History of Musicals: Hollywood Beckons

Posted on June 18, 2020 by boz

Short sound films were a popular novelty in nickelodeons at the turn of the 20th century. One of the most successful systems was Cameraphone, created in 1907 by James A. Whitman. In the fourth floor studios above Daly’s Theatre, not far from New York’s Tin Pan Alley, Whitman filmed numerous vaudeville stars and then recorded them dubbing their screen performances. Such sound-on-disc separation continued until 1923, when Lee De Forest released the first “soundie” musical short using Phonofilm, a direct sound-on-film system. In 1927, Fox studios introduced the competing Movietone system, which became the industry standard, although Warner released its landmark “talkie” The Jazz Singer in 1927 (and its even more successful followup The Singing Fool in 1928) using the quickly obsolete Vitaphone sound-on-disc system.

Most early screen musicals were adaptations of recent Broadway hits, with some simply being a filmed record of the stage production. As audience demand for sound films grew, studios began devising original stories, but they were anxious that viewers wouldn’t believe characters bursting into song, so the Broadway stage remained a popular setting. In 1929 alone, such backstage stories included Paramount’s Applause, Warner’s Gold Diggers of Broadway, and MGM’s The Broadway Melody (the first “all-talking, all-singing, all-dancing” film), which won the Oscar for Best Picture. With the genre’s growing critical and popular success, film producers grew less anxious.

Jeanette MacDonald and Maurice Chevalier in "Love Me Tonight"

Paramount was one of the first studios to master the genre, with films such as The Love Parade (1929), Love Me Tonight (1932), scored by Rodgers & Hart, and The Big Broadcast (1932). Most other studios, though, offered derivative and hastily made productions, and audiences began to shrink. Hollywood released more than 100 musicals in 1930 but only 14 in 1931. Warner Brothers, which helped create the genre in 1927, helped revive it in 1933 with 42nd Street, specifically with the dances choreographed by Busby Berkeley, who brought Warner continued success with Gold Diggers of 1933, Footlight Parade (1933), and Dames (1934), many scored by Harry Warren and Al Dubin.

As the Depression drove down production budgets, Berkeley’s extravagance gave way to the more streamlined choreography of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, who led RKO’s musical resurgence with films such as Top Hat (1935), scored by Irving Berlin, and Swing Time (1936), scored by Jerome Kern. RKO was also the distributor for Disney’s animated musicals, beginning with the celebrated Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937).

Bill Robinson and Shirley Temple in "The Little Colonel"

Twentieth Century Fox saw success with its Shirley Temple vehicles such as The Little Colonel (1935) and The Littlest Rebel (1935), but the studio that eventually emerged as the leader in film musicals was MGM, whose early hits include The Great Ziegfeld (1936), the second Oscar-winning musical, and the operetta Maytime (1937), starring America’s “singing sweethearts” Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald. MGM’s banner year, though, was 1939, which saw the release of The Wizard of Oz and Babes in Arms, both under the guidance of producer Arthur Freed, one of the songwriters of the Oscar-winning The Broadway Melody. Freed would soon lead MGM (and the film musical) into full flower in the following decade.

To sample the sound of the early film musical, explore Rodgers & Hart’s “Isn’t It Romantic?” from Love Me Tonight (1932) (watch here), Warren & Dubin’s “42nd Street” from 42nd Street (1933) (watch here), Irving Berlin’s “Cheek to Cheek” from Top Hat (1935) (watch here), and Harold Arlen & Yip Harburg’s “Over the Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz (1939) (watch here).

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2020 Drama League Winners

Posted on June 18, 2020 by boz

Burstein in "Moulin Rouge"

This morning, the Drama League announced the competitive winners of its 86th annual awards for the condensed 2019-20 New York theater season. The productions chosen by the nationwide organization of theater artists, industry professionals, and audience members for its top awards were Broadway’s Moulin Rouge! as Outstanding Production of a Musical and Broadway’s The Inheritance by Matthew Lopez as Outstanding Production of a Play. Roundabout Theatre’s Broadway premiere of A Soldier’s Play by Charles Fuller was named Outstanding Revival of a Play, while the Off-Broadway production of Little Shop of Horrors by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken was named Outstanding Revival of a Musical.

