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[0:00] David Armstrong: Welcome to Broadway Nation, the podcast that explores the remarkable history of the Broadway musical with a particular focus on the immigrant, Jewish, queer, and black artists who invented it. I'm David Armstrong, and it's my great pleasure to welcome Albert Evans back to Broadway Nation this week. We're going to discuss a topic we don't usually broach very much on Broadway Nation, which is movie musicals. Of course, movie musicals go hand-in-glove with Broadway musicals, and many movie musicals originated from Broadway musicals, including many that we'll talk about today, because the topic today is movie musicals that won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Of course, coming up on March 2nd, we have the possibility of another Broadway musical winning Best Picture.

We'll see what happens. There are a lot more nominees for Best Picture than there used to be when any of these other movies were nominated. But it's an interesting topic, and I thought Albert was the perfect person to discuss it with me. He's seen all of these pictures, some of them multiple times, like myself. I haven't seen a few of them in years, but we did do a little reviewing of some of the ones that we have seen less recently. So welcome, Albert. How do you broach this subject of movie musicals that won the Academy Award?

[1:18] Albert Evans: Very gingerly. I was looking on this list that was in an article you sent me of the musicals that have won the Oscar. They wouldn't be the ones I would give the Oscar to, frankly. Some of them are great movies. They all have great things in them. But I find that the actual great moments in these movies are the numbers. And frankly, you can see the numbers by going on YouTube. So I rarely revisit these movies. Some of them are among my favorite movies, so I have to say that. I think I fell in love with musicals by watching movies because I live in Columbus, Ohio, and we were not the musical theater capital of the world. That said, I am very curious to get your take on these. I think you're maybe more of a fan of the movie musical than I am.

[2:05] David Armstrong: That could be, although it certainly starts the same place your relationship to these movies start for me, which is I'm from Cincinnati, Ohio, and I first came to love Broadway through the movies, through movies about Broadway, and we'll discuss several of those today, and through Broadway musicals that had become movies. I didn't see an actual Broadway musical on Broadway until I was a teenager, until I was nearly an adult. I think for us, like so many people, this was our way into the world of Broadway were these movies and many others like them. And I agree with you, but this is true of anything that wins the best award of whatever year, whether it's the Tony Award for Best Musical or the Academy Award for Best Picture, musical or otherwise.

What ends up getting that award some years is not necessarily the movie we would vote for. More importantly, the ones that don't get that award. I mean, a great example of this is we're going to talk about An American in Paris, which won the Academy Award in 1951. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the following year was Singing in the Rain, with many of the same creators, Gene Kelly, the same producers. It wasn't even nominated for the Academy Award in that year, and frankly, was not nearly as acclaimed in its day as it has become over the years.

[3:24] Albert Evans: Yeah, it's a very interesting case. It was financially successful. It made a lot of money for MGM, but it wasn't critically lauded at the time. It got good reviews, I'm not saying that, but it was saying, this is an entertaining movie. And that was about the end of it. But I think it's only as people have grown up with it and watched it multiple times, we realized how really good that movie is. I did a little homework last night. I rewatched American in Paris. I stuck with it, let me say that. But we'll talk about that when we get to An American in Paris.

[3:58] David Armstrong: Yeah, no spoiler alerts here. We'll wait just a couple minutes before we get to what you thought about it. I'm fascinated to hear. It's a great example, I think, those two movies back to back of one of my favorite, and I'm not alone in this, because it's acclaimed as one of the greatest movies of all time, much less musical movies of all time, Singing in the Rain. I much prefer it to An American in Paris.

[4:20] Albert Evans: Yeah, there's no comparison, really. But there are reasons why it won and why Singing in the Rain didn't. There are cultural reasons, there are prestige reasons, but we'll get to that.

[4:31] David Armstrong: Absolutely. Well, let's jump in. The very first movie musical to win the Academy Award for Best Picture is called Broadway Melody, and it's from 1929. I had a chance to revisit that. That's not a movie I had seen, I don't know how many years ago it was, I saw that movie last. Could go all the way back to the Regency Theater on the Upper West Side in New York in the 1980s. Could have been that long ago that I saw Broadway Melody. When was the last time you saw it, do you think?

[4:59] Albert Evans: I don't know why, but I have a DVD of Broadway Melody of 1929, and so I have re-watched it probably since the Regency. But when I do, I think, first of all, it was one of the very first movie musicals, and they were just making it up as they went. How do you record? I believe when they started filming it, they actually had an orchestra offstage, and then they realized this is causing more problems than it's solving, so they pre-recorded the music and started singing to the pre-recorded music. Now, the voices were still live on stage, so they hadn't yet realized, oh, we could record the voices, too, and get a really good sound quality. But like I said, they're just making it up.

[5:43] David Armstrong: Well, and speaking of Singing in the Rain, many of those issues that become the plot of Singing in the Rain, how do we make this transition from silent movies to talkies and especially to singing pictures, are what's actually happening when they're making this movie?

[5:56] Albert Evans: Yeah, and the songs in Broadway Melody are by Arthur Freed and Nashu Herb Brown, and Arthur Freed later became the big movie musical producer at MGM. He had his own unit. Comden and Green, who wrote the script to Singing in the Rain, thought, well, all of these songs that he wants us to use, all of his own songs, they all came from this era of the transition from the silence to the talkies. So they decided, well, that's what we'll make our movie about, because they didn't have a clue. Originally, they thought, well, let's make it about a cowboy star. They were searching around for what to do.

