The King and I 1956 - The much-loved family classic

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IMDB Rating: 7,5

Director: Walter Lang
Main Cast: Yul Brynner, Deborah Kerr, Rita Moreno, Martin Benson, Terry Saunders, Rex Thompson

"The King and I, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein's 1951 Broadway musical hit, was based on Margaret Landon's book Anna and the King of Siam. Since 20th-Century-Fox had made a film version of the Landon book in 1946, that studio had first dibs on the movie adaptation of The King and I. It typifies the elaborate Broadway musical adaptations with which Hollywood studios often tried to fight the advance of television of 1950s. In general, The King and I tends to be somewhat stagey, with the notable exception of the matchless 'Small House of Uncle Thomas' ballet, which utilizes the Cinemascope 55 format to best advantage (the process also does a nice job of 'handling' Deborah Kerr's voluminous hoopskirts) to counter the smallness of the TV screen, offering equally grand set design, costumes, and cinematography. Most of the Broadway version's best songs ('Getting to Know You', 'Whistle a Happy Tune', 'A Puzzlement', 'Shall We Dance' etc.) are retained. None of the omissions are particularly regrettable, save for Anna's solo 'Shall I Tell You What I Think of You?' This feisty attack on the King's chauvinism was specially written to suit the talents of Gertrude Lawrence, who played Anna in the original production; the song was cut from the film because it made Deborah Kerr seem 'too bitchy' (Kerr's singing, incidentally, is dubbed for the most part by the ubiquitous Marni Nixon - who had been responsible for Natalie Wood's singing voice in West Side Story and Audrey Hepburn's in My Fair Lady). So the songs and performances are equally impressive: Yul Brynner - being the main attraction of the movie - won an Oscar for his career-best performance as the King of Siam, the role that made him a star and with which he will forever be identified." - www.allmovie.com

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A star is born 1954 - Judy's triumph from beginning to end

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IMDB Rating: 7,8

Director: George Cukor
Main Cast: Judy Garland, James Mason, Jack Carson, Charles Bickford, Tommy Noonan, Amanda Blake

"The 1954 musical remake of A Star is Born could have been titled A Star is Reborn, in that it represented the triumphal return to the screen of Judy Garland after a four-year absence. The remake adheres closely to the plotline of the 1937 original: An alcoholic film star, on his last professional legs, gives a career boost to a unknown aspiring actress. The two marry, whereupon her fame and fortune rises while his spirals sharply downward. Unable to accept this, the male star crawls deeper into the bottle. The wife tearfully decides to give up her own career to care for her husband. To spare her this fate, the husband chivalrously commits suicide. His wife is inconsolable at first, but is urged to go 'on with the show' in memory of her late husband.
To make room for the songs, several supporting characters from the 1937 version were eliminated. The result is a film that, despite the increased length, has less story-telling richness, though the deficiency is compensated by Garland's superb performance.
What truly sets the 1954 A Star is Born apart from other films of its ilk is its magnificent musical score by Harold Arlen and Ira Gershwin. The songs include The Man Who Got Away (brilliantly performed by Garland in one long take, sans dubbing), It's a New World, Somewhere There's a Someone, I Was Born in a Trunk, Lose That Long Face and Gotta Have Me Go With You. When originally previewed in 1954, the film ran well over three hours, thanks to the lengthy-and thoroughly disposable-Born in a Trunk number, added to the film as an afterthought without the approval or participation of director George Cukor. The Warner Bros. executives trimmed the film to 154 minutes, eliminating three top-rank musical numbers and several crucial expository sequences (including Norman's proposal to Vicki). At the instigation of the late film historian Ronald Haver, the full version was painstakingly restored in 1983, with outtakes and still photos bridging the 'lost' footage. Despite the efforts of restoration experts, there are today no complete prints of the original release version. Judy Garland benefits from the increased emphasis on her character, and the film is far more of a star vehicle for her than was the original for Janet Gaynor. Though nominated in several categories, A Star is Born was left empty-handed at Academy Award time, an oversight that caused outrage then and still rankles Judy Garland fans to this day. (Hedda Hopper later reported that her loss to Grace Kelly for The Country Girl (1954) was the result of the closest Oscar vote up till that time that didn't end in a tie, with just six votes separating the two.)" - www.allmovie.com