Individual winners include actor Danny Burstein, who was honored with the Distinguished Performance Award for this portrayal of Moulin Rouge! club owner Harold Zidler, as well as this year’s special award honorees Marianne Elliott (Founders Award for Excellence in Directing), James Lapine (Distinguished Achievement in Musical Theater), and the late Terrence McNally (Unique Contribution to Theater), previously announced during the Drama League’s Gratitude Awards on April 30.

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2020 Drama Desk Winners

Posted on June 14, 2020 by boz

Last night, Frank DiLella of NY1’s On Stage hosted the 65th annual Drama Desk Awards (watch here), originally scheduled for May 31. Leading the nominations were the musicals Soft Power (11), The Wrong Man (9), and Octet (8), but only Octet converted any of those accolades into wins.

The big winner of the night, though, was the Off-Broadway musical A Strange Loop (winner of this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Drama), which picked up five trophies, including Outstanding Musical. Additionally, Larry Owens won Outstanding Actor in a Musical, Stephen Brackett won Outstanding Director of a Musical, and Michael R. Jackson won for both Outstanding Lyrics and for Outstanding Book of a Musical.

The Broadway musical Moulin Rouge! also picked up five wins, nearly sweeping the design awards. Its winners included Sonya Tayeh for Outstanding Choreography, Derek McLane for Outstanding Scenic Design for a Musical, Catherine Zuber for Outstanding Costume Design for a Musical, Justin Townsend for Outstanding Lighting Design for a Musical, and Peter Hylenski for Outstanding Sound Design for a Musical.

Other multiple award-winning musicals included Off-Broadway’s Little Shop of Horrors, named Outstanding Revival of a Musical, which brought Christian Borle honors as Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical. While Broadway’s Tina: The Tina Turner Musical garnered wins for Adrienne Warren as Outstanding Actress in a Musical and Campbell Young Associates as Outstanding Wig and Hair Design.

Lauren Patten was named Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical and Tom Kitt won Outstanding Orchestrations for their work on the Broadway production of Jagged Little Pill, and Dave Malloy was honored for his Outstanding Music for the Off-Broadway musical Octet, whose cast (Adam Bashian, Kim Blanck, Starr Busby, Alex Gibson, Justin Gregory Lopez, J.D. Mollison, Margo Seibert, Kuhoo Verma) won the Ensemble Award for their tight a cappella work.

The remaining musical honors went to Luke Halls for his Outstanding Projection Design of West Side Story on Broadway and Martha Redbone for her Outstanding Music in a Play for the Off-Broadway revival of for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf. Finally, the late Harold Prince was the inaugural winner of the Drama Desk’s new lifetime achievement award, named in his honor.

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History of Musicals: First Golden Age

Posted on June 12, 2020 by boz

George M. Cohan in "Little Johnny Jones"

It’s been noted that the form of modern musical theater came from operetta, but its soul came from the music hall. This union of body and soul took place during the first two decades of the 20th century, beginning with George M. Cohan. Born into a vaudevillian family, Cohan was steeped in music hall tradition. In 1901, he wrote his first musical, The Governor’s Son, for his family’s legitimate stage debut. While many composers were mimicking foreign operettas, Cohan wrote in the style of the sentimental waltzes popular in the 1890s. His breakthrough came in 1904 with Little Johnny Jones, a prototype of the modern musical, which introduced the songs “Give My Regards to Broadway” (listen here) and “The Yankee Doodle Boy” (listen here). By 1920, Cohan had created and produced more than 50 Broadway shows.

Vernon and Irene Castle in "Watch Your Step"

Ragtime, another popular music style of the 1890s, saw a resurgence in 1911 after vaudeville singer Emma Carus (star of the original 1907 Ziegfeld Follies) introduced Irving Berlin’s “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” (listen here), which George Gershwin called “the first real American musical work.” Three years later, Berlin wrote his first complete Broadway score for the Vernon and Irene Castle vehicle Watch Your Step, with a book by the prolific Harry B. Smith. Variety labeled the show the “first syncopated musical.” Berlin continued to contribute songs to revues but didn’t write another stage score until 1925. It was Jerome Kern who took up the banner and wove syncopation and jazz progressions into the DNA of musical theater.