[6:33] David Armstrong: Yeah, and then the answer was so obvious. Let's make it about this era when Freed and Brown wrote movie after movie, movie musical after movie musical. That's where they belong, and that's what we'll write about.

[6:47] Albert Evans: And, of course, the songs in Broadway Melody, almost all of them, end up in the movie Singing in the Rain.

[6:53] David Armstrong: Exactly.

[6:54] Albert Evans: The title song is the finale of Singing in the Rain.

[6:58] David Armstrong: Yeah. So anyway, I think you have to approach Broadway Melody of 29 with a historical perspective and realize that they are trying something new, and they're discovering what works and what doesn't work. And it was a huge success. It was a huge grossing movie because it was something new.

[7:14] Albert Evans: It was the highest grossing movie of 1929. Then it won the Academy Award for Best Picture and also had two other nominations, Best Actress for Bessie Love and Best Director.

[7:21] David Armstrong: When you go back, as you just said, you have to approach it from a historical aspect because it is a very rough going. The performances, I actually thought, were fairly magical of the three principles, but they're also overblown and overdone. It's sort of stuck between being a silent movie and a talkie. They're still doing a lot of silent movie acting style, even though they have dialogue all the way through it. There's still some silent movie style titles setting up the scenes, which I thought was interesting. And the musical numbers are very rudimentary. Not the songs. The songs are great, obviously. But the performances, the recording of them, the dancing seems very under-rehearsed and sloppy.

It's quite something. The one segment that many people have seen would be the segment that they use in That's Entertainment, the first of those That's Entertainment movies, which is a segment of this Heidel song, which has this sort of art deco set, which looks pretty amazing. And then it has a woman come out and do a toe tap in the middle of the number, and of course a toe tap is always hilarious because it's just so ludicrous.

[8:44] Albert Evans: And that number, of course, is like seeing a number in a Broadway show. So in a way, it takes us back to what musicals were like in 1929.

[8:58] David Armstrong: What I found really fascinating watching it is looking at all the detail in the set decoration of the backstages of these theaters that the show takes place in. And of course, that's what I fell in love with when I was a kid, was this backstage world that these movies bring. As much as I might be impatient with the story and impatient with these characters today, who are pretty nasty characters in this movie, they're always at each other's throats in a sort of what I think is supposed to be a snappy — and maybe it felt that way at the time, but now it just sort of feels — I hate to say the word rude, but there's something about it that was very somewhat distasteful with the dialogue and the characters in this movie.

It just didn't have the level of wit on top of it, I think, that would make that palatable. It was a hard movie to get through, but fascinating from a historical perspective. And again, if Farther Freed and Nashua Herb Brown hadn't been involved with this and it hadn't been a huge hit, we would never have had the Freed unit at MGM in the 40s and into the 50s, which produced the greatest musicals of all time, I think — movie musicals.

[10:03] Albert Evans: And this is the start of that. This is the first MGM musical, basically, and where they start to acquire the idea that MGM does the best musicals, does the greatest musicals, does the biggest musicals, has the greatest stars. That starts with Broadway Melody.

[10:19] David Armstrong: Exactly. So thank you, Broadway Melody. And stay in 1929 where you belong. So what's next on our historical list of Oscar-winning movie musicals?

[10:46] Albert Evans: Well, in great contrast to that is The Great Ziegfeld, which comes just seven years later, and it is like a world away from the Broadway Melody of 1929 in every aspect, certainly in the moviemaking aspects of it. And I think that's one thing we have to point out, and it's true with Broadway Melody. Part of what the Academy is always rewarding with Best Picture is the technical aspects of moviemaking, the achievement of making a movie in a new way, in a more advanced way than it has ever been done before. Even though we don't view Broadway Melody today in that regard, at the time, this was a giant breakthrough and step forward. And I went back and read some of the reviews for the movie, and it said this will revolutionize the talkies.

This will revolutionize movies, not just movie musicals, but movies in general. And it did. It's just caught in that little moment of transition. I think what these Best Pictures are often about is moviemaking on a grand new scale, and certainly The Great Ziegfeld demonstrates that. It was one of the most successful films of the 1930s. It won the Oscar for Best Picture, Best Actress for Louise Rayner, and Best Dance Direction for Seymour Felix. It's one of, I think, only three or four years where they gave an Oscar for the choreographer of a movie. And to me, one of the great injustices of Hollywood is that they stopped doing that and have never done it again.

[12:20] David Armstrong: Even though the choreographer of these movies, which is not often understood, directs the dance sequences, directs the camera work, the director's often not even on the set at all on the day that the numbers are shot. Let's just use Gentlemen Prefer Blondes as an example. I don't remember who the actual director of that movie is, George Sidney or somebody like that.

[12:41] Albert Evans: I think it was Howard Hawks of all people.

[12:45] David Armstrong: Howard Hawks, that's exactly right.

[12:47] Albert Evans: The last person you would associate with doing musicals.

[12:49] David Armstrong: But on the day that they're filming the Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend number that Jack Cole is the choreographer for, is the dance director, and I think that title was exactly right when they used to use it that way for movies. Howard Hawks is not on the movie set. He's not there at all. This is Jack Cole's vision, and what do we remember now about that movie? We remember that number. We remember Jack Cole. Somehow this partly comes from probably the auteur theory that started to take over everything, is that somehow that's a Howard Hawks movie, when it probably should be considered at least as much a Jack Cole movie.

