Greatest Song and Dance Musical Movie Moments and Scenes

Greatest Song and Dance Musical Movie Moments and Scenes

Part 3

Introduction: The following listing (in multiple parts, organized alphabetically) is a collection of many of the Greatest Song and Dance Musical Movie Moments in film history. Many of the greatest musical moments were accompanied by a well-staged production number, a lavish set, or a great memorable tune. Though the list appears to be dominated by musicals, other genres were examined and included. See also this site's writeup of the Musicals Film Genre.

Key to Iconic Symbols:

Exceptional examples of the development of song/dance

Entries in AFI's 25 Greatest Movie Musicals of All Time with ranking number (#)

Entries in Entertainment Weekly's 25 Best Movie Musicals of All Time with ranking number (#)

Greatest Musical - Song and Dance Movie Moments and Scenes (alphabetical) - Part 3 Part 1 \| Part 2 \| Part 3 \| Part 4 \| Part 5 \| Part 6 \| Part 7 \| Part 8 \| Part 9 \| Part 10 \| Part 11 \| Part 12 \| Part 13 \| Part 14 \| Part 15 \| Part 16 \| Part 17 \| Part 18 \| Part 19 \| Part 20 \| Part 21 \| Part 22 \| Part 23 \| Part 24 \| Part 25
Movie Title	Brief Scene Description	Example
Bathing Beauty (1944)	This MGM film was notable for being the first starring vehicle for Esther Williams (as pretty gym/swimming teacher Caroline Brooks) who performed a famous Technicolored water ballet in the five-minute finale, setting the choreographical pattern for future aquacade musicals with fantastic patterns (sometimes photographed from above), underwater swimming, and water fountains (with flames shooting out from their center).
Beaches (1988)	Gary Marshall's sentimental tearjerker about a lifelong friendship included many memorable songs performed by low-brow Jewish singer Cecilia C.C. Bloom (Bette Midler), including the dramatic expressionist, experimental stage song Oh Industry!, the bawdy vaudeville musical number Otto Titsling (pictured) ("Yes! He had invented the world's first over-the-shoulder boulder holder!...The result of this swindle is pointedly clear: Do you buy a titsling or do you buy a brassiere?"), and C.C.'s powerful tribute to her deceased best friend, uptight WASP mother Hillary Whitney Essex (Barbara Hershey), singing The Glory of Love (pictured) in a wine-velvet gown: ("Ya gotta laugh a little, cry a little and til clouds roll by a little / That's the story of, that's the glory of love...").
Beauty and the Beast (1991) # 22 # 21	Some of the songs in this film (the only animated film to be nominated for Best Picture), a retelling of the classic tale, won Academy Awards for Best Original Score and Best Song (title track); its powerful and memorable tunes included the jaunty, introductory Belle, the bouncily-narcissistic Gaston, the show-stopping Be Our Guest performed by the Beast's vassals who were transformed into enchanting inanimate objects, and the title song Beauty and the Beast sung by the motherly Mrs. Potts (voice of Angela Lansbury) to accompany the partially CGI-rendered dance between the Beast (voice of Robbie Benson) and Belle (voice of Paige O'Hara).
Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971)	This film featured many lighthearted songs, including the animated/live-action song Beautiful Briny Sea as charming witch Eglantine Price (Angela Lansbury) took her beau warlock Emelius Browne (David Tomlinson) and her three adopted surly charges under the sea in a fantasy sequence, and the song Substitutiary Locomotion when Eglantine singlehandedly cast her telekenetic spell twice - the second time to reanimate suits of armor and old military uniforms from a local museum to frighten away an invading Nazi raiding party.
Beetlejuice (1988)	In this haunted comedy, there's the famous Day-O scene in which recently-deceased ghosts Adam and Barbara Maitland (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis) pulled a 'parlor trick' at the dinner table in which they attempted to spook the yuppie Deetz family at a hosted party by having obnoxious artist-wife Delia (Catherine O'Hara) belt out (lip-synch) the calypso Day-O (The Banana Boat Song) - in Harry Belafonte's voice - and by having everyone dance around the table; also there's the finale scene of morose daughter Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) dancing in mid-air and lip-synching Jump in the Line (Shake, Shake, Senora) with a chorus line of dead football player corpses.
Before Sunset (2004)	In this sequel to the first film Before Sunrise (1995), two lovers Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) met again nine years later, with only a short time before Jesse's flight left Paris; at the end of their time together, they went to her apartment to have some camomile tea where she sang A Waltz For a Night (written by Delpy herself) while playing a guitar and sitting on her bed, telling about their previous romantic encounter ("lovely one night stand"): "Let me sing you a waltz, out of nowhere, out of my thoughts, let me sing you a waltz, about this one night stand, you were for me that night, everything I always dreamt of in life..."; they also listened to a CD recording of Nina Simone singing Just in Time. Recalling a Nina Simone concert that she had attended, Celine did an impression of the singer as she stopped in the middle of a song and came to the edge of the stage, while slowly moving her hips side to side and puckering up her lips in a pout, seductively speaking: "Oh yeah, baby. Oh, yeah. Uh, hmm. I love you too. And then she'd walk back, took her time, no hurry, you know. She had that big cute ass that she would move, woooh! And then she would, uh, go back to the piano and play some more..." Celine then warned Jesse: "Baby, you are gonna miss that plane." Jesse responded quietly and knowingly: "I know" as he held his left hand up and briefly twirled his wedding ring with his left thumb. The screen faded to black before the closing credits