After music training in Germany, Kern spent several years in London. By 1911, he had contributed songs to some two dozen British musicals and American revues. In 1912, he wrote his first complete Broadway score for The Red Petticoat, a western musical with book and lyrics by Paul West and the prolific Rida Johnson Young. Later that year, the Shubert Brothers built the 299-seat Princess Theatre, for which agent Elisabeth Marbury asked Kern and Guy Bolton to create intimate (and low-budget) musicals. Their first Princess show was Nobody Home, an adaptation of a 1905 British musical. It was a modest success but didn’t satisfy Kern’s desire for innovation, although “The Magic Melody” (listen here) is noted as the first Broadway song with a basic jazz progression.

Cast of "Very Good Eddie"

Kern and Bolton’s next musical was the original Very Good Eddie, which was a certified hit. Following the European tradition that had begun with Offenbach, Kern and Bolton integrated song and story, but their characters and situations were believable and their humor flowed out of the action, which took place in modern American settings. P.G. Wodehouse joined the Princess team experiments in 1917 for Oh, Boy! and the remaining four shows. Though this musical laboratory was a short-lived three years, the Princess shows built and polished the mold that subsequent musical comedies used.

Noble Sissle and the "Shuffle Along" cast

As the Jazz Age gained energy, syncopated scores became more common on Broadway stages. Among the best was Shuffle Along, the 1921 hit by vaudeville veterans Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake that caused “curtain time traffic jams” on West 63rd Street. Its popularity not only launched the careers of Josephine Baker, Adelaide Hall, and Paul Robeson but also contributed to the desegregation of Broadway theaters, paving the way for musicals like Show Boat (1927), Kern’s best-known and most lasting work, written with Oscar Hammerstein II and Otto Harbach, which finally united musical theater’s body and soul in a masterful blend of operetta and vaudeville.

To sample musical theater’s first Golden Age, explore the book songs “I’m Just Wild About Harry” (listen here) from Shuffle Along (1921) then “Fascinating Rhythm” (listen here) from Lady Be Good (1924) and “Someone to Watch over Me” (listen here) from Oh, Kay! (1926), both by George & Ira Gershwin. Then move to the revue songs “My Man” (listen here) from Ziegfeld Follies (1921), “Manhattan” (listen here) from Garrick Gaieties (1925) by Rodgers & Hart, and “Ain’t Misbehavin’” (watch here) from Hot Chocolates (1929) by Fats Waller and Andy Razaf.

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History of Musicals: American Roots

Posted on June 10, 2020 by boz

Colombina and Harlequin

As I noted the other day, commedia dell’arte and opera are the dual threads that eventually spun into what we call musical theater. We’ve explored opera’s role, now let’s take a closer look at that first thread. Commedia dell’arte began in Renaissance Italy and quickly spread throughout Europe. It didn’t use playwrights or directors. The company manager would announce a title and a give his troupe a short scenario of basic plot points. Within this loose framework, the actors would improvise a unique performance, using whatever physical slapstick and comic shtick they felt appropriate. Commedia relied on the virtuosity of its performers.

Most actors specialized in one of four main archetypes: the cunning servant; the greedy old man; the young lovers; or the boastful captain. These characters made their way into 18th-century British pantomimes, which incorporated song and dance, clowning, and slapstick but were scripted. The traditional story depicted eloping lovers pursued by the girl’s father and his servants, but pantomimes became more topical as they began to compete with the increasingly popular music hall entertainment. Originating in British saloon bars of the 1830s, music halls allowed audiences to eat, drink, and smoke during its shows, which relied more than pantos did on the unscripted physical slapstick and comic shtick of commedia.

As music halls were sprouting up in London, dime museums (the American counterpart) were opening in New York, many along the Bowery. Designed as centers for the entertainment and “moral education” of the working class, primarily recent immigrants, these “museums” purposefully set themselves apart as a cheap alternative to middle class theaters. Although “lowbrow,” dime museums were the training ground for scores of vaudeville entertainers, from magician Harry Houdini to comedians Weber & Fields. In From the Bowery to Broadway, Armond Fields noted, “If the art and business of modern Broadway could be said to have a specific birthplace, it was in the Bowery, in its dime museums, dance halls, and beer gardens.”

