Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: frogprince Date: 02 Dec 09 - 08:52 PM As to my reference to "Juliette of the Spring"; that's "Manon of the Spring"; I don't know where I got the "Juliette". |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: GUEST,Neil D Date: 02 Dec 09 - 09:54 PM I had never heard of Leonard Cohen till I saw "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" and I became an instant fan. For that reason alone I pick "Winter Lady" from that film. |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: MGM·Lion Date: 02 Dec 09 - 11:52 PM Talking of 'You'll Never Walk Alone', did youse over there know that it has become, as it were, officially folkified here as the theme song of Liverpool, sung before all their matches, who are one of our leading football [soccer] clubs? — the title is even inscribed on the gates to their ground. |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: MGM·Lion Date: 03 Dec 09 - 12:27 AM Another charming use of a folksong on film, but only adduced for its movie-history interest - hardly a 'top number' - is Jean Simmons' first-ever appearance on camera at about 15: 1945 film The Way To The Stars, about RAF in WWii. She sings Let Him Go, Let Him Tarry at a base dance for UK & US airmen, who all unaccountably seem to know the chorus & join in from the start... This a year before Gt Expectns in which she made her name as the Young Estella. Just found it on YouTube. |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: MGM·Lion Date: 03 Dec 09 - 01:22 AM ... & let us not forget Powell & Pressburger's excellent 'I Know Where I'm Going' [1945], where a folksong, sung on track by Glasgow Orpheus Choir, actually provides the film's title. Not, once more, in itself a 'top number', but interesting in film history nonetheless. |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: M.Ted Date: 03 Dec 09 - 01:33 AM By the way, MthGM, Jean Simmons' first ever film appearance was in "Give Us the Moon", made in 1943. TWTTS was actually her sixth movie appearance-- |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: MGM·Lion Date: 03 Dec 09 - 01:45 AM Thanks, M.Ted - one lives and learns indeed... I know she attended from early age Aida Foster stage school in Finchley Road just north of Golders Green station, 3 or 4 doors along from a site used prewar for a Montessori nursery school where I took my own first hesitant educational steps [just learning to read, that's all]: & so she was groomed for that sort of career from earliest days. |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: MGM·Lion Date: 03 Dec 09 - 02:33 AM Re Guys & Dolls, John otSC 'Marlon Brando, feh! I understand Sinatra really wanted the Masterson role, and I believe he would have caught the spirit of Damon Runyon' Maybe: but I liked Brando's Brother·Sky in its fashion nonetheless - & what a superb Detroit Sinatra made for all that... And, returning to name of this thread, Vivian Blaine as Miss Adelaide singing "A person [or 'poyssen' in her native Brooklyn] could develop a cold" must surely be a candidate for one of top spots. & by train of thought, don't you love bit of dialog in OnTheTown: "I know a place across the Brooklyn Bridge where they will never find us"... "Oh, where's that?" ... "Brooklyn!" |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: bubblyrat Date: 03 Dec 09 - 04:21 AM Doris Von Kappelhoff,or whatever her real name was, singing "Whip Crack Away" in the opening scenes of "Calamity Jane" always does it for me ! " Here's a man the Sheriff watches; On his gun there's more than twenty seven notches " !! Corny lyrics,but superb music & choreography.( and Doris's belter of a voice). I also like "Bless your beautiful hide" from " Seven Brides etc"....I'm not normally a Howard Keel fan,but I think that this was his finest moment ; the scenery helps ! |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: GUEST, Sminky Date: 03 Dec 09 - 04:33 AM Powell & Pressburger's excellent 'I Know Where I'm Going' [1945] .... in which the superb Roger Livesey sings 'The Nut Brown Maiden'. The Liveseys' ancestral home is about half a mile from where I am right now. |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies) Date: 03 Dec 09 - 04:43 AM Anything by Hoagy Carmichael! Love that stuff, the lyrics were often totally hysterical. Memphis in June My Resistance is Low with Jane Russel Old Buttermilk Sky |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: MGM·Lion Date: 03 Dec 09 - 04:44 AM Thanks for reminding me of that, Sminky. Tho my recollection is that he doesn't actually sing it, but hears it being played on the pipes & recites the words, "··· Oh you are the maid for me", in what P G Wodehouse [cf that thread] might have described as a 'meaningful manner' to Wendy Hiller. BTW, there is a fine NutBrownMaiden sung in Gaelic by the Scots/Canadian group the Rankin Family on YouTube which is well worth googling. |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: MGM·Lion Date: 03 Dec 09 - 