The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982)	This Broadway play film adaptation, a musical comedy, featured big-bosomed Dolly Parton as Madame Mona Stangley - the flamboyant, smooth-talking proprietor of a 'working girl's' establishment - wearing a red gown and sporting blonde ringlets - she sang the catchy down-home tune A Lil' Ole Bitty Pissant Country Place to introduce her bordello to other dancing floozies and to explain the do's and don't of the place, and later she sang a classic rendition of I Will Always Love You as she serenaded local Sheriff Ed Earl (Burt Reynolds).
The Big Broadcast (1932)	This was the first in a series of Paramount musicals regarding the new medium of radio, in which many of the new radio performers from "Radioland" were brought to the screen for the first time; in this film's score, there were three of the best-known tunes of mellow-voiced Bing Crosby (as Himself): Please (where he was accompanied by Eddie Lang on guitar), Here Lies Love (sung in a slightly morbid sequence), and Bing's trademark song Where the Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day; the film also included Cab Calloway's (as Himself) famous performance of Minnie the Moocher, and the Boswell Sisters' rendition of the hit song Heebie Jeebies (pictured). [Cab Calloway also sang Minnie the Moocher in Fleischer's Betty Boop Talkartoons cartoon of the same name, in 1932.]
The Big Broadcast of 1936 (1935)	This basically plotless musical film contained a few memorable song/dance moments, including the famous dance number to a recording of Miss Brown To You by both Bill "Bojangles" Robinson (exiting a barber shop) and the Nicholas Brothers (as Dot and Dash) (at an early stage in their career) on a small stage, and also the spirited singing of It's The Animal in Me by Ethel Merman (the number was shot for the earlier film We're Not Dressing (1934), but was cut, and then used in this film).
The Big Broadcast of 1938 (1937)	There was one very classic, touching and sentimental song in this madcap musical film: the Academy Award-winning Best Song Thanks For the Memory, sung as a serenade-duet by womanizing radio host Buzz Fielding (Bob Hope) and ex-wife Cleo Fielding (Shirley Ross) who poignantly and slightly regretfully looked back on the good times they had experienced within their failed relationship; they clinked together their drink glasses as he started to sing: "Thanks for the memory / Of rainy afternoons / Swinging Harlem tunes/ Motortrips and burning lips / And burning toast and prunes" and she joined in: "How lovely it was / Thanks for the memory / Of candlelight and wine / Castles on the Rhine / The Parthenon..." as they continued to alternate the lyrics; their singing ended wistfully, as they clinked their glasses together again and sang: "Hooray for us"; she asked, still singing: "Strictly entre nous, darling, how are you?" and he replied: "And how are all those little dreams that never did come true?"; she responded: "Awfully glad I met you", with his response: "Cheerio, toodle-oo" - she collapsed in tears in his arms when they finished -- (this was the song that would launch Hope's career and become his famous trademark or signature theme song).
The Big Chill (1983)	This dramatic film centered around the reunion of aging college friends from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, who pondered the subject of death ("the big chill") and loss of idealism during the funeral-weekend of a suicidal friend (an off-screen Kevin Costner), but in one scene, they boogied-danced to the Temptations' Ain't Too Proud to Beg while cleaning up in the kitchen.
Blazing Saddles (1974)	On stage at the Rock Ridge Saloon, saloon singer Lili Von Shtupp (Madeline Kahn) performed "I'm Tired" off-key, parodying Marlene Dietrich's "Falling in Love Again" with a world-weary Germanic, monotoned accent and a lisp. The sultry singer reduced all the men in the audience to fools - in the lyrics, she asked one of the drooling cowboys: "Hello, handsome, is that a ten-gallon hat - or are you just enjoying the show?" [Her line was a variation of one of Mae West's most infamous pronouncements.] She sang about being tired and having had her fill of sex: "I've had my fill of love, From below and above." To finish her sleepy act, she yawned: "Tired, tired of playing the game. Ain't it a freakin' shame. I'm so? Let's face it. Everything below the waist is ka-put."
Blonde Venus (1932)	Although not a musical, this film was most memorable for Marlene Dietrich's performance as a night-club performer to the beat of an African drum; after stripping down from a gorilla headed costume in the Hot Voodoo number, she sang the throaty song wearing a blonde Afro wig while surrounded by archetypal 'black' dancers -- the song's lyrics included: "...That African tempo has made me a slave, hot voodoo - dance of sin, hot voodoo, worse than gin, I'd follow a cave man right into his cave".
The Blue Angel (1930, Ger.) (aka Der Blaue Engel)	In director Josef von Sternberg's film, the legendary Marlene Dietrich in a star-making role - portrayed a sensual, carefree, and carnal top-hatted entertainer named Lola Lola (Marlene Dietrich) at the Blue Angel nightclub; in her most memorable scene featuring Dietrich's signature song, she sang a throaty rendition of "Falling in Love Again (Can't Help It)" astride a barrel on stage; she tilted her head to the side, leaned backwards, and grasped one gartered-stockinged leg on bare thighs with her arms: "Falling in love again, Never wanted to, What's a girl to do?, I can't help it, Love's always been my game, Play it how I may, I was made that way, I can't help it."