Top musical number in film

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: 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 - 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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 - 01:22 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: M.Ted
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 08:07 PM

Given that this is a folk forum, here is a folk song, and one of the most moving musical moments ever in a film--From "Paths of Glory"

Subject: RE: Top musical number in film
From: Little Robyn
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 07:41 PM

Most of those above are great but no-one's mentioned Sound of Music - Eidelweiss is one we sing at work quite a lot!
Robyn

Subject: RE: Top musical number in film
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 07:34 PM

I must admit my partiality to Oscar Hammerstein. His lyrics to Bill's Soliloquy in CAROUSEL just can't be topped. This song reveals Bill's character as well as it advances the musical's plot. Also I am sufficient old to know that everybody back in the late forties/early fifties graduated to "You'll Never Walk Alone". Finally, a generation before in SHOWBOAT, Hammerstein and Jerome Kern showed how a song that every bass sang for the next forty years ("Old Man River") could not only function as a showstopper but also as a leitmotif for the rest of the musical.

Subject: RE: Top musical number in film
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 07:09 PM

Re: Guys and Dolls
I remember really looking forward to this movie, but was disappointed full-sore. The leads were poorly cast--Marlon Brando, feh! I understand Sinatra really wanted the Masterson role, and I believe he would have caught the spirit of Damon Runyon much better. Also I would have like to see a bit more of Sheldon Leonard in that film.

Likewise Paint Your Wagon. Note to self: When you make a musical, use musical voices.

Subject: RE: Top musical number in film
From: frogprince
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 04:39 PM

And now for something completely different:
How many of you have seen the French movie "Juliette of the Spring"?
I think that the scene of Juliette in the woods, dancing nude and playing the harmonica, is easily the most beautiful example of nudity in a film that I've seen.
Also, I have a question; what melody was she playing?

Subject: RE: Top musical number in film
From: Rasener
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 04:20 PM

There is a place for us

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BQMgCy-n6U

Subject: RE: Top musical number in film
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 03:43 PM

This is one of favourites. Julie London in "The Girl Can't Help It" and that's Barney Kessel on guitar.

Cry Me a River

Subject: RE: Top musical number in film
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 03:13 PM

Talking of Cab Calloway & Minnie the Moocher & the Marx Bros — have always loved the bit at beginning of ANightAtTheOpera, where the Sig Ruhman character, director of the opera, announces that their new signing from Europe will be a great bargain at only $1000 a night. '$1000 a night,' exclaims Groucho: 'why for 75 cents you can get a phonograph record of Minnie the Moocher — come to think of it, for a dollar and a quarter you can get Minnie.' Ah, happy, innocent days!

Subject: RE: Top musical number in film
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 03:05 PM

Thank you, Spaw. Agree will never establish a Top Number. I wouldn't even like to try & decide which was Busby Berkeley's best-ever sequence, or Judy Garland's or Bing Crosby's or Frank Sinatra's best song, or Fred Astaire's best dance & whether it was better than any of Gene Kelly's...

Must mention here, tho — next time you watch the crap-game-in-sewer sequence in Guys&Dolls, notice the guy in the big green fedora hat — that is my cousin Daniel Mayer, nephew of Louis B who was my grandfather's 1st cousin so mine 2ce removed. Danny came over here every year with Garland's company on her annual visit to the Dominion Tottenham Ct Rd; was there for the one she died. A couple of years before he had made contact & we all had tea together at my grandmother's. If you want to know why my Cal cousins spell it that bit different [Mayer while I am Myer] — why, becoz Americans can't spell of course - why else!!!

Subject: RE: Top musical number in film
From: GUEST,Ian Gill
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 03:03 PM

Cab Calloway doing 'Minnie the Moocher' in the 'Blues Brothers' movie ? Or the 'Rawhide' theme from the same - 'we got both types of music here, country and western'?

Subject: RE: Top musical number in film
From: catspaw49
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 02:55 PM

A great thread! There are so many wonderful musical moments in film.............and here's an area where we agree MtheGM. Starting with your opening post I think I have agreed with all of the selections.   I think we can nominate hundreds but may never agree on a "top" number....that's the worst thing about these lists.

Personally, I loved every minute of a Marx Brothers film but I still enjoy Chico and Harpo equally to the humor. Groucho, a musically talented man himself. hated the piano and harp interludes.

Adding a bit to the Cagney post.........Jimmy was an entirely different dancer than anyone else of his time and watching "Yankee Doodle Dandy" should be mandatory to fill the "block of cultural knowledge" that we should have.

Dancers? Can't leave out "White Nights".........Mikhail Barishnikov and the late Gregory Hines in one movie........fantastic!