04:50 AM Talking of Hoagy Carmichael, I always think his best song [tho he didn't do the lyrics for once, but collaborated with the great Johnny Mercer] was The Old Music Master. Not sure if that featured in a film — anyone know, please? |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: GUEST, Sminky Date: 03 Dec 09 - 05:15 AM MtheGM: I know the Glasgow Orpheus Choir sing it (in Gaelic), and he does the famous recitation, but doesn't he sing it (in English) as he marches to the castle to meet his fate, near the end of the film? Incidentally, Livesey never went anywhere near Scotland during the filming - he stayed in London the whole time - they used a double for location shots of him in the Scottish landscape. |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: MGM·Lion Date: 03 Dec 09 - 06:03 AM You may be right at that, Sminky - tho it's his meaning gleam·in·the·eye as he recites word to WH that lives on in my mind. I think I had heard before about the no-locations swiz! Can't precisely remember either about the title-song, or find anything in wiki &c — was it, as my memory tells me, sung over the opening titles by Barbara Mullen, or am I confusg with something else? |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: MGM·Lion Date: 03 Dec 09 - 01:39 PM Refresh, so that Sminky, who obvsly remembers this film so well, can answer above ???. |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: MGM·Lion Date: 04 Dec 09 - 01:43 AM ... & has anyone an answer to the ?? I asked above, as to whether Carmichael/Mercer 'The Old Music Master' ever appeared in a film? |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: MGM·Lion Date: 04 Dec 09 - 09:35 PM Refresh, hopefully, just once more. Don't mean to be a bore, but some answers wd be appreciated. |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: MGM·Lion Date: 08 Feb 10 - 09:30 AM r |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: zozimus Date: 08 Feb 10 - 09:55 AM The song Tammy's in Love" was sung in one of the first films I ever saw, can you guys remind me of the films title? |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: MGM·Lion Date: 08 Feb 10 - 10:10 AM Zozimus - I think you mean this one:— This song came from the movie Tammy and the Bachelor. It became an instant hit of the year. It tells of Tammy, played by Debbie Reynolds, falling in love with Leslie Neilson who plays Peter Brent in the movie. Movie also stars Walter Brennen and Fay Wray. Great classic movie of a young girl in love. The song earned Reynolds a gold record in 1957. |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: Mick Pearce (MCP) Date: 08 Feb 10 - 10:20 AM MtheGM - According to my book of Hollywood Musicals (from 1927 to the Present day - 1981 when published), which claims to be complete, it doesn't appear in any musical. That doesn't mean it wasn't used in some non-musical film of course. (As for me - give me Fred Astaire singing pretty much anything in Swing Time or Top Hat - I can't decide which I like better. After that, Can't Help Loving That Man from Showboat. But I love the musical from the 30s and 40s; if I sit and think I'd fill a thread!). Mick |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: Steve Gardham Date: 08 Feb 10 - 10:25 AM Yes, Love em all, but nobody yet mentioned ALL the songs in Snow White. I once sang the lot in a folk club with a ceilidh band backing. Don't tell Disney! |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: JohnB Date: 08 Feb 10 - 10:31 AM Always Look on the Bright Side, Eric Idle, Monty Python's "The Life of Brian" JohnB |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: MGM·Lion Date: 08 Feb 10 - 10:34 AM Mick Pearce: please note the title I gave this thread - careful NOT to specify 'a musical film'. Many of best songs come from films that are not, specifically, "musicals" in genre: from The Wizard Of Oz to The Snake Pit to Let's Make Love... In the last of which I will nominate Ms Monroe's performance of Cole Porter's My Heart Belongs To Daddy as worthy of recollection on this thread (I didn't specify that the song had to originate in the film, either — or none of the Singin' In The Rain lot would qualify)... |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: fat B****rd Date: 08 Feb 10 - 10:34 AM Cinderella 'Work Song' West Side Story 'America' Snow White 'The Silly Song' Deliverance 'Duellin' Banjos' And not to forget - the theme from 'The Vikings' |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: GUEST,TJ in San Diego Date: 08 Feb 10 - 11:23 AM A lot of great tunes are mentioned. The best are evocative and stay in your memory long after the show is over. That said, I think this is really much more about time, place and indelible impressions than about the songs themselves. Example: I can't hear zither music without thinking of Harry Lime and glistening cobbled streets and alleys in black and white. I can't hear "Old Man River" without seeing Paul Robson singing on the dock near the riverboat's