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The band wagon 1953 - Last of the great Hollywood musicals

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IMDB Rating: 7,6

Director: Vincente Minnelli
Main Cast: Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse, Oscar Levant, Nanette Fabray, Jack Buchanan

"Made towards the end of MGM producer Arthur Freed's peak period of musical productions, at a time when movies, theater, and other forms of entertainment were all feeling the heat from the rise of television, preeminent musical director Vincente Minnelli's backstage story celebrates the musical itself and its brand of pop entertainment. Pitting Fred Astaire's washed-up movie hoofer against Jack Buchanan's high-falutin' artiste and Cyd Charisse's transplanted ballerina, The Band Wagon reflexively pokes fun at the musical's excesses and delves into the question of what an audience really wants, implicitly defending traditional forms of entertainment at a time when Hollywood was in decline and consumers were turning to new form of recreation. As with Freed's Singin' in the Rain (1952), the sophisticated comedy of show business manners becomes a showcase for the Freed Unit's sparkling production values and musical acumen, as well as Minnelli's stylistic virtuosity. While numbers such as Astaire's 42nd street dance 'Shine on Your Shoes' and Astaire's and Charisse's 'Dancing in the Dark' reveal Minnelli's mastery at integrating dance and story, the final 'Band Wagon' revue is a peerless sequence of pure musical entertainment, with 'The Girl Hunt' deftly mixing the high and low arts of ballet and jazz in a parody of Mickey Spillane's detective yarns. Though not one of Minnelli's Oscar winners, The Band Wagon has come to be considered his best musical, and a wise elegy to the form." - www.allmovie.com

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Singin' in the rain 1952 - One of the greatest Hollywood musicals ever made

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IMDB rating: 8,4

Director: Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly
Main Cast: Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor, Debbie Reynolds, Jean Hagen, Cyd Charisse

"Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly's Singin' In The Rain is usually lumped together with the other MGM "songbook" musicals of its era, An American In Paris and The Band Wagon. In contrast to those two outstanding works of music and motion, however, Singin' In The Rain had an additional layer of importance and appeal as one of Hollywood's relatively rare feature films about itself. The Arthur Freed/Nacio Herb Brown songbook is on one level the center of the movie, but it's also a backdrop for a humorous and delightfully stylized look back at the crisis that engulfed the movie mecca and its inhabitants once synchronized sound came to films. The musical was made in 1952, only 25 years after the beginning of the series of events depicted and satirized in the script, so recent in time that there were still plenty of old studio hands (including sound department head Douglas Shearer) who had firsthand memories of the actual events.The film is full of delightful in-jokes about its subject and the people who lived through the era: Jean Hagen's Lina Lamont is a burlesque of silent-movie sex symbol Clara Bow, whose decidedly urban style of diction never really fit her image or what the public wanted, while Millard Mitchell's R.F. Simpson was a gently jocular satire of Freed himself, who could never quite visualize the elaborate musical numbers whose scripts and budgets he was approving as producer. Donald O'Connor's Cosmo Brown was an onscreen stand-in for men like Franz Waxman and dozens of other musicians, who moved from writing arrangements or conducting the major theater orchestras to heading the music departments of the studios. The resulting musical, in addition to offering a brace of memorable songs and performances (with a startlingly sultry featured spot for Cyd Charisse in the "Broadway Melody" sequence, as a bonus), gave audiences a short-course pop-history lesson about how the movies learned to talk, sing, and dance." - www.allmovie.com

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An American in Paris 1951 - The musical that set new standards

