Musical (Song and Dance) Movie Moments and Scenes

Greatest Musical (Song and Dance) Movie Moments and Scenes

The following listing (in multiple parts) was an attempt to compile a collection of many of the greatest song and dance moments in film history. Though the list appears to be dominated by musicals, other genres were examined and included.

Those that are exceptional examples of the development of song/dance are marked with this symbol:

AFI's 25 Greatest Movie Musicals of All Time are marked with an icon and their ranking number (#)

Another point of reference for this kind of material may be found in the AFI's selections of 100 Years...100 Songs and in this site's genre writeup of "Musical Films".

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	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.
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 film contained a few memorable song/dance moments, including the famous dance number with Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and the Nicholas Brothers, and the spirited singing of The Animal in Me by Ethel Merman.
The Big Broadcast of 1938 (1937)	There was one very classic song in this madcap musical film: the Academy Award-winning Best Song Thanks For the Memory, sung as a duet by Buzz Fielding (Bob Hope) and ex-wife Cleo (Shirley Ross) - (the song that would launch Hope's career and become his famous 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".