[13:22] Albert Evans: For the numbers, yeah. I think Howard Hawks, I mean, he was known for sort of tough guy buddy pictures. This is a female buddy picture, so I think he brings that to it. You actually feel there is a relationship between Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe. We feel like they're friends, they're buddies.

[13:39] David Armstrong: Absolutely. That's a movie I like very much, and they're both terrific. I mean, the scenes are really funny and quite good in that movie, but it's just leaving the choreographer out. I feel this injustice starts right here with Seymour Felix, who does some amazing work in The Great Ziegfeld. When was the last time you saw this movie?

[13:59] Albert Evans: The Great Ziegfeld? Probably, oh, I don't know, 10 years ago. But I did in the last couple of years. Louise Rainer won the Oscar because of a very short scene where she's on the telephone, and she's breaking up with Ziegfeld, as I recall it. She was actually a great actress, even though it's this kind of silted style of acting. It's still very effective in that movie. It kind of chokes you up. But it's only like two minutes long. That's why she won the Oscars, the telephone scene.

[14:29] David Armstrong: You know, it's interesting, I've always heard that, as I watched the movie this week, she is fantastic all the way through the movie, every scene.

[14:36] Albert Evans: She just sparkles. So I thought, well, it's not just that. I mean, that may be the clincher is that dramatic scene where she smiles through her tears. She's actually congratulating Ziegfeld on his wedding, I think, to Billy Burke, but dying inside because she loved him the whole time and divorced him because she thought it would bring him back. And of course, it didn't. But she is sensational in the musical numbers and just sparkles in these very, very funny scenes early in the movie. She actually is in most of the movie, and it's a very long movie, I have to say. And that's common, I think, of Academy Award winning movies in general, not just musicals. They tend to be big, long movies that have claimed their space in a way.

And this movie is more than three hours long. It's too long, but I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed it more than I remembered from before. I didn't expect to like it as much as I did. The performances all the way through are terrific. Some of the musical numbers are sensational. It has that one amazing sequence, which just alone is probably what clinched the Academy Award, which is the pretty girl is like a melody number, which we've seen excerpted many, many times.

[15:59] Albert Evans: Although usually you don't see the whole thing, and it is what they call the wedding cake, where this giant set revolves and unwraps, these curtains unwrap it as it goes up, and it keeps revealing new scene after new scene after new scene, all the way up to this somewhat ludicrous, you could never actually do that on a stage. I mean, they obviously did it on a soundstage, and you could do it on a Broadway stage, but you couldn't do anything else. Yeah, you couldn't. You'd have to do the entire show. You'd have to have an intermission before and after it in order to set that up.

[16:48] Albert Evans: Exactly. But it is so incredibly beautiful, and the design all the way through the movie, the costumes are spectacular. There's a Ziegfeld-style routine, sort of a costume parade, basically, in the roof garden sequence that is spectacular as well. Of course, you know, they play fast and loose with history, but that's to be expected. After having researched this period a lot, I was actually surprised how accurate so much of it was. Wasn't Billy Burke actually a consultant on the picture?

[17:20] David Armstrong: She was indeed, yeah. But that could go either way.

[17:22] Albert Evans: Yeah, yes. That could make it less accurate. Anyway, that's a movie I highly recommend now, which I wouldn't have necessarily thought I was going to when we proposed doing this show. But after watching it again, I thought it was really great. It does have some dull parts. It is too long. There are some frustrating elements. Fanny Bryce is in it, but they cut away from her singing My Man, but they include her singing a really silly song earlier than that. But what she does have, which I didn't remember, I remember that, that was disappointing, but she has a very funny scene with Ziegfeld in the dressing room where he's trying to hire her that is great, and she's fantastic in it. And you get a sense of who Fanny Bryce, what she was like as a performer, more almost than you do in the musical sequences.

[18:08] David Armstrong: Okay, well, that's going on my to-rewatch list. I will revisit The Great Ziegfeld, 1936.

[18:16] Albert Evans: Yeah, plan an intermission for yourself.

[18:19] David Armstrong: I always do.

[18:53] David Armstrong: Don't go away. Albert and I will be back with more Broadway Nation right after this quick break.

[19:08] Albert Evans: So that brings us to the highest grossing movie of 1944. It's interesting. I think you said this to me on the phone the other day. Many of these movies are the biggest grossing movies of the year. I think it's true not just of the musicals, but of all Oscar winners. But they are big deal movies, and that's partly why they win the Oscar.

[19:25] David Armstrong: Yeah, that's certainly still true. I mean, it's the big blockbusters that had the best chance of winning the Oscar because it's Hollywood celebrating itself and patting itself on the back for having a big hit. I think we've drifted away from that in the last 20 years a bit. When you're talking about genre movies, we're talking about superhero movies and things like that. They often get excluded from the Oscars entirely, and I think a more recent phenomenon is sort of small independent movies sometimes becoming the Oscar winner. But I think in general over the whole period of the Oscars, what you're saying is correct. The big blockbusters at least get nominated if they're not just popcorn movies.