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IMDB rating: 7,3

Director: Vincente Minnelli
Main Cast: Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, Oscar Levant, Nina Foch, Georges Guetary

"Vincente Minnelli's An American in Paris set a new standard for the subgenre known as the 'songbook' musical. Since the dawn of sound, producers had been attracted to films built around the published output of composers as different as Johann Strauss (The Great Waltz, Waltzes From Vienna), Jerome Kern (Till the Clouds Roll By), Cole Porter (Night and Day), and Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart (Words and Music). Mostly, the material was strung together, sometimes hooked around a fanciful pseudo-biography of the composer in question, and audiences grinned and bore the plot elements while delighting to the music. An American in Paris was freed of any need to embrace composer George Gershwin as an onscreen figure by virtue of the 1945 screen biography Rhapsody in Blue, in which Robert Alda had portrayed the composer. Rather, Minnelli, Gene Kelly, and screenwriter Alan Jay Lerner simply used the title and the substance of the title work as a jumping-off point for a screen fantasy that happened to utilize much of the major Gershwin song catalog. Some of the inspiration for the film's 16-minute ballet finale came from the Red Shoes ballet sequence from Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's 1948 The Red Shoes. Whatever its inspirations and imitations, An American in Paris won seven Academy Awards and box-office success. The overall film (especially the non-musical elements) hasn't worn quite so well over the years, but it was a vital piece of cinema in its time, stretching the envelope of the level of sophistication that a major studio would pursue, and ripping that envelope to shreds with the climactic ballet sequence, which became the model for still more daring sequences in such Hollywood films as Singin' in the Rain and The Band Wagon and such European imitators as Black Tights and Kelly's own dance extravaganza, Invitation to the Dance." - www.allmovie.com

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On the town 1949 - One of MGM's brightest musicals

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IMDB rating: 7,7

Director: Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly
Main Cast: Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Betty Garrett, Ann Miller, Jules Munshin, Vera-Ellen

"Three sailors on a 24-hour pass - Gabey (Gene Kelly), Chip (Frank Sinatra), and Ozzie (Jules Munshin) - decide to soak up the sights and sounds of New York. Each one finds romance within those 24 hours: Gabey with aspiring dancer Ivy Smith (Vera-Ellen), Chip with lady cabbie Hildy Esterhazy (Betty Garrett), and Ozzie with paleontology student Claire Huddesten (Ann Miller).
Adapted from the Broadway musical by Betty Comden, Adolph Green, and Leonard Bernstein, On the Town is one of the freshest, most exhilarating musicals turned out by the old MGM regime. The stars' verve and camaraderie are contagious, and the songs are staged by legendary musical director Stanley Donen and Kelly himself with wit and innovation. Highlights include the opening 'New York, New York' number, shot on location and flat-cutting from one image to another at a dizzying pace, and Gene Kelly and Vera-Ellen's 'Miss Turnstyles Ballet'." - www.allmovie.com

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The red shoes 1948 - Influential musical tragedy

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IMDB rating: 8,3

Directors: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Main Cast: Moira Shearer, Anton Walbrook, Marius Goring, Ludmilla Tcherina

"Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's 1948 film The Red Shoes was, for nearly four decades, the most successful British movie ever released in America. Movies had used ballet as a subject before but the public had mostly ignored them. The Red Shoes, by contrast, seemed to draw audiences into its spell, virtually one theater at a time. In New York, it played to sell-out crowds at a single theater in Manhattan for almost two years before going into wide release, by which time word of the film had spread sufficiently to make it a hit throughout the country.
The movie had started life as a proposed screenplay, written by Pressburger for Merle Oberon before World War II, which never saw production - the intervening war and its aftermath led to a major change in its focus, from romantic melodrama to art. Powell and Pressburger sincerely believed that having spent four years dying in the name of freedom and liberty, the world was ready to see a movie that suggested it was now alright to die in the name of art. The public (outside of England, where critics panned the movie and it closed very quickly) responded in kind, in what was the first huge 'art-house' success in postwar cinema." - www.allmovie.com