Spaw

Subject: RE: Top musical number in film
From: richd
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 02:27 PM

"The End" by The Doors at the begining of 'Apocalypse now'.

"Smoke gets in Your Eyes" in the sock hop scene in 'American Graffiti'.

"The Rustle of Spring" in 'The Singing Detective'.

"I Wanna Be like You" in "The Jungle Book".

Subject: RE: Top musical number in film
From: Don Firth
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 02:26 PM

The dream sequence ballet in "An American in Paris." Leslie Caron, Gene Kelly, others. Runs about half an hour. Bloody brilliant! Gershwin would have been proud!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Top musical number in film
From: Rasener
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 02:22 PM

You just have Mike :-)

Subject: RE: Top musical number in film
From: MikeofNorthumbria
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 02:02 PM

I'm astounded that nobody has yet mentioned "As Time Goes By" from 'Casablanca' - "Arrest the usual suspects!"

Wassail!

Subject: RE: Top musical number in film
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 01:59 PM

Olive Oyl's He's Large from the musical Popeye

Subject: RE: Top musical number in film
From: Rasener
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 01:36 PM

ooops

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zey8567bcg&feature=related

Subject: RE: Top musical number in film
From: Rasener
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 01:16 PM

>>Generated in me a lifelong love of chopping wood and wearing lumber jackets<<

Funny you should say that. This had the same effect on me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zey8567bcg&feature=related

LOL

Subject: RE: Top musical number in film
From: greg stephens
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 01:13 PM

Or at least a friend of Michael Palin

Subject: RE: Top musical number in film
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 01:12 PM

Slight drift [I can - I'm OP] — what did we DO B4 YouTube?

Subject: RE: Top musical number in film
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 01:08 PM

You too could become a friend of Dorothy then, Greg

Subject: RE: Top musical number in film
From: greg stephens
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 01:07 PM

And here's a clip of that polecat scene. Fantastic! Generated in me a lifelong love of chopping wood and wearing lumber jackets.

Subject: RE: Top musical number in film
From: greg stephens
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 01:01 PM

Well, I have a very soft spot for the very wonderful "I'm a lonesome polecat"..the snow-encrusted axe-wielding worksong in "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers"

Subject: RE: Top musical number in film
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 12:52 PM

Someone mentions Over The Rainbow above — my adored Judy G again. I know she was a gay icon, but I must be the only straight Friend·Of·Dorothy in captivity.

{NB This is MY thread, & I positively forbid it to start off on any of the themes on THAT particular topic currently ongoing below the line!..

So Hurrah For Captain Spalding...}

& who remembers Marilyn's masterly ['mistressly'? no I think not!] rendition of Cole Porter's My Heart Belongs To Daddy in Let's Make Love?

And what do we all think [talking of other ongoing threads] of the use & rendering of Sumer Is i-Cumen In at the climax of The Wicker Man?

Subject: RE: Top musical number in film
From: beeliner
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 12:45 PM

"The Kangaroo Hop" in Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother.

An absolute show-stopper.

Subject: RE: Top musical number in film
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 12:44 PM

See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have

Subject: RE: Top musical number in film
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 12:42 PM

NEWSFLASH

All those James Bond title numbers are now jostling for recognition in my head...

Subject: RE: Top musical number in film
From: Rasener
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 12:39 PM

Sorry MtGM missed that.

Subject: RE: Top musical number in film
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 12:38 PM

'What a Swell Party This Is', from High Society,>>>

Well did you ever!!!!!

Subject: RE: Top musical number in film
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 12:35 PM

Lets not forget Singing in The Rain>>> We didn't, Villan. It's in my OP —

as are not [o how they flood into mind] New York New York from OnTheTown; Dietrich FallingInLoveAgain, the BlueAngel.

& could the entirely unexpected James Cagney possibly infiltrate the CAN·Sing thread with YankeeDoodleDandy?

Subject: RE: Top musical number in film
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 12:30 PM

'Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Same film

Subject: RE: Top musical number in film
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 12:29 PM

What a Swell Party This Is', from High Society, in fact almost any number from that great film.

Subject: RE: Top musical number in film
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 12:24 PM

I know it's unimaginative, but I'd have to go with "Somewhere Over the Rainbow". Not just a great movie song, but possibly the best song of the entire 20th century. It works as a song or simply as an instrumental, and it works on any instrument (or ensemble thereof) from full-blown symphony orchestra to banjo.

Subject: RE: Top musical number in film
From: Rasener
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 12:20 PM

Lets not forget Singing in The Rain

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3GqaQkhuYw

Subject: RE: Top musical number in film
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 12:17 PM

Doris is 104 years old, sharper than most people much younger, and still able to dance.

Amazing! Didn't know Mary's fate though a lot of those girls had a very rough time of it...