Many vaudeville performers went on to create shows for themselves, such as the team of George Walker and Bert Williams. The most successful went on to produce shows for themselves, such as the teams of Ned Harrigan and Tony Hart at Theatre Comique and Joe Weber and Lew Fields at Broadway Music Hall. The premiere showcase, though, became Florenz Ziegfeld’s Follies productions, which were inspired by the Folies Bergère of Paris. The first American Follies premiered in 1907 at Jardin de Paris, the Liberty Theatre’s rooftop venue, and was so popular that a new edition opened every year through 1925, with an additional six editions appearing occasionally until 1957.

These extravagant revues featured star performers such as Josephine Baker, Fanny Brice, Bob Hope, Helen Morgan, Will Rogers, and Bert Williams — as well as the Ziegfeld chorus girls — performing songs by star writers including Irving Berlin, Rudolf Friml, George Gershwin, Victor Herbert, Jerome Kern, and Harry Warren. The craft of American musical theater was built by this group of artists, beginning with Ziegfeld’s 1927 production of Jerome Kern’s Show Boat with Helen Morgan.

As writer Miles Kreuger said, “The history of the American musical theater is divided quite simply into two eras: everything before Show Boat and everything after Show Boat.” However, that milestone didn’t appear spontaneously. The two decades between 1907 and 1927 were important formative years for the emerging musical theater.

To sample the American roots of musical theater, explore “Mulligan Guard” (listen here) from Mulligan Guard (1873) by Harrigan & Hart, “The Bowery” (listen here) from A Trip to Chinatown (1891) by Charles Hoyt, “The Hypnotist” (listen here) by Weber & Fields (1904), and “Nobody” (listen here) from Abyssinia (1905) by Bert Williams.

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History of Musicals: European Roots

Posted on June 9, 2020 by boz

Bouffes-Parisiens poster

Commedia dell’arte and opera are the dual threads that eventually spun into what we call musical theater. Let’s take a closer look at that second thread and its journey toward early musical theater. As I wrote yesterday, in the 18th century, Italian opera gave rise to opera buffa, a variation that included spoken dialogue and lighter music. Vienna saw the first budding of the form, but Paris saw the full bloom of what we now call operetta. Hervé’s Don Quichotte and Sancho Panza is considered the first genuine operetta, but the man responsible for the form’s international popularity is Jacques Offenbach.

Though he was a successful cellist and conductor, Offenbach wanted to compose. Unable to find many producers interested in his work, he leased Salle Lacaze, a 300-seat theater off the Champs Élysées in Paris, to present his own short comic operas. The newly christened Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens opened on July 5, 1855, with Offenbach’s one-act Two Blind Men on the bill. It was a smash and soon had productions from Vienna to London. Four years later, Offenbach premiered his first full-length, Orpheus the Underworld, which was another hit. In all, Offenbach self-produced more than 50 works, about half of them one-act and half of them full-length.

While conducting in Vienna, Offenbach met Johann Strauss II and suggested that he branch out from writing waltzes and try his hand at comic opera. Strauss did. After two abandoned projects, Strauss had his first production at Theater an der Wien in 1871: Indigo and the Forty Thieves. “It consists of dance music on which Strauss has overlaid text and characters,” one critic wrote, but “is a foretaste of great things to come.” And it was. In 1874, Strauss premiered Die Fledermaus, heralding the golden age of operetta in Vienna.

Offenbach’s influence continued to expand — from Paris to Vienna and, most important in the history of musical theater, to London. In 1869, Offenbach sent his comic opera The Brigands to dramatist W.S. Gilbert, asking if he would be interested in adapting it for the English stage. Gilbert’s translation was published in 1871 but not performed until 1889 in New York City.

Meanwhile, producer Richard D’Oyly Carte needed a short after-piece for an 1875 production of Offenbach’s La Périchole at the Royalty Theatre. He asked Gilbert, who offered the idea of “Trial by Jury: An Operetta” (read here), his 1868 comic skit for the magazine Fun. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan had worked on John Hollingshead’s successful 1871 Christmas production of Thespis, which parodied Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld, so Carte asked Sullivan to write the music.