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Flying down to Rio 1933 - Historically important for its star making pairing of Astaire & Rogers

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IMDB rating: 6,8

Director: Thornton Freeland
Main Cast: Dolores Del Rio, Gene Raymond, Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire

"The top-billed stars in the extravagant RKO musical Flying Down to Rio are Dolores Del Rio and Gene Raymond. Forget all that: this is the movie that first teamed Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. We're supposed to care about the romantic triangle between aviator/bandleader Raymond, Brazilian heiress Del Rio and her wealthy fiance Raul Roulien, but the moment Fred and Ginger dance to a minute's worth of 'The Carioca', the film is theirs forever. Other musical highlights include Rogers' opening piece 'Music Makes Me' and tenor Roulien's lush rendition of 'Orchids in the Moonlight'. Then there's the title number. The plot has it that Del Rio' uncle has been prohibited from having a floor show at his lavish hotel because of a Rio city ordinance. Astaire and Raymond save the day by staging the climactic 'Flying Down to Rio' number thousands of feet in the air, with hundreds of chorus girls shimmying and swaying while strapped to the wings of a fleet of airplanes. It is one of the most outrageously brilliant numbers in movie musical history, and one that never fails to incite a big round of applause from the audience - no matter what the date is. Together with King Kong, Flying Down to Rio saved the fledgling RKO Radio studios from bankruptcy in 1933. The film was a smash everywhere it played, encouraging the studio to concoct future teamings of those two stalwart supporting players Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers." - www.allmovie.com

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Going Hollywood 1933 - Davis follows Crosby to Tinseltown

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IMDB rating: 8,3

Director: Raoul Walsh
Main Cast: Marion Davies, Bing Crosby, Fifi D'Orsay, Stuart Erwin, Ned Sparks, Patsy Kelly

"Reportedly at the request of Marion Davies herself, Bing Crosby was borrowed from Paramount for the MGM Davies vehicle Going Hollywood.
When she discovers that the crooner she adores is 'Going Hollywood', a liberated school teacher dogs his steps all the way to the Studio sound stages.
Marion Davies tries her hardest to entertain in this tinsel town spoof, but neither the script (based on a story by the celebrated Frances Marion) nor the direction give her much leeway. Raoul Walsh seems a curious choice to direct this kind of film, but he must have had William Randolph Hearst's approval or he never would have been given the assignment. The trouble is that Marion has little chance to be anything other than sweet and pleasant - when finally given the opportunity to do a wicked spoof of co-star Fifi D'Orsay, she's terrific. Unfortunately, moments like that come all too rarely.
Leading man Bing Crosby comes off rather better, showing the casual charm that would make him a huge star. And he gets to sing some fine tunes by Nacio Herb Brown & Arthur Freed, including the classic ‘Temptation' and the fun ‘We'll Make Hay While The Sun Shines.' Although his character is a bit of a cad, Bing never fails to deliver the goods to the audience. As was his wont, publisher William Randolph Hearst, Marion Davies' 'very good friend', was present throughout the filming, making it difficult indeed for Bing Crosby to 'lose himself' in the kissing scenes.
Some of the best moments in Going Hollywood belong to Patsy Kelly, making her movie debut as Davies' wisecracking chum, and to the Radio Rogues, a comedy singing act specializing in impressions of contemporary radio celebrities." - www.allmovie.com

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Mammy 1930 - "Let me sing and I'm happy"

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0021110/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 6,3

Director: Michael Curtiz
Main Cast: Al Jolson, Lois Moran, Lowell Sherman, Louise Dresser, Hobart Bosworth, Tully Marshall

