Best Musical ever?


Someone asked me to pick what I felt was the best overall musical film ever made - script, songs, dancing, etc. - and I ended up with this one. I know "Singin' In The Rain" is generally considered to be the best, but I would put EP right up there with it.

What do others think?

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It's one of my favorite musicals ever! This along with Meet Me In St Louis is my favorite Judy Garland musical. It's just perfect in every way. It's got Judy and Fred together, what can be better? Judy looking adorable, vulnerable and singing her heart out. Fred dancing looking smooth as usual. And the amazing Ann Miller tap dancing her feet off! Even Peter Lawford is charming. To top it off, it's got that magical A Couple of Swells number with Judy and Fred dressed as bums. What's not to like about this musical?

"bleep me gently with a chainsaw"

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Definitely one of the best musicals ever. I do love Singing in the Rain too. I'd also put them on equal footing. :D

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MGM made about ten GREAT MGM musicals. The ten that usually make the
four-star list:

The Wizard of Oz
Meet Me in St. Louis
Easter Parade
On the Town
An American in Paris
Singin' in the Rain
The Band Wagon
Kiss Me Kate
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
GiGi

The list is arguable, and MGM (as well as other studios) certainly made
other wonderful musical films, but this is usually the "top-ten" from
MGM.

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Seems like a good place to note that Singin' In The Rain could have been a spin-off from Easter Parade, (or what Easter Parade might have been with its originally nominated cast?) Why? SIR Stars Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse, after both forced to exit EP. Used Arthur Freed/Ignacio Brown's lyrics/music instead of Berlin's. EP had Astaire/Lawford: Don Lockwood/Cosmo Brown. SIR had Kelly/O'Connor: Don Hewes/Johnny. EP Female Ingenue: Garland. SIR Ingenue: Reynolds. EP Older Woman Miller:Nadine Hale. SIR Older Woman Hagan: Lena Lamont. Both period pieces which featured songs appropriate to the era. Storyline, if dissected, not that dissimilar. Scenes – Both have a comedic meeting scene with a car. Both have a number singing under an umbrella/in the rain. Lawford and O'Connor as friends, respectively, of main characters. Women in both pitched against each other. Talents of both ladies differ from each other in both stories. There is a similar “wobble” near the end of both, where male almost seems to discard new-found love. What's different? Kelly chases DR in SIR. No 4-square (circumlocation) romantic twist in SIR. SIR leans more to dancing – everybody dances except Lena, whose comedy (in SIR) replaces Nadine's waspishness (in EP). EP - Maid blows whistle on Garland; SIR - Zelda blows the whistle on Reynolds. Nadine thinks she can get along without Hewes (at beginning EP). Lena thinks she can get along without Lockwood (at the end SIR) .EP - “Michigan” serves same spot as SIR - “All I Do Is dream Of You”. Shall I continue?

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Thanks for that list. I've seen three of those titles (fairly easy to guess which) and now also Easter Parade, which was a very pleasant surprise. I'll certainly look for the others.

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For my money "Top Hat" is one of the most perfect musicals with Fred Astaire. Sorry, 'Easter Parade' doesn't hold a candle--to coin a phrase--to "Oklahoma" or "Show Boat." "Easter Parade" is excellent! Yet the themes of 'Oklahoma' or 'Show Boat' elevated those two to another realm.

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I disagree. There's no question that the MGM musicals and the Rodgers&Hammerstein/Hart are two very different worlds. I just find that Oklahama epitomizes all that is worst about the R&H/H side of things. The songs are more sophisticated and the dance numbers are more like ballet choreography, but the whole thing is quite boring. Give me Easter Parade or proper ballet or opera, but Oklahoma is neither fish nor fowl.