Trial by Jury was a hit, outlasting the run of La Périchole, so Carte commissioned Gilbert and Sullivan to write a comic opera for his newly formed Comedy Opera Company. Carte had tired of producing badly translated French operettas and saw a chance to develop an English form of light opera. Over the next 25 years, Gilbert and Sullivan wrote 14 wildly successful comic operas for Carte, including The Pirates of Penzance in 1879, which bears a striking resemblance to The Brigands.

The Paris-style comic operettas and Vienna-style romantic operettas were both popular with U.S. audiences and with American composers. Reginald de Koven leaned toward the French comic style (as in Robin Hood), while Victor Herbert leaned toward the “Ruritanian” romantic style (as in Naughty Marietta). The European composers who found success in the U.S. primarily favored romances, including Hungarian Franz Lehár (The Merry Widow), Hungarian Sigmund Romberg (The Desert Song), and Czech Rudolf Friml (Rose-Marie).

Several of Romberg and Friml’s most popular works were adapted for the New York stage by Otto Harbach and Oscar Hammerstein II, who both later worked with Jerome Kern to begin crafting a true American musical theater.

To sample the European roots of musical theater, listen to the songs “Modern Major General” (watch here) from Pirates of Penzance (1879), “Vilja” (watch here) from The Merry Widow (1905), “Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life” (watch here) from Naughty Marietta (1910), “Indian Love Call” (watch here) from Rose-Marie (1924), and “Stouthearted Men” (watch here) from The Desert Song (1926).

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History of Musicals

Posted on June 8, 2020 by boz

Euterpe

Music and dance have been central features of theater for millennia. Ancient Greek and Roman plays included songs and choreography, and the Middle Ages saw traveling minstrels perform musical morality plays, but neither of these eras had much direct influence on today’s musical theater. Later, Shakespeare’s plays and Molière’s farces included music and dance, too, but the first direct ancestors of the Broadway musical arose in the late Italian Renaissance: commedia dell’arte and opera. Those are the dual threads that eventually spun into what we now call musical theater.

In the early 18th century, Italian opera saw the rise of opera-buffa, a variation on the form that included spoken dialogue and lighter music. Near the end of the century, Mozart brought the comic opera to new heights in Vienna, but the revolution truly took hold in Paris with its opéra-comique (later opéra-bouffe), the French translation of the form. In fact, the Opéra-Comique theater was originally called Le Théâtre Italien.

In England, comic opera took a romantic turn, while commedia gave birth to English pantomime, a vital part of British music hall tradition. These operas and pantos were two of the primary types of musical entertainments on U.S. stages until the mid-19th century, when P.T. Barnum and other producers began translating these forms for American audiences along the Bowery, which quickly became New York’s premiere theater district.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll present a more detailed account of the rise of stage and film musicals. In the meantime, take a look at the two dozen shows (and four dozen suggestions for further exploration) that I’ve reviewed in the past few weeks.

Stage musicals

1. Show Boat (then Porgy and Bess and The Mikado)
2. Oklahoma! (then Annie Get Your Gun and Pal Joey)
3. Guys and Dolls (then Kiss Me, Kate and The Pajama Game)
4. My Fair Lady (then Hello, Dolly! and Oliver!)
5. West Side Story (then The Music Man and Bye Bye Birdie)
6. Gypsy (then Carnival and Nine)
7. The Fantasticks (then Little Shop of Horrors and The Threepenny Opera)
8. Fiddler on the Roof (then Man of La Mancha and Les Misérables)
9. Cabaret (then Rent and Urinetown)
10. A Chorus Line (then Dreamgirls and Dear Evan Hansen)
11. Sweeney Todd (then Evita and Ragtime)
12. Hamilton (then Wicked and The Book of Mormon)

Screen musicals

1. 42nd Street (then Love Me Tonight and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs)
2. Top Hat (then Swing Time and Pinocchio)
3. The Wizard of Oz (then Girl Crazy and Holiday Inn)
4. Yankee Doodle Dandy (then Stormy Weather and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers)
5. Meet Me in St. Louis (then Cover Girl and Easter Parade)
6. An American in Paris (then Funny Face and Summer Stock)
7. Singin’ in the Rain (then The Band Wagon and Gigi)
8. A Star Is Born (then Jailhouse Rock and New York, New York)
9. Mary Poppins (then Yellow Submarine and The Muppet Movie)
10. All That Jazz (then Fame and Nashville)
11. Beauty and the Beast (then The Lion King and The Nightmare Before Christmas)
12. Frozen (then Moulin Rouge! and La La Land)

Another good survey of musical history is Broadway: The American Musical, home of the 2004 PBS series, which has a companion book by Laurence Maslon. Also check out New Line Theatre’s YouTube channel, which has several playlists of historical videos, as well as the book Making Musicals (1998) by Tom Jones, a good introduction not only for learning about musicals but also making them, and the video Broadway’s Lost Treasures (2006), with clips from 40 years of Tony Awards.