gangplank. |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: Mick Pearce (MCP) Date: 08 Feb 10 - 11:23 AM Then it was used in True To Life, 1943. Mick |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: brezhnev Date: 08 Feb 10 - 12:52 PM Doris singing Any way the wind blows in Please Don't Eat the Daisies and Del Shannon singing You Never Talked About Me in It's Trad Dad. Teenagers in a British town unite in their struggle to be allowed to listen to rock & roll and jazz music. The mayor tries to ban the jukebox... |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: Mick Pearce (MCP) Date: 08 Feb 10 - 12:55 PM (My last post was answer to MtheGM, not the intervening posts!). Mick |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: MGM·Lion Date: 08 Feb 10 - 01:01 PM Thanks, Mick — I took it as such, I am grateful for info additional to later usage. Michael |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: MGM·Lion Date: 09 Feb 10 - 03:27 PM ... & Mick, talking of Fred Astaire, which you were a few posts back, my two favourite of his are not in either of the films you mention [tho they are replete with fine songs indeed], but one is in Follow The Fleet [We Joined the Navy to See the World], & the other, mentioned right back in my OP is A Couple Of Swells from Easter Parade. Mind you, I love Isn't This a Lovely Day to be Caught in the Rain? with Ginger in Top Hat. |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: SINSULL Date: 09 Feb 10 - 03:33 PM Springtime For Hitler in the Producers. Jimmy Cagney was amazing. I saw a tribute show, maybe a roast, for him. He had to be in his 80s and he hopped up on a table and danced like a 20 year old. Amazing. And he loved it so - that was his original career. A song and dance man. |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: PoppaGator Date: 09 Feb 10 - 04:25 PM I'm surprised no one has mentioned "Oh Brother Where Art Thou." Either Ralph Stanley's "O Death" or the dubbed-in group rendition of "Man of Constant Sorrow" would be valid nominations. Out of very many songs from musical films, I really love the "Triplets" song ("we hate each other very much / we hate our folks...") but can't remember the film title. I think two of the triplets were Fred Astaire and Nanette Fabray, but I'm not sure. Anybody? Anybody? Then there's Louis Armstrong's opening theme for High Society, sung with his band on their tour bus in Newport, RI, on the way to the Jazz Festival. However: My single favorite musical moment in film is the gospel trio seen briefly, and then heard at great length throughout the cemetery scene, in Easy Rider. My reasons are strictly personal: I got to meet the singers a year or two later, when I was performing on some of the same New Orleans streetcorners where they had been working for years. They may well have been the most down-home, authentically "folk," performers ever to find their way into a Hollywood movie. They were quite old and probably unaware of the larger world outside their little church community and their neighborhood. I've always wondered if they got paid; my guess is that they got something, but not nearly enough, and that whatever they were offered, 100% of it went to their church. |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: Mick Pearce (MCP) Date: 09 Feb 10 - 04:48 PM Poppa - the third was Jack Buchanan and the film was The Band Waggon; a clever song! MtheGM - Follow the Fleet I don't mind, but A Couple of Swells leaves me cold I'm afraid - Easter Parade was never a favourite film. Still, we can't all love the same things. Mick |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: MGM·Lion Date: 17 Oct 11 - 02:24 PM Train of thought has just led me back to this 20 month old thread. What a lot included then ~~ and what a lot omitted ~~ try e.g. Born In A Trunk At The Princess Theater In Pocatella Idaho, Judy Garland in the 1954 version of A Star Is Born. And Sweet Nelly Kelly from her 1942 version of the George M Cohan's 1920s show of that name. And, talking of Cohan, there is a fine youtube version of Yankee Doodle Dandy, featuring the Cagney version from film of that name with Jimmy as Cohan, followed by the 2-year earlier Rooney-Garland rendition from Babes In Arms http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StDpLge_ITM&feature=related |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: Max Johnson Date: 17 Oct 11 - 02:56 PM Would it be cheating to have some of the Mills Brothers' Betty Boop soundtracks? MgM, 'Let Him Go, Let Him Tarry from 'The Way To The Stars' is high on my list and, bubblyrat, also 'Whip Crack Away'. |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: GUEST Date: 17 Oct 11 - 05:38 PM Lee Marvin singing "Wand'rin' Star" in "Paint Your Wagon". Not a singer, but he "sells" the song very well. |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: GUEST Date: 17 Oct 11 - 06:37 PM The "Telephone Number" not sure if that is the song's name but you will understand, from Bye-Bye Birdie. I Believe in you from