[20:10] Albert Evans: Well, in a way, I've been thinking lately that I think those action-adventure superhero movies are the musicals of our time because they have these set pieces within them that are like, that's what people come to see. The way they came to see the musical numbers before, I think you could make a case for that.

[20:25] David Armstrong: I think that's absolutely correct, and it's also somewhat mystifying because you hear people complain about musicals, and we'll talk about this as we go on, being unrealistic, being ridiculous because people break into song. Well, people flying and doing all the things they do in superhero movies is equally probably more ridiculous, but people don't complain about that at all.

[20:54] Albert Evans: No, that's why they go to those movies.

[20:58] David Armstrong: Exactly. And of course, why people go to musicals is because people break into song.

[20:59] Albert Evans: Exactly. Going My Way was the movie we were just getting to, and this is a movie which we'll just spend a couple minutes on because I don't really think of it as a movie musical, although it probably has more songs in it than Broadway Melody did. To me, if it were a stage show, I'd call it a play with music, not a musical, just in the terms of the way it feels. There's no dancing, there's no production numbers. Music is in the story but is not the point of the story or used to tell the story in any way. But you can't discount its impact at the time. Seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Bing Crosby, Best Supporting Actor for Barry Fitzgerald, Best Screenplay, Best Story, which was a separate category back then, and Best Song for the song Swinging on a Star.

[21:44] Albert Evans: It was just the star power of Bing Crosby, I think. People wanted to see and hear Bing Crosby, and Bing Crosby playing a priest was irresistible, apparently, to people in 1944.

[21:56] David Armstrong: Yeah, and sort of playing an unconventional priest, the new hip young priest who's at odds with the old establishment represented by Barry Fitzgerald, who eventually comes around to him, of course. And such a big hit that they made a sequel of it, The Bells of St. Mary, which was also nominated for the Academy Award, didn't win the Academy Award, but was also a giant hit two years later. But have you seen that movie at any recent time?

[22:24] Albert Evans: Probably not for maybe 15 years, because I still do remember the end where his mother comes over from Ireland, and for some reason, I think she's coming down in a wheelchair down the aisle of the church to see him, and he's singing Toora Loora Loora, and it's just a big tear-jerker. Am I completely remembering this wrong?

[22:42] David Armstrong: I don't know. I didn't watch this one, so I don't know. That could be Bells of St. Mary, for all I know.

[22:46] Albert Evans: Or say one for me. But yeah, I'm with you. It's not one that, when you do think of it, which is very rare, I think, you don't really think of it as a musical. You think of it, well, it's a Bing Crosby movie, so of course he's going to sing in it. And that was sort of his thing. He made however many movies he made, dozens and dozens, and he always sang in them, but only probably a handful of them are sort of big musicals. They're usually much more intimate with some great songs in them.

[23:14] David Armstrong: So let's jump now to 1951, and this is An American in Paris, one of the most famous movies of all time, at least for our generation. We grew up with this being like the ultimate movie musical to a great extent.

[23:39] Albert Evans: And I watched it last night. I thought, I have not seen this movie in I don't know how long. So I rewatched it. Frankly, I didn't have a very good impression of it in my mind.

[23:50] David Armstrong: I'm with you there. Of course, I remember the amazing things about it. I don't want to discount anything that's so great about it. The ballet, of course, is sensational in all aspects, the design, the choreography, the dancing, the idea of it. I remember some other great numbers, I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise, I Got Rhythm. But I also think of it as the story being very unmemorable and the characters not being particularly interesting. I remember that Oscar Levant is funny in it, but he's sort of being Oscar Levant. It didn't really feel like, again, in my memory, this is my impression of that movie. So now tell me, was that similar to your impression? And how was that changed by viewing it last night?

[24:30] Albert Evans: Yeah, I think your memory is absolutely accurate. First of all, Oscar Levant, I think it's a federal law that you can't make a movie about George Gershwin without having Oscar Levant, and probably writing his own lines. And he's very entertaining, but he's absolutely dispensable to the plot. Now the plot, first of all, the movie is huge. It's opulent. It's got gigantic orchestrations. It's got big sets. I read somewhere that the ballet, the 15-minute ballet that ends the movie, costs like half a million dollars.

[25:02] David Armstrong: In 1951 money.

[25:04] Albert Evans: Yeah, in 1951 money. The plot is so uninteresting. It's Gene Kelly being an artist, ex-GI, now he's an artist in Paris. He's trying to sell his paintings on the street and the adventures that he has. Somehow he gets involved with Nina Folk, who is a sort of wealthy, older woman in Hollywood terms, who takes him on as a project. Obviously, she wants to sleep with him, but in order to do that, she's going to sponsor him in a big showing of his paintings.

[25:40] David Armstrong: So this is sort of Pal Joey territory.

[25:43] Albert Evans: Yeah.

[25:44] Albert Evans: Gigolo aspect of kept man story, which Gene Kelly was something that worked for him. There's always something a little suspect about his characters. It works great in Singing in the Rain. In this, it just makes him kind of unpleasant, because who he really should end up with, and does end up with, is Leslie Caron. And this is her first movie, and she's very charming. But maybe it's just the sexual rules of 1951. He's allowed to sleep around as much as he wants, but if Leslie Caron did that, you would really think that she's a terrible person.

[26:21] David Armstrong: Right.

