Musical Movies

The musical movie genre was one of the last to emerge thanks largely to the advent of sound in movies and has regularly set its characters in fantasy environments. There are many popular musical movies, from the first part-talking, part-singing film 'The Jazz singer' (1927), the first full length musical film, 'The Broadway Melody' right through to more recent dance films. Such recent films include 'The Black Swan' (2010), starring Natalie Portman in ballet shoes, as well as the hugely successful Ballet Hip Hop hybrid 'Step Up' (2006) which had a $12 million budget and has grossed $115 million to date.

Famous stars in dance shoes have entertained the cinema going public with a host of musicals and dance films, including one of the most famous musical movie ever made - 'My Fair Lady' (1964). My Fair Lady was based on Lerner and Loewe's stage musical and starred Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison. It ranks amongst the top 20 grossing musical movies of all time and had a huge budget for its time at $17 million. In the same year Walt Disney produced the highly successful musical movie ‘Mary Poppins' with a budget of $6 million. Based on the children’s book by Australian novelist Pamela L Travers, this now-classic film starred Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke and ranks as one of the top 10 grossing musical movies ever made.

'The Sound of Music' was a 1965 Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical masterpiece, produced and directed by Robert Wise with a budget of $8.2 million, it was based on Lindsay and Crouse's 1959 Broadway hit. Starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, the film was set in 1938 Salzburg, Austria ranking as one of the top 10 grossing musical movies ever made.

Musical movies made a strong comeback in the 1970s with John Travolta starring in ‘Saturday Night Fever’ (1977), John Travolta was trained by dance champion Denny Terrio & choreographer Lester Wilson. The film’s budget was $3.5 million and has so far made almost $300 million. John Travolta also starred with Olivia Newton-John in ‘Grease’ (1978), which had a soundtrack that was the second-best selling album of 1978 and is itself currently ranked as the second highest grossing musical movie ever made. Adrian Lyne's ‘Flashdance’ (1983), described as a music video style film, had an Oscar-winning title song by Irene Cara. ‘Footloose’ (1984) starring Kevin Bacon and ‘Dirty Dancing’ (1987) with Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze in dancing shoes were also hugely popular dance films.

Animated musical films have been very successful and include the legendary ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ (1937) produced for $1.5 million by Walt Disney, the movie is based on the German fairy tale written by the famous Brothers Grimm, Snow White is currently the biggest grossing musical movie ever made. ‘The Jungle Book’ (1967) and ‘Beauty and the Beast’ (1991) both rank in the top 10 grossing musical movies ever made. Recently released musical movies that have taken their script directly from stage plays have proven very popular - these include ‘Chicago’ (2002) and ‘Mamma Mia’ (2008) who both rank in the top 10 grossing musical movies ever made.

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