"Mammy features Al Jolson as the star of a travelling minstrel show, appearing in a small Southern town. Jolson falls in love with an actress in the troupe (Lois Moran), but she loves another. One of Jolson's fellow minstrels (Lowell Sherman) is shot backstage, and it is assumed thanks to several plot convolutions that Jolson is guilty of the deed. He heads for the hills, but returns to the show, his reputation restored but his love for the actress unrequited.
Maudlin in the extreme, Mammy is salvaged by several enjoyable songs by Irving Berlin and by its Technicolor photography (though most TV prints are black and white). The film's fascination with modern viewers rests with the presence of Al Jolson - and with the casual use of profanity during his confrontation scene with Lowell Sherman." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/mammy-v101069

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Monte Carlo 1930 - "Beyond the blue horizon"

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0021153/?ref_=fn_al_tt_3
IMDB rating: 7,0

Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Main Cast: Jeanette MacDonald, Jack Buchanan, Claud Allister, Zasu Pitts

"Monte Carlo was intended to build upon the success of the earlier Jeanette MacDonald-Ernst Lubitsch collaboration, the delightful Love Parade. Unfortunately, although it has one moment that is perhaps better than any isolated moment in the earlier film, Monte Carlo doesn't live up to its promise. Much of the problem is with co-star Jack Buchanan, who simply does not partner MacDonald as well as Maurice Chevalier did in Parade. He doesn't have the power needed to keep pace with MacDonald, especially at this point in her career, and there's a smugness to his personality that is annoying. Lubitsch has done his usual, dependable job of supplying the film with a great number of subtle, sly winks and of keeping the storytelling interesting, but the story itself is too old hat to succeed without a more consistently witty and involving script. Richard Whiting and W. Franke Harling's score is quite good, however, with 'Whatever It Is, It's Grand' and the marvelous 'Beyond the Blue Horizon' exceptional. The latter provides the film's highpoint, as part of the magnificent wedding sequence that opens the film. Lubitsch builds the number, matching the sound and movement of the train to the song to create a genuinely thrilling number. Had the rest of the film lived up to this terrific opening section, Monte Carlo might have been a classic rather than a moderately entertaining trifle." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/monte-carlo-v102788/

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Follow thru 1930 - Practically no plot just the charm of Nancy and Buddy

Nancy Carroll & Charles 'Buddy' Rogers

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0020894/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 7,4

Directors: Lloyd Corrigan, Laurence Schwab
Main Cast: Nancy Carroll, Charles 'Buddy' Rogers, Zelma O'Neal, Jack Haley, Eugene Pallette, Thelma Todd

"Less than a week after MGM programmer 'Love in the Rough' opened, another golf themed musical was released (advertised as 'All Singie - Talkie - Dancie - Golfie'), although this one was far more prestigious. The all Technicolor Follow Thru was based on the Broadway hit of 1929 (401 performances) and paired Paramount's singing sweethearts - Charles 'Buddy' Rogers and Nancy Carroll. Apart from the two stars, it followed its stage roots with Jack Haley and Zelma O'Neal repeating their roles as the secondary comic couple and also a teen couple, Don Tomkins and Margaret Lee.
Lora Moore (Nancy Carroll) the champion golfer at the Mission Country Club is defeated at an important tournament by her arch rival Ruth Van Horn (Thelma Todd). She doesn't care - she has caught the eye of handsome golf pro Jerry Downs (Rogers) and begins to wonder if there is more to life than golf!! He is, unfortunately, just passing through so Lora persuades her bubbly friend Angie (Zelma O'Neal) to use her charms on his boss, girl shy Jack Martin (Jack Haley). Haley is the hit of the film, he is hilarious and has a 'head twitch' that happens whenever he sees a girl he likes! Anyway, Angie tries her best with the lively 'Button Up Your Overcoat' (it left you wanting more!) but it doesn't seem to work. Lora and Jerry do their courting to the beautiful 'We'd Make a Peach of a Pair' - and they do! - but wiley Ruth is determined to win Jerry away. Babs and Dinty (the teen couple from the stage show) sing and dance an eccentric number 'Then I'll Have Time for You'. At the Masquerade Ball, Lora looks very fetching in kilts but the night belongs to Angie as she performs the over the top fantasy number 'I Want to Be Bad' - it rivals 'Turn on the Heat' for sheer outrageousness. Ruth spreads stories about Jerry and Lora, upset, challenges her to a golf tournament but with all the agitation is completely off her game until Jerry takes charge at the last hole and orders her to 'Follow Thru'!
As often happened with those 'taken from Broadway' musicals, some of the original songs were ditched - among them was 'You Wouldn't Fool Me, Would You?' that was a big hit for Annette Hanshaw. The big hit of the movie was one especially written for it. 'A Peach of a Pair' was given top treatment by Nancy and Buddy and proved to be the song people were humming on their way home from the cinema."