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Well, to each their own. The sentimentality of Rodgers and Hammerstein can be a bit daunting. The pretentiousness of Agnes DeMille can be a bit daunting. And Rogers and Hart created something so different from Rogers and Hammerstein, which speaks to something but I don't know what. Hart the destructive (and homosexual) alcoholic versus Hammerstein that puritan estabilishment. That Rogers would respond to these two distinct personalities with two distinct sounds is remarkable. Hammerstein and Kern created "Show Boat" in 1927 which is more in the tradition of Rogers and Hammerstein than Rogers and Hart.

Rogers and Hammerstein (Hammerstein and Kern as well) worked with gigantic themes of the human condition: racial prejudice, gambling addiction, persecution by the state, murder, etc. By contrast, Fred Astaire, Irving Berlin left themselves to work with affairs of the heart--boy meets girl, boy loses girl, etc. Irving Berlin's music is an evocation of the heart and affairs of the heart while Rogers and Hammerstein evoke substantial matters of the soul; and so their dance, their music reflects that effort.

Irving Berlin--Israel Balien--an immigrant Jew from Russia, growing up impoverished in the Lower East Side of New York, would see something about America and what it means to be an immigrant, to be Jewish in Christian America. And as an immigrant and a Jew--always looking in and never being allowed to enter, never quite feeling a right to enter. (The metaphysics can be equally daunting!)

Someone said of him re White Christmas: it is in a minor key--the key of mourning--which gives the song a wistful quality. Did Irving Berlin have that sense of wistfulness in his life about his own past growing up in New York with its white Christmas whilst living in Hollywood? (And equal loss about a Russia he may have only dimly recalled.) As a transplanted New Englander, I have that sense of the wistful for what was past in my youth.

But the movie musical is not the stage musical. And Fred Astaire and Irving Berlin created a unique art form about the movie musical--a marriage of true minds to create a uniquely American genre available for all to appreciate and come out of the theater in more optimisitc mood than when they walked in. And it seems important to emphasize their films were a product of the Great Depression and World War II--moments of profound doubt in America about the American soul.

It is a fair criticism to say that the Broadway Musical ends up being neither fish nor fowl. Is it opera, comic opera, ballet, dance hall? At least with Gilbert and Sullivan the audience knows it's going to get a good laugh. How respond to West Side Story, Cabaret, Chicago--each with a dark and sinister undertow?

Comparing Broadway musical to the movie musical is indeed a question of apples and oranges; comparing one movie musical to another movie musical is also akin to comparing apples and oranges.

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I second that motion. And I am even more a fan of Fred Astaire than I am of Gene Kelly. SITR is just a perfect movie.

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Great question! Everyone has their own favorite musicals. The one thing we can probably all agree on is that they sure don't make them like they used to! My personal favorite is My Fair Lady. I think it is perfection. Also very high on my list:

1. My Fair Lady
2. Top Hat
3. Mary Poppins
4. Wizard of Oz
5. Meet me in St. Louis
6. Swing Time
7. Oklahoma
8. Easter Parade
9. Singin'in the Rain
10. The Band Wagon

Honorable Mention: Babes in Arms, Girl Crazy, Babes on Broadway (anything with Mickey and Judy singing)

And thank heaven for You Tube, which allows us to see so many of the great moments from musicals of the past. The movie "Blue Skies" may be horrible, but I'll watch Fred Astaire dancing to "Puttin' on the Ritz" a thousand times.

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Maybe not the ultimate best but definitely one of the best musical film ever made in the history of cinema!
JeSkuNk

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Well, of course the best musical ever is The Music Man. If you think differently you must be smoking funny cigarettes! :^)

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Hi! Yeap. When I'm being asked it was usually THE SOUND OF MUSIC... Until I watched EASTER PARADE. To name other musicals is tempting. But Easter Parade is most deserving of being named Best Musical for me. Not even Singin' in the Rain will equal it imo. :-)


When you're excited, you'll win.

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Peter Lawford keeps it from being a truly great movie (as does the goofy waiter).

Great scenes throughout a flawed movie.

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I haven't seen all of them but this and Wizard of Oz are the best I've seen so far.

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