evil in a musical as he was in a Ken Russell or David Cronenberg film. No surprise with Sikes: Reed makes him slightly terrifying without ever turning him charmless.
*Do you think it was confusing for a man named Oliver Reed to be in this movie? If you were him, and someone referred to Mr. Reed, you’d never know if they meant you or the director, Carol. Alas, referring to “Oliver” wouldn’t do you any good, either, because you can’t rule out being confused for the film’s titular moppet. How embarrassing!
However, the real joyous ham, and MVP, of OLIVER! is Ron Moody, who makes a whole meal out of Fagin. You can feel the movie realizing in real time just how much more compelling Fagin is than anybody else; he and the Artful Dodger basically get the film’s closing beat. He just owns the screen in every scene, as he dances around during “Pick a Pocket or Two” and quite artfully sells the comic number “Reviewing the Situation”, two songs that could threaten to be completely obnoxious if not performed by somebody who knows what they’re doing. Fagin would arguably be Moody’s defining role, and one he would revisit on the stage about fifteen years later.
There are other highlights: Shani Wallis gets the most well-known number from the show (”As Long As He Needs Me”), and the choreography for the big “welcome to the city” number (“Consider Yourself”) is joyful in its building excess, reminding me at times of the big Ziegfeld spectacles of decades prior. One character that kind of gets lost in everything is poor Oliver himself. It’s not that Mark Lester isn’t good, it’s just that seemingly every other character is larger than life, and gets to be played as such. Oliver is left to be the “normal” kid at the center of it all, which can be a thankless task.
Still, after all that, it’s impossible to look at OLIVER! and its place in Oscars history and not see it as a last hurrah. The next Best Picture would be MIDNIGHT COWBOY, a defining beginning to the next chapter of Hollywood history. Save for one final film, no other musical has won the big prize since 1968. But, maybe it deserves to be looked at as the type of old-school entertainment that could still be appreciated in its moment, even as the entire structure of how to make a movie was changing around it.
CHICAGO (2002)
Directed by: Rob Marshall
Starring: Renee Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Richard Gere, Queen Latifah, John C. Reilly
Written by: Bill Condon
Released: December 27, 2002
Length: 113 minutes
Other Best Picture nominees: GANGS OF NEW YORK, THE HOURS, THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS, THE PIANIST
Also won for: Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Zeta-Jones), Best Sound (Michael Minkler, Dominick Tavella, David Lee), Best Art Direction (Art Direction - John Myhre; Set Decoration - Gordon Sim), Best Costume Design (Colleen Atwood), Best Film Editing (Martin Walsh)
Also nominated for: Best Directing (Marshall), Best Actress in a Leading Role (Zellweger), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Reilly), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Latifah), Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay) (Condon, based on the Maurine Dallas Watkins play), Best Music (Original Song) (“I Move On” by John Kander and Fred Ebb), Best Cinematography (Dion Beebe)
Synopsis: Show-biz dreamer Roxie Hart is arrested after shooting her lover dead, despite her husband’s best attempts to take the fall. In the clink, she forms an uneasy alliance with starlet Velma Kelly in an attempt to avoid execution. Flashy and opportunistic Billy Flynn crafts Roxie into a media sensation, but will her long-sought fame last for long?
It may be impossible to believe for those who weren’t really paying attention at the time, but CHICAGO winning the 2002 Best Picture award was considered a foregone conclusion.
Oh, sure, with twenty years of hindsight, the Rob Marshall adaptation of the current second-longest-running show in Broadway history seems like the 21st century Oscars aberration to end all 21st century Oscars aberrations. Despite some hopes to the contrary, CHICAGO did not launch a second wave of movie musicals; if anything, they seem like bigger novelties than ever. Also, there’s an easy argument to be made that it is the least essential of all five Best Picture nominees that year. CHICAGO hasn’t left much of a cultural impact nearly a quarter-century later.
But, at the time? Its victory was a matter of if, not when. Nearly every article you can find from back then gave CHICAGO even odds, a Vegas line that ended up being accurate. There are a couple of reasons for this: one, never forget this was a Miramax picture. Four years after SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE snatched the Best Picture statuette from SAVING PRIVATE RYAN’s calloused hands, the Weinstein machine was fully oiled (oh, shut up). I think, given the then-recent terrorist attacks in New York City, there was a desire in Hollywood to return to olden days, and Miramax was able to play to those emotions at every turn.
Also, not for nothing, but CHICAGO was well-liked at the time! They’re not perfect metrics by any means, but its Rotten Tomatoes score sits at 87%, and its Cinemascore was a healthy “A-”, indicating support from both critics and audiences. And it’s worth noting that Chicago is an easy show to like. It has a legitimate claim as the greatest musical ever written. It’s a mean, vicious satire that sinks its teeth into America’s unique relationships with fame, crime, and famous crime. Not a single character is entirely likeable; most of the leads are completely out for themselves, even as they pretend to work together. But it’s all wrapped in a vaudevillian charm that keeps the show from being fully bilious.
Crucially, though, Chicago requires literally letter-perfect casting in order to keep this balance. A whiff of effort from Billy Flynn, and he’s sunk (the Broadway show employed Jerry Orbach in the role, so he most definitely floated). If you dislike even a hair on Roxie Hart’s head, the show ceases to function (one imagines the originator, Gwen Verdon, has never had an unlikeable hair on her head). Therein lies the problem with CHICAGO, at least for me. I didn’t find Renee Zellweger or, tragically, Richard Gere very charming. Thus, you have a movie about bad people you don’t like screwing each other over. I can watch the news for that.
Yes, the satire is clear, but it’s also hammered home at every opportunity, perhaps because the movie senses the trouble at its center. The original staging of “They Both Reached For the Gun”, which envisions Roxie as a ventriloquist dummy and Billy as her puppeteer, with the entire press row nothing more than marionettes, was apparently too subtle. This leads to a shot of Gere as the marionette master because, get this, he’s pulling the strings! Pushing these things too far to make sure you get it throws off the entire equilibrium of the show.
There are other quibbles, such as the MTV-style of filming (although, gotta say, I remembered it being fast to the point of incomprehension, which it isn’t), and the decision to split the musical numbers between reality and fantasy, which, again, only feels like it’s pushing the point on you again (the songs are in their mind, man! It’s just a form of expression!) There are also things to like: I think John C. Reilly and Catherine Zeta-Jones earned their nomination and win, respectively. Christine Baranski acquits herself well as the face of the press. But overall, CHICAGO remains an odd place for this particular story to finish. Until, of course, WICKED gets the LORD OF THE RINGS treatment next Oscars season. I’m kidding. I think.