For screen musicals, try Rough Guide to Film Musicals (2007) by David Parkinson and the video That’s Entertainment! (1974), which features 30 years of highlights from the MGM vaults, many from the legendary Freed Unit.

Here’s some vocabulary as you explore the world of musical theater: ballad, song style where music is most prominent; charm song (rhythm song), song style where music and lyrics are equally prominent, e.g., “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top” from Oklahoma!; comedy song, song style where lyrics are most prominent; dramatic scene (production number), song style where words shift between dialogue and lyrics, e.g., “Dancing Through Life” from Wicked; diegetic song, a song performed as a song, often in backstage musicals, e.g., “Take Back Your Mink” from Guys and Dolls; interpolated song, an old song used in a new show, often in jukebox musicals, e.g., “Good Morning” from Singin’ in the Rain; and trunk song, a song written but unused in one show that is rewritten and used in another show, e.g., “Come What May” from Moulin Rouge!

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Essential Film Musicals: Frozen

Posted on June 4, 2020 by boz

In 1937, Walt Disney had an idea for a biographical film about Hans Christian Andersen. In 1940, he arranged a co-production with Samuel Goldwyn, who would shoot live-action sequences to accompany Disney’s animated sequences, but World War II brought an end to the project. In 1952, Goldwyn released a live-action film starring Danny Kaye, with songs by Frank Loesser, which received six Oscar nominations. It wasn’t until the 1990s that Disney returned to Andersen and his 1844 tale “The Snow Queen,” but the idea was scrapped again by 2002. Disney’s latest attempt began in 2008, when director Chris Buck pitched several ideas (including “The Snow Queen”) to Disney animation head John Lasseter, who gave the go-ahead on Anna and the Snow Queen. In 2010, development stalled once again.

The primary challenge that Buck and producer Paul Del Vecho encountered was the title character herself, who is a villain in the original story. The first major breakthrough was the decision to make Anna (based on Andersen’s protagonist Gerda) the younger sister of the queen, establishing a family dynamic. The story underwent several more revisions before beginning production in 2011. “There is snow and there is ice and there is a queen, but other than that, we depart from it quite a bit,” said Del Vecho.

Songwriters Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez and screenwriter Jennifer Lee joined the project in early 2012. Several core concepts were already in place, such as the film’s hook, “an act of true love will thaw a frozen heart,” but the next breakthrough was the song “Let It Go,” presenting Queen Elsa as more vulnerable and sympathetic, which Del Vecho said “rippled through the entire movie.” At its core, though, Lee notes the film remains Anna’s coming-of-age story, “where she goes from having a naive view of life and love … to the most sophisticated and mature view of love, where she’s capable of the ultimate love, which is sacrifice.”

In November, the creative team was confident in the direction of the story, but by February, they felt it wasn’t quite working, which led to more rewriting. The final breakthrough came in June, with the “I Want” song “For the First Time in Forever,” which Lopez calls “the linchpin of the whole movie.”

Disney conducted two test screenings in late June, and the team realized they were done. Frozen premiered at Hollywood’s El Capitan Theatre on November 19, 2013, starring Kristen Bell (Anna), Idina Menzel (Elsa), Jonathan Groff (Kristoff), and Josh Gad (Olaf). The film was nominated for two Oscars (for animated feature and the song “Let It Go”) and won both. It also won the Golden Globe, the BAFTA, and Annie Award for best animated feature. The chart-topping soundtrack picked up two Grammys, including one for the song “Let It Go” (watch here).

Adaptations include the animated shorts Frozen Fever (2015) and Olaf’s Frozen Adventure (2017), the animated sequel Frozen II (2019), and a Broadway musical (2018) starring Patti Murin (Anna), Caissie Levy (Elsa), Jelani Alladin (Kristoff), and Greg Hildreth (Olaf).