How to succeed in business... |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: Joe Nicholson Date: 17 Oct 11 - 07:01 PM Y0u'l never walk alone from Carousel Joe Nicholson |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: Bert Date: 17 Oct 11 - 07:28 PM Oom Pa Pa from Oliver. White Christmas. Some Enchanted Evening from South Pacific. |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: MGM·Lion Date: 18 Oct 11 - 04:16 AM Joe N ~ below is url to the Shankly Gates at Anfield football ground, named after a distinguished former manager of Liverpool Football Club. You'll Never Walk Alone, as you will see, has broken free of its Rodgers & Hammerstein roots and entered folklore as theme song of this leading club with its distinguished history or championships and cups. The story of how this came about, via a hit recording by Liverpool-based group Gerry & the Pacemakers in the 60s, will be found in the Wikipedia entry on the song. http://www.flickr.com/photos/andynugent/76672246/ ~Michael~ |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: MGM·Lion Date: 19 Nov 12 - 04:45 AM Often an idea to refresh an old thread to see if any further ideas have come to anyone. I have discovered the following website regarding the still-extant, tho now a cinema, Princess Theater in Pocatello Idaho, birthplace of Judy Garland's fictional stage persona in A Star Is Born http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/4821 ~M~ |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: MGM·Lion Date: 19 Nov 12 - 04:50 AM ... in fact, no longer a cinema, but since 1920 part of a retail complex: see the website. ~M~ |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: Bert Date: 19 Nov 12 - 09:43 AM Buttons and Bows from Paleface. |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: Stringsinger Date: 19 Nov 12 - 10:41 AM There are so many. Astaire absolutely. He knew how to interpret a song. Another potent song that worked in movies but not as well on stage was from Cabaret, "Tomorrow Belongs To Me" about the rise of Nazisim in Berlin. I think Cabaret worked much better as a movie than onstage. I saw the original New York production. Also, Jewison's "Jesus Christ Superstar" worked better on film although it was intended to be a recording, an oratorio. The scene of the dancing Acolytes was remarkable with freeze frames. An important number is Astaire and Eleanor Powell doing "Begin the Beguine" in Broadway Melody of 1940. The two were amazing together and each a bit shaky by their company as dancers. It sizzled and popped! I loved "Raghapati Ragava Rajah Ram" from the film Ghandi when the historic march to the sea took place to protest the salt restriction by the Brits. One of my favorites was Nielsen singing Fred Neil's song "Everybody's Talking" from the opening credits and scene of Midnight Cowboy. Also, although I didn't care for the movie, the opening sequence of Born Free showing a panorama of the Serengeti Plain, the wild animals with the John Barry tune "Born Free" playing over the sequence was effective. I liked "Luck Be A Lady" with Brando from Guys and Dolls. The ending of Member of the Wedding which worked well as a stage play but the movie version featuring Ethel Waters at the end singing "His Eye is on the Sparrow" was lovely. Also, the last scene of Kubrick's epic Dr. Strangelove with the melancholy "We'll Meet Again". There was Hoagy Carmicheal doing "The Hong Kong Blues" in To Have and Have Not with Bogie. Also, he never said "Play it again, Sam" in Casablanca but the song worked really well. It was Herman Hupfeld's one hit wonder. |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: frogprince Date: 19 Nov 12 - 11:10 AM Just re-skimmed this; since I was "here" last, my wife and I attended the memorial service for Doris Eaton Travis. She last danced on broadway weeks, perhaps days, before her death at 106. We saw a video of that last appearance; she danced just briefly, holding the hand of one young man on each side, but she was 106 years old . One other "top" musical moment, in an otherwise badly botched movie: Dylan's singing of "Knocking on Heaven's Door" over the scene of a dying Slim Pickens in "Pat Garrett and Billie the Kid" |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: Jack Campin Date: 19 Nov 12 - 02:47 PM According to this soundtrack video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3geiAxyZqU the music for "Manon des Sources" was arrangements of Verdi's "La Firza del Destino" made by Jean-Claude Petit. |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: dick greenhaus Date: 19 Nov 12 - 03:01 PM "Once In Love With Amy" frpom "Charlie's Aunt"----one of my all tim favorites. |
Subject: RE: Top musical number in film From: fat B****rd Date: 19 Nov 12 - 03:24 PM Flying Home in Malcolm X Saturday Night Fever in Saturday Night Fever. Por Una Cabeza (Thank you Google) The tango scene in Scent of a Woman. It's Gonna Take Magic from Play It Cool. |
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