[26:21] Albert Evans: And of course, we never actually see. It's always implied that Gene Kelly and his patron, his patroness, are sleeping together. But it's never actually stated. It's always like, well, you know, we'll just leave that offstage. But this whole plot about she's going to sponsor him, she's going to have this show, it's just completely abandoned by the end of the movie. It's sort of forgotten. Like, what is going on here? That seemed like that was going to be the whole story of the movie. And then after a while, they just sort of think, it's too unpleasant, we've got to get Gene and Leslie together, so let's just drop that.

[27:03] Albert Evans: In the meantime, the numbers are very good, but the plot simply is not interesting enough to build these gigantic numbers on, especially the ballet at the end, which seems to be about his dilemma. And how is he going to resolve this dilemma? Because she keeps appearing in different segments of the ballet. As probably most people know, it's based on the painting styles of five or six famous French artists.

[27:23] David Armstrong: And it's basically a dream ballet.

[27:25] Albert Evans: It's a dream ballet, yeah. He's appearing in all of them. And it's extremely pretentious. It's extremely opulent. It's colossal. And it's also very prestigious, I guess I would say. It's arty with a capital A.

[27:41] David Armstrong: Yes, it is. And it's gorgeous to watch, but it seems to have no connection with these people that we have known during the preceding movie.

[27:49] Albert Evans: The Lori Makes Up Her Mind ballet clearly had some impact on it.

[27:54] David Armstrong: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[27:55] Albert Evans: Unlike that, it doesn't really seem to be psychoanalyzing these characters in some way, revealing the workings of their mind.

[28:02] David Armstrong: No, it just, it's Gene Kelly, he's being tortured about something in this ballet. You know how he is always reaching out his hands to say, please help me, you know, but you never know what he really needs help with. Meanwhile, Leslie Caron, she's like a 19-year-old girl in this. And she is sort of obligated to marry the man who helped her in France during the occupation, helped keep her alive, a family friend. But now he has fallen in love with her and she feels obligated to marry him because of what he did for her back during the war.

[28:38] Albert Evans: And so she's actually leaving at the end. The ballet is inspired by, she says, no, I have to go marry this guy. I love you, you love me, but I've got to go marry him because of what he did. So she's actually leaving to go to the airport. And that's what triggers the ballet. It's like, why can't I have her? Why is my life in such a shambles? So they do this ballet.

[29:00] Albert Evans: Right after the ballet, the car that she's left in with the guy comes back. Gene Kelly is on a balcony. He sees her get out of the car and the man she's supposed to marry, who's like,

[29:13] David Armstrong: Welcome back to Broadway Nation. Today, we’re diving into a fascinating topic: movie musicals that have won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

[29:41] Albert Evans: It’s a great topic, David. There’s so much to discuss, especially considering how intertwined Broadway and film musicals are.

[30:07] David Armstrong: Absolutely! Many of the films we’ll talk about today started as Broadway shows. It’s interesting to see how these stories transitioned from stage to screen.

[30:35] Albert Evans: And with the Oscars coming up, there’s a lot of buzz around the possibility of "Wicked" becoming another Broadway musical to win Best Picture.

[31:03] David Armstrong: Yes, it will be fascinating to see what happens. The landscape of nominees has changed so much over the years.

[31:32] Albert Evans: Definitely! There are many more nominees for Best Picture today than there were back when classics like "West Side Story" or "My Fair Lady" won.

[32:00] David Armstrong: Right! And those films have left such a lasting impact on both Broadway and Hollywood.

[32:28] Albert Evans: They really have. Each of those films brought something unique to the table, and they continue to influence new generations of artists.

[32:58] David Armstrong: Let’s start with "West Side Story." It’s such a landmark film in the musical genre.

[33:28] Albert Evans: Yes, and it’s interesting to note how it tackled themes of race and identity, which are still relevant today.

[33:58] David Armstrong: Exactly! The way it portrayed the struggles of different communities was groundbreaking for its time.

[34:28] Albert Evans: And the music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim are just timeless.

[34:58] David Armstrong: They really are. Moving on to "My Fair Lady," it’s another classic that won the Oscar.

[35:28] Albert Evans: "My Fair Lady" is such a beautiful adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s "Pygmalion."

[35:58] David Armstrong: Yes, and Audrey Hepburn’s performance is iconic.

[36:28] Albert Evans: Absolutely! The songs are so memorable, and they really capture the essence of the story.

[36:58] David Armstrong: Then we have "The Sound of Music," which is a favorite for many.

[37:19] Albert Evans: "The Sound of Music" is a perfect example of how a musical can uplift and inspire audiences.

[37:49] David Armstrong: It’s also interesting how it reflects the historical context of its setting.

[38:19] Albert Evans: Yes, the backdrop of World War II adds a layer of depth to the story.

[38:38] David Armstrong: And the music is just so uplifting.

[39:05] Albert Evans: It really is! Moving on to "Oliver!"—that’s another film that won Best Picture.

[39:35] David Armstrong: "Oliver!" is such a charming adaptation of Charles Dickens’ work.

[39:58] Albert Evans: And the songs are incredibly catchy. It’s hard not to sing along!

[40:28] David Armstrong: Finally, we have "Chicago," which brought a whole new energy to the film musical genre.

[40:58] Albert Evans: "Chicago" redefined the musical film with its modern take and incredible choreography.