Listen to the Grammy-winning soundtrack, then read more about the making of the movie in The Art of Frozen (2010) by Charles Solomon. The film is available in various video formats from Disney and streaming on Disney+.

NEXT, explore Moulin Rouge! (2001), the first musical to receive a Best Picture Oscar nomination since Beauty and the Beast (1991). This jukebox musical from Baz Luhrmann features one original song, “Come What May” (watch here), which missed an Oscar nomination because it was written (but unused) for Luhrman’s Romeo + Juliet (1996).

AFTER, look for La La Land (2015), Damien Chazelle’s homage to Hollywood musical classics such as Singin’ in the Rain, The Band Wagon, and particularly An American in Paris, with an Oscar-winning score and song, “City of Stars” (watch here), by Justin Hurwitz with Benj Pasek and Justin Paul.

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Essential Film Musicals: Beauty and the Beast

Posted on June 4, 2020 by boz

After the success of Snow White (1937), Walt Disney began looking for other fairytales to adapt, including Beauty and the Beast. His team continued working on that story through the 1930s and into the 1950s, but it “proved to be a challenge.” Disney Studio execs resurrected the idea for the satellite animation studio it opened in London to work on Who Framed Roger Rabbit in 1987, and director Richard Purdum began working with producer Don Hahn on a nonmusical version of Beauty and the Beast set in 19th-century France. Disney Company CEO Michael Eisner brought on Linda Woolverton, the first screenwriter for a Disney animated film, and she wrote a first draft before storyboarding began.

On seeing the initial storyboard reels two years later, Disney Studios chair Jeffrey Katzenberg asked the team to start over from scratch as a musical. Purdum resigned as director, and Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale were hired, though their only directing experience had been the pre-show short for Epcot’s Cranium Command exhibit. For the score, Katzenberg asked Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, the Oscar-winning songwriters of The Little Mermaid, the film that launched the Disney Renaissance in 1989.

Disney’s version of the fairytale is based on Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont’s 1756 adaptation of the 1740 original by Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve. It focuses on the relationship between the enchanted Beast (Robby Benson) and inquisitive Belle (Paige O’Hara) but adds new characters, including Mrs. Potts (Angela Lansbury) and other enchanted household items as well as the villain Gaston (Richard White), similar to elements added in Jean Cocteau’s 1946 live-action film. In 1990, Katzenberg approved the new script and storyboarding began again.

To accommodate Ashman’s failing health, pre-production was moved from London to New York. As development came to a close, production began in Burbank on a compressed timeline (two years rather than Disney’s traditional four), due to the loss of time developing the non-musical version, and pre-recording began in New York. The cast recorded the songs live with an orchestra rather than overdubbing, to give the score the Broadway energy that Katzenberg wanted. Ashman died six months before the film was released.

With only three-quarters of the animation completed, the film premiered at the New York Film Festival on September 29, 1991, with storyboards and pencil tests filling in the unfinished segments. At the end of the screening, it received a standing ovation from the audience. The completed film premiered at Hollywood’s El Capitan Theatre on November 13, before its national release on November 22 to widespread acclaim. “Two years ago, Walt Disney Pictures reinvented the animated feature,” New York Times critic Janet Maslin wrote. “Now, lightning has definitely struck twice.” Washington Post critic Hal Hinson called the film “a near-masterpiece.”

The film received six Oscar nominations, including picture, the first for an animated movie and the first for a musical since All That Jazz in 1979. It was also the first of any genre to receive three song nominations, winning for the title track (watch here) and for its score. It was also the first animated film to win the Golden Globe.

An abridged stage version opened in 1992 at Disneyland’s Videopolis amphitheater, directed by Robert Jess Roth and choreographed by Matt West, who began work on the Broadway adaptation at Houston’s Theatre Under The Stars in 1993, before opening at New York’s Palace Theatre in 1994, starring Terrence Mann (Beast), Susan Egan (Belle), Beth Fowler (Potts), and Burke Moses (Gaston). The production, Disney’s first Broadway adaptation, was nominated for nine Tonys but only won for costumes. It ended its run in 2007 after 5,461 performances.

