AND SPEAKING OF MUSICALS

My little boy went on a sleepover the other night but got restless and called at quarter to one. After I talked him into trying to fall asleep there, he called again at quarter to three and asked me to come pick him up.

He woke me both times out of a sound sleep, but after going and getting him and driving him home, I was wide awake. So, lying in bed, trying to get back to sleep, after the usual deep breathing, prayers, ideas for new books, plays, etc., I finally went back to the old standby of an alphabet list.

Having recently seen HAIRSPRAY with him, I started thinking about musicals, and thought that might be an interesting list: favorite Hollywood musicals (meaning live action movies in which the characters break into song and/or dance, often in non-performance situations) and found it incredibly easy to come up with more than one for most letters, as musicals have always been one of my favorite movie genres, despite the less-than-macho cache of just the idea of singing and dancing interrupting real life.

So I tried to keep each letter to the bare minimum of Hollywood musicals I truly can re-watch anytime. Here’s what I came up with:

AMERICAN IN PARIS, AN
BORN TO DANCE (Eleanor Powell, the incredible dancer, with the young Jimmy Stewart!)
CABIN IN THE SKY, CAROUSEL, CARMEN JONES (Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte were the best looking screen couple in Hollywood when this was made), and CABARET (before Liza Minelli became a caricature of herself, or maybe this was where that process began)
DREAMGIRLS
EASTER PARADE (weak story, but worth it to see Garland and Astaire together)
FLYING DOWN TO RIO, FOOTLIGHT PARADE (Cagney as a tough guy Broadway producer), 42nd STREET, and FUNNY FACE
GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933 (early Busby Berkley spectacular), GUYS AND DOLLS, and GREASE (I’m not crazy about the way this musical trivializes part of my own experience, but it’s still pretty entertaining, and my littler boy digs it)
HOLIDAY INN (Astaire and Crosby) (A HARD DAY’S NIGHT could be here, of course, except it isn’t a “Hollywood” musical)
IT HAPPENED IN BROOKLYN (Sinatra and Durante, what can I say)
JAILHOUSE ROCK and JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR (both are a little weak for me, but both also have unforgettable numbers that make the movies worth seeing)
KING CREOLE (my personal favorite Elvis flick)
LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (I’m not crazy about the music, but the story and the cast are pretty entertaining)
MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS, THE MUSIC MAN, MY FAIR LADY, and MARY POPPINS
NIGHT AND DAY (a Hollywood version of Cole Porter’s life, but still, Cary Grant and Cole Porter songs? Pretty sweet)
OKLAHOMA (you gotta see it on the big screen to really get the beauty of its artistry) and ON THE TOWN
PENNIES FROM HEAVEN (both versions, the 1936 Bing Crosby one, where he’s supposedly in small town New Jersey, plus Louis Armstrong has a number, and the 1981 Steve Martin entirely different, and much heavier flick, but worth it for what Martin was trying to achieve and for Chris Walken’s dance number) and THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE (Kevin Kline and Linda Ronstat!)
Q
RENT (another one I’m not really crazy about, but there’s something compelling in the theatricality of the attempt to show more “realistic” natives of Manhattan than previous musicals)
SWING TIME, STORMY WEATHER, SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN, SOUTH PACIFIC, and THE SOUND OF MUSIC
TOP HAT
UP IN CENTRAL PARK (because I like Deanna Durbin movies, a Hollywood star barely remembered today, and not my thing when I was young, but in retrospect she was an incredible singer/actress of a type that couldn’t compete with the raw emotional talent of Judy Garland or the younger cutesy lovably talented Shirley Temple, but much like the almost forgotten screen dancer Eleanor Powell, Durbin was so confident in her talent she seems like some kind of proto-feminist—like a singing Nancy Drew—as does Powell, strong girls and women who don’t break down or give up or give in, and the story line isn’t bad for a musical either, New York Irish again)
V
THE WIZARD OF OZ, WEST SIDE STORY, and WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (the Gene Wilder original)
X
YOU’LL NEVER GET RICH (Astaire and Rita Hayworth!) and YOUNG AT HEART (I’m not crazy about Doris Day, and you certainly can’t ignore her in anything she’s in, but if you can distract yourself when she’s soloing and tune in for Sinatra’s numbers, it’s a sweet film) and YENTL (I know, I know, but as I said at the time in Streisand’s defense, first of all, she’s an incredible singer who changed popular music forever when she was barely out of her teens, and second of all, what avant-garde performance artist would have the nerve to play a young woman disguised as a boy when she’s hitting middle age? Plus Amy Irving is wonderful, and Mandy Patimkin isn’t bad)
ZIGFIELD FOLLIES (this 1946 flick is the only time Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire danced together, ‘nuff said)