[41:14] David Armstrong: It’s amazing how it won the Oscar in a time when musicals were not as prevalent in cinema.

[41:44] Albert Evans: Exactly! It showed that musicals could still be relevant and successful in the early 2000s.

[41:57] David Armstrong: So, as we look at these films, it’s clear that they not only won Oscars but also shaped the landscape of musical theater and film.

[42:27] Albert Evans: Absolutely! Each of these films has a unique story and legacy that continues to resonate today.

[42:57] David Armstrong: I can’t wait to see how the upcoming Oscars unfold, especially with "Wicked" in the mix!

[43:48] Albert Evans: Not in a social setting, but as an expression of who they are and as a representation of the action of the story should be even harder, but somehow the movie makes it work. And the Spielberg movie made that work to a great extent too. But we get the original Jerome Robbins choreography, which just can't be equaled. And I think that's an incredible achievement. This was the highest grossing movie of 1961. Again, a theme we'll get here with these movies. It won Oscars for Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, George Chakiris, Best Supporting Actress, Rita Moreno, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, Scoring of a Musical Picture, and Sound Design. Eleven Oscars. Wow. It deserved them. This is not a movie that I would quibble with and say, ah, that's just, you know. I'm with you there. And of course, its probably greatest achievement is it turned the stage musical, the property West Side Story, into an internationally beloved show.

[44:54] David Armstrong: Oh, certainly. I mean, the show was certainly an artistic success, although some people had walkouts because people just weren't in the mood for ballet dancing punks. But people always recognized that this was something new, something different, something truly artistic and something special. When that movie came out, I don't think I was in high school yet, but I remember that everyone was talking about it. Kids were talking about it. They weren't talking about, oh, they do ballet dancing. Teenagers were swept away by this movie. It remained one of their favorite movies, probably still is, those same teenagers. And the soundtrack album was something that you had to have. And that soundtrack album is one of the highest selling albums of all time.

[45:43] Albert Evans: Yeah. That's why the musical is still seen on stage, because people fell in love with it first through that movie. And it makes a great stage piece, but it introduces you to what that is and makes you want to see it on stage. All right. So we have two that we don't quibble with, Gigi and West Side Story so far. We don't question in any way whether this was awarded correctly or not.

[46:08] David Armstrong: So that brings us to 1964 and My Fair Lady. So in a way, it's sort of functioning as a sequel to Gigi rather than the other way around, at least if you only go to the movies and not to Broadway. So where do you stand on this movie? I'll just say one thing for my students. I make them watch 12 different Broadway musicals that have been some way preserved on video or on film. And my goal always in that is to try to find a version that's the closest to seeing it on stage and seeing the original production, if possible. Those two goals. If I could have a video capture of every show, that's what I would have them watch. I want them to have the stage experience rather than a film experience. But of course, that's not possible.

I don't choose to have them watch My Fair Lady, even though we spend a lot of time talking about the show and it's, you know, a key show in the history of the Broadway musical. I just find the movie to be too long, too overblown, and kind of a bore.

[47:08] Albert Evans: I'm with you there. I think that My Fair Lady on stage, really, it was such a hit. But I think it was because it was elegant. It was about this peculiar relationship between a, well, we all know what it's about. Again, it was like a somewhat older man and a younger woman and training her to become a sort of an experiment. But then as the original Shaw play Pygmalion, as the title of that would suggest, it's about an artist creating something that then escapes his control. The sets for the original that we can tell from lots of documentation were very sort of elegant, but spare. The movie is so overblown. I mean, Higgins' study alone seems like the lobby of a grand hotel or, you know, what is he doing living in this whole fleet of maids? And it's just...

[48:06] David Armstrong: Because he's not of the nobility.

[48:08] Albert Evans: No, I mean, he's, you know, his family obviously has money, and it's not the money that he brings in by teaching people to speak like a Duchess. Yeah, I just find that the movie is way, it's just colossal. Everything about it is colossal. Asgard is colossal. The ball is colossal. Everything works against that central story of this human relationship that's very interesting. It doesn't need gigantic sets. It doesn't need hats that are bigger than most people's apartments. I don't know, and I find it boring. I think Rex Harrison's too old by this point. I think that Audrey Hepburn doesn't do it for me, especially as the Cockney. She has too much inner elegance. She's elegant right from the beginning. There's not that much of a transformation except that she washes her face and cleans up her vows.

[49:01] David Armstrong: Yeah, I don't disagree with that at all. It's not a movie that I really look forward to watching, and I know it's some people's very favorite movie. I think they like seeing those big sets, and that's fine. I'm happy they're happy. And I do think the power and the magic of the Broadway musical does come through to a great extent. It's just sort of extended and drawn out and diluted by that. I still think that is a lot of what people are responding to. And Rex Harrison's performance, I agree with you, he is too old by this point, but of course we're thrilled that his performance was captured because it is one of the great iconic performances of all time. But it doesn't help, especially in contemporary times, to have the age difference between the two characters be so great, which it wasn't in the original Broadway show.

He's supposed to be, I don't know, 32 years old or something. He's not supposed to be a 50-year-old man, even in the play. His being older is not part of the story, necessarily. They're contemporaries to a great extent.