Other adaptations include the spin-off TV series Sing Me a Story with Belle (1995), three direct-to-video follow-ups — Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas (1997), Beauty and the Beast: Belle’s Magical World (1998), and Belle’s Tales of Friendship (1999) — as well as as a live-action remake (2017) starring Dan Stevens (Beast), Emma Watson (Belle), Emma Thompson (Potts), and Luke Evans (Gaston). In 2002, the original animated film was selected for preservation in the Library of Congress National Film Registry.

Listen to the Grammy-winning soundtrack, then read more about the making of the movie in Tale as Old as Time: The Art and Making of Beauty and the Beast (2010) by Charles Solomon. The film is available in various video formats from Disney and streaming on Disney+.

NEXT, explore another mega-hit of Disney’s Renaissance: The Lion King (1994), co-written by Linda Woolverton, with songs by Elton John and Tim Rice, including the Oscar-winning “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” (watch here) among its Oscar-winning score. The film is available in various video formats from Disney and streaming on Disney+.

THEN, look for The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), the stop-motion animated musical with songs by Danny Elfman, which began as a poem that Tim Burton wrote in 1982 while working as a Disney animator. The film is available in various video formats from Disney.

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Essential Film Musicals: All That Jazz

Posted on June 2, 2020 by boz

Roy Scheider

In 1974, director-choreographer Bob Fosse was editing Lenny, his first film since winning an Oscar (watch here) for Cabaret, and staging Chicago, a Broadway musical starring his estranged wife Gwen Verdon. To keep pace, he was popping Dexedrine and ignoring troubling health warnings. Shortly after rehearsals for the musical began, he suffered a massive heart attack. Both productions were put on hold while Fosse recuperated from open-heart surgery. The film (whose title is from a song in the musical) is a semi-autobiographical fantasy about that experience. Fosse explained, “I became very interested in death and hospital behavior, and the meaning of life and death.”

Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider) is a pill-popping, cigarette-smoking, sex-addicted director who is editing the Hollywood film The Stand-up while staging the Broadway musical NY/LA, which stars Joe’s ex-wife Audrey (Leland Palmer). Ann Reinking was more or less playing herself as Joe’s girlfriend Kate, as was Cliff Gorman, who won a Tony Award for playing Lenny Bruce onstage but lost the film role to Dustin Hoffman. That’s the semi-autobiographical part of the film. The fantasy part is the hallucinated nightclub scenes where Joe talks with — and flirts with — Angelique (Jessica Lange), a blonde angel of death.

As in Fosse’s final two musicals, the score primarily features cover songs, including the opening “On Broadway” montage (watch here) and the “Bye Bye Life” finale from the early rock era. The one notable exception is the show-stopping and eye-popping production number for NY/LA, “Take Off with Us” (watch here), written by Stan Lebowsky and Fred Tobias (who wrote the score for the short-lived 1970 Broadway musical Gantry).

Reviews were largely positive. New York Times critic Vincent Canby called the film “an uproarious display of brilliance, nerve, dance, maudlin confessions, inside jokes and, especially, ego,” while Variety described it as “a self-important, egomaniacal, wonderfully choreographed, often compelling film.” Director Stanley Kubrick, who is mentioned in the movie, reportedly called it the “best film I think I have ever seen.”

It won the Palme d’Or at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival and nine Oscar nominations (including picture), winning four, including score (Ralph Burns). The film would be the last musical nominated for Best Picture until Beauty and the Beast in 1991 and the last live-action musical until Moulin Rouge! in 2001.

In 2001, All That Jazz was selected for preservation in the Library of Congress National Film Registry. In 2006, it ranked #14 on the American Film Institute’s list of Greatest Movie Musicals.

Listen to the soundtrack, then look for the film (which unfortunately isn’t available for streaming). For more about the making of the film, read Sam Wasson’s Fosse (2013), which was adapted for the miniseries Fosse/Verdon (2019).

NEXT, explore Fame (1980), another unflinching look at the hardships of life in the theater, with a score featuring the Oscar-winning title song (watch here) by Michael Gore and Dean Pitchford.

THEN, look behind the scenes of the country music business in the Oscar-nominated Nashville (1975), with a score featuring the Oscar-winning song “I’m Easy” (watch here), by Keith Carradine.

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