Thanks, Beadie. I always thought "The Music Man" was probably the best stage musical around. ANd the movie was great, too. One of the few where they didn't cut anything out. The film version of "My Fair Lady" also remained intact, making it one of the best. The same goes for "Fiddler on the Roof". Hollywood seems to have missed the point with musicals. You go to hear people sing, not talk. Showboat suffers because of this attitude. The last half of the Allen Jones/Irene Dunne version is almost all talk. Forget the color version, songs were deleted and the last half of the story never even made it onto film. In "Brigadoon" all the songs not sung by the two leads was discarded. I've never seen "Carousel" on stage, but the movie is more of a "Talkical", too much space between songs. (and now that I've grown up, I realize it's about an abusive husband that we're supposed to feel some kind of sympathy for, and a much too complacent wife. The song "What's the Use of WOndering" promotes a realy pathetic attitude: a woman who will eventually become a properly subservient wife with a dozen kids telling the abused wife to just live with it. Wow.)
"Grease", the stage version nearly put me to sleep. I don't think you can vote on the best musical unless you've seen the stage version.
And whatever happened to manly baritones like Howard Keel and Alfred Drake? THey've been replaced by Whispering Michael Crawford and other similarly wimpy singers.
Yeah, I'm a Grumpy Old Man, too.