Lights, camera, music!
Apart from TheSound OfMusic, here are 10 of our favourite films adapted from stage musicals.
West Side Story (1961)
WEST Side Story beat every last buggin’ film on the whole buggin’ street during the 1962 Oscars, winning 10 out of 11 nominations, including Best Picture. It still holds the record for most Oscar wins for a film musical.
Based on the 1957 Broadway musical that was a modern take (at the time) on William Shakespeare’s Romeo And Juliet, it revolves around the star-crossed love of Tony, co-founder of The Jets, and Maria, sister of Benardo, leader of rival gang The Sharks. If this movie had been released today, social media would have been flooded with #TeamJets and #TeamSharks hash tags.
Fun fact: Elvis Presley was approached to star as Tony, but turned it down because of the character’s association with gang culture.
My Fair Lady (1964)
BY George, she’s got it! We could have danced all night with the ethereal Audrey Hepburn, who plays Eliza Doolittle, an “uncultured” flower girl who takes speech lessons from Professor Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison) after he makes a bet that he can turn her into a lady of high society.
Cue lessons about how the rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain, and how in Hartford, Hereford, and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly happen.
The utterly lover-ly film won eight Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for Harrison, who incidentally, played Professor Henry Higgins in the 1957 stage production as well.
Fun fact: The 1964 film was adapted from the 1957 stage production that was adapted from the 1938 film that was adapted from the original 1913 play by George Bernard Shaw. Phew!
Oliver! (1968)
“PLEASE sir, I want some more.” After watching this, you certainly wish there were more films like Oliver! There have been countless retellings of Charles Dickens’ classic novel Oliver Twist on film throughout the years, but none have been quite as memorable or enjoyable as this 1968 film based on the West End musical.
The 1960s was a great decade for film musicals, with four winning Best Picture Oscars – West Side Story in 1962, My Fair Lady in 1965, The Sound Of Music in 1966, and last, but not least, Oliver! in 1969.
Fun fact: Ron Moody was the original Fagin for the stage version of Oliver!, but was only cast in the film after A-listers such as Peter O’Toole, Dick Van Dyke, and Peter Sellers, declined the role.
Hello, Dolly! (1969)
BASED on a musical that was adapted from Thornton Wilder’s 1938 farce The Merchant Of Yonkers, Hello, Dolly! was directed by the legendary Gene Kelly, and
Story. Hepburn’s eliza Doolittle makes a grand entrance in MyFairLady. tells the story of Dolly, a matchmaker who visits New York, to find a match for miserly rich man Horace Vandergelder.
It was Barbra Streisand’s second feature film role, and her first since winning the Best Actress Oscar (which she shared with Katharine Hepburn) for Funny Girl the year before.
Nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Hello, Dolly! eventually won three – Best Art Direction, Best Score, and Best Sound.
Fun fact: Louis Armstrong, who makes an appearance in the film as an orchestra conductor, also recorded the film’s title track, which became a No. 1 single in 1964.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
LET’S do the time warp back to 1975, when Tim Curry sang about being a sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania in this send-up of B-grade sci-fi and horror movies based on the 1973 stage musical.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show was not exactly a box-office smash when it was first released, but is now a cult favourite all over the
WestSide it’s safe to say that Audrey ii from the LittleshopofHorrors isn’t a vegetarian. world. Besides, it features Meatloaf crashing through a wall on a bike with a saxophone on his back to sing Hot Patootie Bless My Soul before getting picked off by an icepick. What more can you ask for? Fun fact: Curry, who plays Dr Frank N Furter in both the stage and film versions, first heard of the show when he met creator Richard O’Brien on the street after he had been to the gym to see if he could find a “muscleman who could sing”.
Little Shop Of Horrors (1986)
THERE are few things more disturbingly weird than a giant man-eating plant with lips, singing “Feed me! Feed me!” with the sultry tones of an R&B crooner, but that’s what The Little Shop Of Horrors had.
Based on the off-Broadway musical of the same name, the movie starred Rick Moranis (hot off his Keymaster role in Ghostbusters), and Four Tops lead vocalist Levi Stubbs as the voice of Audrey II the carnivorous alien plant.
It may not have won any Oscars, unlike many of the films on this list, but it was utterly bonkers, mindless fun, and had Steve Martin being devoured by a plant (BURP).
Fun fact: The original ending featured Audrey II eating Moranis’s Seymour character and taking over the world, but they had to film a happier ending after disastrously negative responses from test screening audiences.
Chicago (2002)
A “MUSICAL comedy crime film” set in 1920s Chicago starring Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renée Zellweger, as two women accused of murder fighting to milk as much fame as possible from their situations, Chicago mixed music, murder, mystery, and all that jazz into one tantalisingly sexy production.
The film won six Oscars in 2003, including Best Picture, and Best Supporting Actress for Zeta-Jones.
Fun fact: Chicago was the first musical to win the Best Picture Oscar since Oliver! in 1969.
Dreamgirls (2006)
DREAMGIRLS follows the career of all-girl R&B band The Dreams, who are living the dream – plucked from obscurity by a sleazy record executive to become one of the biggest R&B acts of the 1960s and 1970s.
The original 1981 Broadway stage musical was based loosely on the rise and fall of The Supremes, and charts the evolution of the American R&B music industry. Although the movie was nominated for eight Oscars, it only won two (Best Sound Mixing, and Best Supporting Actress for Jennifer Hudson).
Fun fact: Dreamgirls was the first ever live-action film to receive three Oscar nominations for Best Song, though all three conveniently lost to I Need To Wake Up from eco-documentary An Inconvenient Truth.
Mamma Mia! (2008)
OH Mamma Mia, how can we resist you? No matter what you think of the movie, the music, and Pierce Brosnan’s terrible singing, there is just no resisting the charm of this movie and the catchiness of Abba’s songs.
Adapted from the 1999 West End musical, it had the formidable Meryl Streep in one of her most commercially successful roles ever, as a single mother whose daughter (Amanda Seyfried) tries to set her up with her three possible fathers, played by Brosnan, Colin Firth, and Stellan Skarsgård.
Fun fact: Raking in more than US$600mil (RM2.2bil) worldwide, Mamma Mia! is the highest grossing musical of all-time. Gimme gimme gimme money money money!
Les Misérables (2012)
“I DREAMED a dream in time gone by, when hope was high, and life worth living”. It’s hard not to be moved (and get a little depressed) when Anne Hathaway’s Fantine starts singing this iconic show tune. Hathaway later won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for the role, the standout performer in a cast full of stand out performances.
Winning three Oscars and nominated for Best Picture, there was no denying that the movie is a stunning adaptation of the original West End/Broadway production, even though watching the macho likes of Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe singing throughout the show took a bit of getting used to.
Fun fact: With over 12,000 shows to date, the original West End production is the longest running stage musical in history.