Musicals
ography, puddle-jumping Gene Kelly and fruit-balancing Carmen Miranda are critically but lovingly examined by someone who grew into her passion for film during the golden age of Hollywood musicals.
“During postwar World War II, even the minor ones were great entertainment, good performers and singers and dancers, eyepopping Technicolor,” Basinger says. “The history of them is so oversimplified. … I wanted an accurate history showing how the business is an art form and the art form is a business.”
In a phone interview from her home in Middletown, Basinger, who is 83, knocks off the foremost historical error generally accepted as truth, even dramatized in the legendary 1952 musical “Singin’ in the Rain.”
“Why do people insist on thinking ‘The Jazz Singer’ was the first sound movie? … The first all-talking film is ‘Lights of New York,’ a really bad gangster film,” she says. “The industry said, ‘No way, this is better over here. We have Al Jolson. He’s a great star. His first line is ‘You ain’t heard nothin’ yet!’ That’s a great line. [Film mogul] Sam Warner dropped dead the night before the premiere.’ It was good copy.”
Basinger lists her favorite musical performer as Fred Astaire.
“He’s peerless perfection,” she says. She respects and admires Gene Kelly — whose forceful style often is held up as a contrast to Astaire’s cool urbanity — but added “his film persona, the aggressive, wolfish male, doesn’t hold up quite as well.”
The book dissects hundreds of major musicals in Hollywood history but also takes time to showcase lesser-known but noteworthy ones. One will finish the book eager to find the 1933 romance “Melody Cruise” and the little-seen 2006 crime drama “Idlewild.”
Basinger, whose life and work have evolved around cinema, has too many favorite musicals to list. But in advance of an appearance at Wesleyan’s RJ Julia Booksellers in Middletown on Nov. 21, when she will present a reading and booksigning, she chatted with us about some films she admires and why they are noteworthy examples of the musical form (listed in chronological order of their release dates).
Carmen Miranda. The film told a story about a soldier in love. It included the wildly colorful and strange dance routine “The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat.”
“There is a craziness in Busby Berkeley in all the things he does. I like that craziness. He is a man who proves that the movie musical is a musical and not a theatrical experience. He breaks down the proscenium, the frame, takes you into different layers where stage can’t take you, and he works kaleidoscopic things.
‘The Gang’s All Here’ is the craziest one of them all. It’s wonderful.” performer after another.
“It makes me happy to see a movie with all that talent in it.”
Vincente Minnelli’s 1951 Best Picture Oscar winner starred Gene Kelly and
Leslie Caron in a Parisian romance.
“This was a groundbreaking musical. There had been long ballet numbers in movies like ‘The Red Shoes’ and ‘Yolanda and the Thief,’ but this movie created an original ballet with Gene Kelly dancing it with Leslie Caron.
“Gene Kelly was not playing a professional dancer. Leslie was not playing a professional dancer. They were individual people who sing and dance because that is how they express their love and feeling and friendship, any emotion. That was where the musical was going to go. This really brought it forward, introduced it to people.”
“The Greatest Showman,” the 2017 biopic of P.T. Barnum starring Hugh Jackman, was “a real musical,” Basinger says “a great, thumping, singing, dancing musical experience.”
The film was the closest she’s seen in recent years to an old-fashioned, Golden Age musical, she says, and the many negative reviews didn’t stop musical-loving audiences from finding the film and making it a hit.
“A lot of people have begun to ignore reviews. Nowadays it’s so easy to get your hands on films, streaming, DVD. You could go out to a theater, but people find things on their own.
“Like ‘High School Musical,’ people find what they like and make those movies hits. Musicals are very directly vicarious and emotional. People get exhilarated. People want to be exhilarated.”