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Madam Satan 1930 - Musical, comedy, disaster, romance, epic? Decide for yourself

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0021106/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 6,7

Director: Cecil B. DeMille
Main Cast: Kay Johnson, Reginald Denny, Lillian Roth, Roland Young

"Cecil B. DeMille tried to cover a few too many bases in Madame Satan, with his reach definitely exceeding his (considerable) grasp - but that grasp was still strong enough to produce a film quite unlike any other. Chaotic and messy, this mélange of styles - a musical comedy disaster romance epic, if you will - never approaches coherence, but the second half of the film is fascinating. Of course, to get there one has to go through an awkward and often trying first half, during which song cues are not really set up and the dialogue scenes are played with little sense of style or humor. Once the film gets to the bizarre masquerade ball on the dirigible, however, things pick up; the latter half may not always convince as drama, but it's terrific entertainment. Visually, it's a sheer delight, with some truly incredible costumes and DeMille's practiced hand at crowd control very evident. Highlights include several unexpected and charmingly innapropriate musical numbers, including a bizarre 'Ballet Mechanique' featuring dancer Theodore Kosloff and Kay Johnson's 'Meet Madame' is also noteworthy. The destruction of the dirigible is very well done, with special effects that stand up reasonably well today, and which builds very successfully to a satisfying conclusion. In addition, the humor that is missing (or unintentional) in the first half finds flower in the second, with some wry asides from Roland Young scoring particularly well. Ridiculous and campy at times, Madame Satan is still a one-of-a-kind experience. Though DeMille carefully threw in every ingredient that he hoped would appeal to a mass audience, Madam Satan was one of his few box office flops." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/madame-satan-v30670/

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Whoopee! 1930 - An old fashioned musical but with a lot of fun

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0021549/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 8,0

Director: Thornton Freeland
Main Cast: Eddie Cantor, Ethel Shutta, Paul Gregory, Eleanor Hunt, Jack Rutherford

Adapted from Owen Davis's stage comedy The Nervous Wreck (itself filmed in 1927), Flo Ziegfeld's musical spectacular Whoopee! was one of the solid hits of the 1928-29 Broadway season, thanks largely to the irrepressible Eddie Cantor. Filmed for a then eye-popping $1.5 million, Whoopee! is an example of the old fashioned star comic musical film. It features the cinematic debut of choreographer Busby Berkeley. While none of the numbers are shot entirely in the now-recognizable Berkeley style, many have touches that foreshadow that style, such as the use of an overhead shot in 'Cowboy' and the use of close-ups on beautiful chorus girls in 'Stetson'. There's an emphasis on the spectacular throughout, which helps to smooth over some of the rough patches in the script. Much of the humor seems tired by modern standards, and the use of blackface in 'My Baby Just Cares for Me' is off-putting, especially as Cantor is so otherwise appealing. He does here what he always does, playing a nervous wreck who happily can't seem to stay out of trouble. Cantor's vulnerability is leavened by his underlying rambunctiousness, and his talent was one of a kind. While Whoopee! is clearly his show, he does get some valuable support from Ethel Shutta, and the score is attractive.
Featured among the Goldwyn Girls are such future stars as Claire Dodd, Virginia Bruce, and 14-year-old Betty Grable, who energetically performs the very first chorus of the very first song in the film. Lensed in eye-pleasing early Technicolor, Whoopee was a success, launching a long and fruitful cinematic collaboration between Eddie Cantor and Sam Goldwyn. It was remade by Goldwyn in 1944 as Up in Arms, a showcase for the producer's 'new Cantor' Danny Kaye. - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/whoopee%21-v54440/

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Babes in arms 1939 - Let's put on a show!

