Why we’re all making a song and dance about musicals
As movie soundtracks dominate the album charts...
THIS week, it was revealed musical soundtracks dominated the album chart of 2018 – with three making the Top 10.
The Greatest Showman, featuring Keala Settle’s brilliant This Is Me, was the best-selling of the whole year.
The soundtracks for Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again and Lady Gaga’s A Star Is Born grabbed the No 6 and No 10 slots.
But this is not the first time that the popularity of feelgood musicals have surged during times of political and economic distress.
The Great Depression of the 1930s went hand in hand with the Busby Berkeley extravaganzas, which offered lines of highkicking dancers forming dazzling kaleidoscopic routines that are still breathtaking.
Their unbeatable fusion of toe-tapping tunes, massive budgets and glamorous star actors and actresses ensured musicals were the real blockbusters movies of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.
So, in these austerity-filled and Brexit-dominating years, it is perhaps no surprise that we find modern audiences flocking to the cinema to embrace the likes of La La Land and The Greatest Showman.
And as this amazing year ahead is about to unfold, we have Mary Poppins Returns to hopefully brighten the gloom – along with the singalong version of Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, which will arrive in our cinemas from next Friday.
Hard times have dictated how we brighten our lives with these musicals.
So, now we are back in love with them, here is a look at the very best to cheer your day.
1 Singin’ In The Rain (1952)
Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor send up 1920s Hollywood in this gloriously entertaining and sensational musical which also just happens to be the greatest film ever made.
2 42nd Street (1933)
No list of musicals is complete without acknowledging the incredible choreography of Busby Berkeley, whose dance routines set a benchmark in ambition and scale yet to bettered. This backstage Broadway drama features the tunes of Harry Warren and Al Dubin, and sees Ginger Rogers in a minor role as Ann “Anytime Annie” Lowell.
3 Seven Brides For Seven Brothers (1954)
Howard Keel and Jane Powell star in this rousing and unapologetically un-PC story about a family of backwoodsmen who kidnap local girls in order to marry them. Russ Tamblyn plays Keel’s youngest brother and also appears in West Side Story.
4 My Fair Lady (1964)
The winner of eight Oscars including Best Film, Director and Leading Man, though Audrey Hepburn was not even nominated for her spirited turn as the Cockney flower girl, who was taught how to talk “proper” by Rex Harrison’s bad-tempered professor. It was in this year that Julie Andrews won the Best Actress Oscar that year for her role as Mary Poppins.
6 Top Hat (1935) 5 West Side Story (1961)
Natalie Wood starred in Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein’s re-imagining of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, partially filmed on location in New York. The movie used innovative colour techniques and walked off with won 10 of the Oscars it was nominated for. Legends Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are in truly tip-top form dancing cheek to cheek in this fabulous screwball musical comedy film, which proved to be their biggest hit. A remake of 1940s The Philadelphia Story sees Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby hit all the right notes as they compete to romance Hollywood queen Grace Kelly in her last film role before becoming a real life princess.
8 Cabaret (1972)
Dance supremo Bob Fosse’s dark musical sees Hollywood royalty Liza Minnelli at her formidable best as showgirl Sally Bowes. Co-stars Joel Grey, whose daughter Jennifer starred as Baby in 1987’s Dirty Dancing.
9 Mary Poppins (1964)
Julie Andrews is practically perfect in every way as the world’s favourite nanny, playing alongside Dick Van Dyke’s Cockney chimney sweep, in this magical family fantasy.
10 Grease (1978)
John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John were the ones everyone wanted in this electrifying rock ’n’ roll homage to the high school years of the 1950s.