[50:04] Albert Evans: Yeah, I think it's a reasonable age gap for the time that he would be 10 or 15 years older than her, and that wouldn't raise any eyebrows. But now it's like, what are you doing? And saying, I've gotten accustomed to her face. Well, you shouldn't be accustomed to her face. You should leave her alone. To your point, a lot of what it's awarded has to do with the physical production. Rex Harrison will win Best Actor. It will win Best Picture, Best Director, but then Best Costume Design, Best Original Score, Best Production Design, Best Cinematography, Best Sound Mixing, Best Supporting Actor for Stanley Holloway, Best Film Editing, and Best Adapted Screenplay. Again, what we're blown away by is the production of it. But I agree with you, it's like he lives in Buckingham Palace. It distracts us, I think, from the story.

[50:57] David Armstrong: Yeah, and I think that the actual material is still very good. The songs are sensational. It's a great script. It's got good acting. But I just think it's so overblown that, to me, it doesn't seem all that important that these people become successful when they're already successful. They already seem like incredibly rich. I don't know. It just doesn't do it for me.

[51:18] Albert Evans: Well, and of course, it's ultimately a socialist story. So that even is probably part of why it feels weird, because the original impulse behind George Bernard Shaw is a story advocating for the collapse of the class system. Identifying the lie behind it all. And of course, then you make a movie that's just sort of so celebrating the extravagance of the wealthy, but not in a satirical way.

[51:49] David Armstrong: Yeah, very interesting.

[52:07] Albert Evans: Don't go away. David and I will be back with more Broadway Nation right after this quick break.

[52:15] David Armstrong: Thank you.

[52:28] Albert Evans: Now this brings us to 1965 and The Sound of Music. Arguably the most popular movie of all time.

[52:36] David Armstrong: And directed by the same guy who directed West Side Story.

[52:39] Albert Evans: Yeah, amazingly.

[52:41] David Armstrong: Oddly enough, because there could not be two more radically different properties.

[52:45] Albert Evans: Right. And he will win the Academy Award for Best Director. Again, I think, and you know, there's so many opinions. Obviously, it's a beloved movie. The world loves this movie. There are, of course, many people who never want to see it again. And they're, you know, turned off by it from its opening on Broadway through its reviews for the movie. The number one applied words to it are always sugary and treacly and all those kinds of things. Of course, the public didn't care. The public has always loved it. It is an incredibly well made movie. Again, part of what I think makes these movies win the Academy Award is the accomplishment of the filmmaking.

[53:26] David Armstrong: Yeah, there's so many ways that Sound of Music could have gone wrong on screen. I mean, it could have just been intolerable in the wrong hands, but they knew how to open it up. First of all, the casting was perfect. It's not my favorite movie, but it's not my favorite musical either. But the one thing that I think is sensational about it is the score. I think the score is perfection, you know, especially the Broadway score, because the songs match the characters. It's probably the whitest score ever written. I will say that it's the least jazzy score, but that's exactly what it should be, because those are among the whitest characters ever to exist. But Richard Rodgers just had a field day writing that music. Hammerstein's lyrics are perfect. Even the lark learning to pray, it's perfect for Maria. That's exactly what she would be impressed by. That's how she would express herself.

[54:23] Albert Evans: I'm not very fond of the kids in the movie. But again, what do you do? But they seem like Mouseketeers to me. They just seem too perfect, even when they get grumpy and when they get a little gretel in her finger, you're not happy with that.

[54:35] David Armstrong: Yeah, I think that's why she can't sing, but she's memorable. You're still talking about her.

[54:43] Albert Evans: Yeah, I'm still talking about her. You can't argue with the impact of the movie. It again is the biggest box office hit of 1965. And then goes on. I mean, that's just the beginning of its success. It would be then re-released and re-released. And then as TV and video and every new technological format, it has been a giant triumph in every aspect. I have to say it's one of those movies that you think, oh, I don't want to watch that again. Or you can feel like you might be tired of it or over it. But if you find yourself in the situation and it's on and again, it's a very long movie. But in spite of that, it just sucks you in. It is very captivating. Again, like Broadway musicals, as I always say, it's about something big.

It's about defeating fascism. That's what the movie is ultimately about. It may be a love story. It may be about nuns. It may be about kids. But really what's underneath it, Hitler is what's hanging over the movie. There's a genuine threat. It's not a threat of, oh, my mother-in-law is going to disapprove of our marriage. It's real. It's a genuine, it's something to fight.

[55:54] Albert Evans: Yeah. And, you know, in some ways, the love story is not that different from an American in Paris, except it's a man who's going to marry the wrong one and has to realize who he actually is in love with. But that's not really what gives the show power that it has. That's just the metaphor for telling that story. It's not what the story is actually about.

[56:15] David Armstrong: All right. That's going to take us to the center of my childhood, especially starting with The Sound of Music and now to Oliver, 1968. I am the perfect age to want to be Oliver or the Artful Dodger. Either one I would have taken had they cast me. I think we're going to disagree on this movie. I think this is a fantastic movie. I don't think it's just because I have such fond memories of it and was so drawn to it as a kid. I've rewatched that movie recently, and it has some of the overblown aspects of these other movies, but I think it pulls it off fairly successfully. And I think it's a vast improvement over the original Broadway musical, even though it's very faithful in many ways.

[57:04] Albert Evans: It's not a movie that I actually know very well.