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031066/?ref_=nv_sr_1
IMDB rating: 6,6

Director: Busby Berkeley
Main Cast: Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Charles Winninger, Guy Kibbee

"Babes in Arms is a prime example of the 'let's put on a show' musical popular in the 1930s and 1940s. The nominal plot is little more than a means of connecting the elaborate production numbers; the supporting cast are little more than props for stars Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. Busby Berkeley's direction is able and functional: like the audience, he's just eager to get to the next dance set. MGM had other priorities at the time of Babes' production - most notably Garland's classic The Wizard of Oz, on which the studio lost money, and the expensive, lucrative Gone With the Wind - so the budget for the Berkeley musical was surprisingly low. What Babes in Arms lacks in production grandeur, however, it amply compensates with the captivating star turns from Rooney and Garland." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/babes-in-arms-v3541/

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On the Avenue 1937 - Excellent musical with memorable Irving Berlin tunes

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029345/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 6,9

Director: Roy Del Ruth
Main Cast: Dick Powell, Madeleine Carroll, Alice Faye, The Ritz Brothers, Cora Witherspoon, Joan Davis

"One of the more enjoyable backstage musicals of the 1930s, On the Avenue is different from many others in the genre in that it's concerned with a show that has already opened, rather than one that is steaming ahead toward opening night. Avenue also benefits from a script in which the pieces all fall into place naturally; the plot has its holes, but the film has such an amiable feeling that the viewer is willing to overlook them. While the dialogue is not in a class by itself, it has a certain combination of whimsy and winsomeness to it that is quite appealing. Of greater importance, Avenue boasts a first-class Irving Berlin score that includes the infectious 'I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm', the slightly melancholy 'This Year's Kisses', and the beguiling 'You're Laughing at Me'. Avenue is also helped by its solid cast, with Dick Powell providing a smooth sound in the songs and an easy charm in his scenes and Madeleine Carroll creating an imperious rich girl that still manages to win the viewer's heart. Alice Faye is in top-notch form, pouring her creamy tones into her singing and imbuing her character with a combination of vulnerability and sauciness that's quite touching. The Ritz Brothers are given too much screen time for their own good, as is the cringe-inducing Stepin Fetchit, but Cora Witherspoon's breeziness helps to compensate for them. Smoothly directed by Roy Del Ruth, Avenue is a pleasant stroll for musical fans." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/on-the-avenue-v104700/

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Swing time 1936 - Heavenly dancing from Astaire & Rogers

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028333/?ref_=nv_sr_1
IMDB rating: 7,7

Director: George Stevens
Main Cast: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Victor Moore, Helen Broderick, Betty Furness

"Perhaps the perfect example of the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers appeal, Swing Time is a charming romantic-fantasy that's almost impossible to resist when its musical set pieces are in motion. The plot, however minimal, only distracts from the classic melodies and entertaining dance sequences. Directed by the venerable George Stevens, Swing Time was the fifth Astaire-Rogers film, and came out during the peak of their popularity; it's of a piece with the duo's other successes, and in fact markedly resembles their earlier hit, 1935's Top Hat. Perhaps the most cherished dance number is "Bojangles of Harlem," during which Astaire dances with shadows and pays tribute to famous dancer Bill Robinson. The Jerome Kern-Dorothy Fields score also includes such standards-to-be as 'Pick Yourself Up', 'A Fine Romance', 'The Way You Look Tonight', and 'Never Gonna Dance. The peerless supporting cast of Swing Time includes Helen Broderick, Victor Moore, Eric Blore, and Landers Stevens, the actor-father of the film's director, George Stevens." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/swing-time-v48170/

