MUSICAL / DANCE FILMS

Best Picture-Winning Musicals in the 60s:

West Side Story - 1961From 1958 to 1968, there were five musical Best Picture winners out of eight nominees. Four musicals in the decade of the 1960s adapted for the screen won the Academy Award for Best Picture. All four were based on Broadway hits, but with a distinct difference - each one involved a major cast change:

All of the directors of the Best Picture-winning musicals in the 60s were long-overdue recipients of a Best Director Oscar:

- co-directors Jerome Robbins (with his sole nomination) and Robert Wise (with his second nomination) for West Side Story (1961)
- director George Cukor (with his fifth nomination) for My Fair Lady (1964)
- director Robert Wise (with his third nomination) for The Sound of Music (1965)
- director Carol Reed (with his third nomination) for Oliver! (1968)

The Demise of the Musical in the Late 60s and 70s: Flops and Failures

Hello Dolly! - 1969The adaptation of stage material for the screen remained the predominant trend in Hollywood with extravagant, lavish productions that attempted to duplicate the successes of the 60s, in films such as: Bells Are Ringing (1960), Bye Bye Birdie (1963) - the first Broadway musical to include rock songs, Richard Lester's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966) based on Stephen Sondheim's 1964 Broadway show (with Zero Mostel), director Norman Jewison's Fiddler on the Roof (1971) based on the stories of Sholem Aleichem about changing times and the life of a Ukranian milkman's family in pre-revolutionary Russia - and one of the longest-running Broadway musicals of all time, Man of La Mancha (1972) and more. However, by the end of the 1960s and early 70s, musicals were virtually extinct and had significantly diminished in popularity.

For a few decades (until the 80s), major musicals, whether adaptations or original productions, seemed to have disappeared or fared poorly at the box-office, and were regarded as insipid and overblown. A number of disappointing flops and sometimes disastrous films spelled an end to the large-scale film musical:

Younger directors experimented with re-creating the splendor of 1930s musicals, with limited success, as mentioned above:

Best Picture-Nominated Musicals in the 1970s:

Cabaret - 1972Hollywood musicals generated 50 Academy Award nominations in the 70s. There were only three musicals nominated for Best Picture in the 1970s, and none of them won the top Oscar. Two of them, directed by dynamic choreographer-director-screenwriter Bob Fosse, received high praise for their cinematic innovation, bold approach and dramatic quality:

Rock 'N' Roll Films:

Inventive rock 'n' roll films and rock musicals were becoming a popular musical sub-genre. The original musical film was becoming an endangered species, pushed out by rock 'n' roll songwriters and new tastes among the record-purchasing public. The first mainstream feature film to use rock music (Bill Haley's Rock Around the Clock) - during the opening credits - was in Richard Brooks' Blackboard Jungle (1955). Soon after, Rock Around the Clock (1956) featured disc jockey Alan Freed and the group Bill Haley and His Comets (singing the title song) and many others (such as the Platters, and Freddy Bell and The Bell Boys) - it was the first film entirely dedicated to rock 'n' roll. It was quickly followed by two more similar films featuring Alan Freed (as Himself) -- Don't Knock the Rock (1956) and Rock, Rock, Rock (1956). Both films argued that rock-and-roll was a new, fun, and wholesome type of music.

The rock and roll music of the 50s was on display, along with big-bosomed star Jayne Mansfield as a talentless, dumb blonde sexpot in writer/director Frank Tashlin's satirical comedy The Girl Can't Help It (1956). It was the first rock and roll film to be taken seriously, with 17 songs in its short 99 minutes framework. Great rock and roll performers included Ray Anthony, Fats Domino, The Platters, Little Richard and his Band (featured in the title song), Gene Vincent and His Bluecaps, Eddie Cochran (with his screen debut) and others. American youth wanted to hear their popular groups in the films of their choice.

Elvis 'The Pelvis' Presley: The King of Rock 'N Roll

Jailhouse Rock - 1957The hip-swiveling king of rock 'n' roll, singer Elvis Presley broke into films, making a total of thirty-three films in his career from the mid-50's to 1970. Although most of them were forgettable, formulaic, low-budget, sappy 'boy-meets-girl' pictures sprinkled with hit songs, Jailhouse Rock (1957) captured the real magnetism of the music star. He was also featured as an actor in many money-making films after signing his first film deal in 1956. His screen debut was in Paramount's Civil War drama Love Me Tender (1956) (originally titled The Reno Brothers), with a #1 single hit song ballad. Jailhouse Rock (1957) is generally acknowledged as his most famous and popular film, but he also appeared in Loving You (1957) (noted for his first screen kiss) and in director Michael Curtiz' King Creole (1958) as a New Orleans teen rebel (acclaimed as one of his best acting roles) before the decade ended. His induction into the Army in 1958 was a well-publicized event. After his Army stint, he also starred in G.I. Blues (1960), in Don Siegel's western Flaming Star (1960) (with only two songs) as a half-breed youth, in the southern melodrama Wild in the Country (1961), and in other formulaic 60's films (i.e., Blue Hawaii (1961), Kid Galahad (1962), and his biggest box-office hit Viva Las Vegas (1964)). By the 70s, his film roles had deteriorated, and although he returned to stage performances and revived his singing career, he was physically on the decline until his death in August, 1977 of heart disease and drug abuse.

The Beatles:

The Beatles' improvisational and imaginative first film was producer Richard Lester's A Hard Day's Night (1964), made at the peak of "Beatlemania" popularity. It captured a surrealistic day and a half in the lives of the "Fab Four" Beatles from Liverpool, and heralded a new kind of musical. Their music was also featured in Yellow Submarine (1968), an animated musical feast. Two great rock documentaries focused on the life of singer/writer Bob Dylan: D.A. Pennebaker's Don't Look Back (1967) followed his 1965 tour of England, including appearances by Joan Baez and Donovan, and Martin Scorsese's No Direction Home (2005) focused on the first six years of Dylan's career.

Jim Henson's The Muppets:

Puppetmaster Jim Henson's loveable creatures, the Muppets (from Sesame Street and The Muppet Show (1976-1981)), including Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, and a host of others, crossed over to family-oriented feature films in the late 70s. Inevitably, these profitable films in the original trilogy included energetic and silly musical numbers:

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