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Gold diggers of 1935 - A visual masterpiece

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0026421/?ref_=nv_sr_3
IMDB rating: 7,7

Director: Busby Berkeley
Main Cast: Dick Powell, Adolphe Menjou, Gloria Stuart, Alice Brady, Hugh Herbert, Glenda Farrell

"Gold Diggers of 1935 features outstanding musical numbers and dazzling choreography from director Busby Berkeley, not to mention some amusing moments with future Titanic star Gloria Stuart. The plot, such as it is, takes place at a rich resort hotel where a lowly desk clerk (Dick Powell) falls in love with Stuart's character, the daughter of a rich snob (Alice Brady). As was common in Depression-era escapist movies, the wealthy elite are depicted as elegant but insensitive, and true love wins out for the happy ending. Winifred Shaw's rendition of 'Lullaby of Broadway' gives the film its highlight, though all of the production numbers are strong. Gold Diggers is a primary example of Berkeley's work, both as a choreographer and as a director. Of particular note in the tech credits are Anton Grot's production design and George Barnes's crisp cinematography." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/gold-diggers-of-1935-v20141/

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42nd Street 1933 - The quintessential backstage musical

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024034/
IMDB rating: 7,8

Director: Lloyd Bacon
Main Cast: Warner Baxter, Bebe Daniels, George Brent, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell, Una Merkel, Guy Kibbee, Ginger Rogers

"If MGM's 1929 The Broadway Melody invented the musical, Warner Bros.' 42nd Street saved it. The four years between the two movies had seen the genre driven practically into the ground, as the studios, still struggling with synchronized sound and what to do about it, ground out one ill-advised musical after another, few terribly good as music and most even less impressive as movies. It had gotten so bad that by 1932, theater owners were protecting their box office with signs announcing, for any 'suspect' title, 'NOT A MUSICAL!' It was into that environment in 1933 that Warner Bros. released 42nd Street, directed by Lloyd Bacon and choreographed by Busby Berkeley - and it revived and revolutionized the whole musical genre, by taking it to the long-delayed next step. It was during the making of The Broadway Melody that filmmakers discovered that they could separate the shooting of a musical number from the recording of its music. Berkeley and cinematographer Sol Polito took this notion to the next step by removing the camera from the studio floor. Under their direction, shots were done from overhead angles and other locations from which no person could ever actually observe in real life, and the dancers' motions were, in turn, designed to exploit those angles; in effect, they created the true movie musical, as opposed to a musical that happened to be on film. Bacon's direction of the dialogue portions of the story, with both dramatic and comic content, was also very sure, no surprise for a man later responsible for dramas like The Fighting Sullivans and comedies with Red Skelton, which meant that the movie held up even when there was no dancing or singing on the screen; and when there was, the music by Harry Warren and Al Dubin was downright clever; and the acting, though a little broad by modern standards, was of first caliber, also unusual for a musical, ranging from serious dramatic lead Warner Baxter to comic relief from George E. Stone as the mousy, lecherous stage manager and Guy Kibbee's befuddled, lecherous backer, with Bebe Daniels, Ruby Keeler, and Ginger Rogers at their most delectable.
Based on the novel by Bradford Ropes (which was a lot steamier than the movie censors would allow), 42nd Street is highlighted by such grandiose musical setpieces as 'Shuffle Off to Buffalo', 'Young and Healthy', and of course the title song. The audience devoured it, and Warner Bros., Berkeley, and company rose to the occasion of delivering more and better musicals like it for much of the rest of the decade.
Nearly fifty years after its premiere, it was successfully revived as a Broadway musical with Tammy Grimes and Jerry Orbach." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/42nd-street-v258

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