[57:06] David Armstrong: Well, I'm like, what, nine years older than you are? I didn't want to be Oliver. No, I wanted to be a hippie. I just think it's lost almost entirely its Dickensian qualities. So I don't think the story is very interesting. Again, it feels overblown. It feels like this also was a story about social injustice and let's reform how we treat the poor. And I think that gets lost with, it seems like the poor at the least provocation will just break into a big musical number.

[57:31] Albert Evans: Who's the leading lady in it?

[57:36] David Armstrong: Shani Wallace.

[57:38] Albert Evans: Oh, yeah. Shani Wallace, I think is Nancy, is just too well scrubbed. I don't know, she just doesn't give any indication at all of what her place in society is. Just the actress herself just seems like she's on a TV variety show.

[57:53] Albert Evans: It's so interesting because you're not alone in that. Everybody who sort of grew up with the stage musical, whether they saw it or not, but with the album of the stage musical and with the idea of it, and Georgia Brown is such a rough character and I don't know how you describe her voice, but a rough voice in a way is the polar opposite of Shani Wallace. So I think that is a big challenge for people who, if that's their point of reference, then she seemed to be totally out of kilter. I think for myself, going into it with Shani Wallace,

[58:24] David Armstrong: So then, reflecting the culture of the late 20th century, we go from 1968 to 2002 without another musical winning Best Picture. And I'm sure some people thought it would never happen again because Hollywood was just so down on musicals and there was this belief that even though there had been a few hit musicals in that interim, that it was a genre from the past. But in 2002, we get Chicago and that will be the most recent. We'll see what happens this year. But up to now, that's the last movie musical to win the Academy Award. This, again, was a big hit movie. It also won the Oscars for Best Supporting Actress, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Best Art Direction, Costume Design, Film Editing, and Sound Design.

And it really put its director, Rob Marshall, and its screenwriter, Bill Condon, on the map, both of whom have gone on to do musicals. I know Bill Condon has the new movie of Kiss of the Spider Woman, which just opened at Sundance to rather great reviews so far. So that'll be interesting to see. So, what's your take on Chicago as a movie?

[59:51] Albert Evans: I liked it. I thought it was good. I thought it was smart, what they did of making everything sort of a fantasy sequence, because the original was not the most realistic musical.

[1:00:16] David Armstrong: Basically a review, and with incredibly stylized, purposely non-realistic format.

[1:00:20] Albert Evans: Yeah, right from the beginning, it was a vaudeville.

[1:00:30] David Armstrong: Yeah, and highly theatrical, highly meta, which shouldn't work in a movie. There's a downside to that, though. I think it reflects also this feeling in recent times of movie makers being embarrassed to be making a movie musical, and being so afraid of making a musical and having characters sing as part of the story, that they find any way they can to try to mitigate that. That's, for me, one of the most refreshing things about the Wicked movie is they don't shy away from that at all. They say, we're a musical, and we're not ashamed of it, and people sing as part of the story. It's just a substitute for dialogue. They talk and they sing. There's no difference between them in terms of the storytelling aspect, which I thought was great, because I was disappointed in this aspect of In the Heights, is they had to find a way to not really let it be a musical in that regard. They have to find some kind of device like they did in Chicago, where it's all in someone's mind. There's some workaround.

[1:01:29] Albert Evans: Well, if we could normalize human beings singing in a movie, I mean, actually singing in their thoughts and singing as though it's dialogue, that would be great.

[1:01:37] David Armstrong: Well, Wicked's going to go a long way toward that.

[1:01:41] Albert Evans: I think it probably will. I always talk about, we went away from musicals in the 70s and the 80s being popular or cool or whatever you want to think, because we got to this idea that they were just unrealistic. I think it's because a generation did not grow up with them and did not grow up with the vocabulary of them. The current generations of young people, there's several of them now, several generations, all grew up with Disney animated musicals, which are written exactly in a Broadway style, and that has normalized the vocabulary of the musical. They're much more willing to accept it and to respond to that than the Gen X generation, I think, which is the one that sort of turned away from musicals to a great extent. And we grew up with that vocabulary as part of what we were acclimated to.

[1:02:43] David Armstrong: I haven't seen the Wicked movie yet, but I noticed that in the trailers for it, there is singing, but you never see anyone singing. You hear those characters that you're actually seeing, but their mouths aren't moving. You hear snippets of the song sort of as part of the accompaniment, background music.

[1:03:05] Albert Evans: There's some weird marketing idea in Hollywood that you're going to turn off the audience by letting people know the movie is going to be a musical. And it's just weird because, of course, it seems to me like, well, then if they're going to be turned off by it, then they're really going to be turned off when they get to the movie and it's a musical. I don't get it. I don't understand. But it's part of the same sort of feeling that we have to be ashamed of being a musical. It's affected so many of these movies. It also makes them want to take out what I call the unacknowledged songs, which I hear is what they're doing in the Kiss of the Spider Woman musical. They've left out the songs that don't happen in the movie musical part of it that happened in the jail.

And apparently very successfully, I'm not condemning this entirely, certainly with the movie of Cabaret, which I think is one of the great movies of all time. And interestingly enough, did not win the Academy Award. Now it did have some competition. It probably would have won a year earlier, a year later, but it was up against The Godfather. So the fact that it did so well at the Academy Awards that year and that Fosse won Best Director is quite amazing and a testament to just how great that movie is. But that's a movie where he purposely left out all of the book songs, all of the unacknowledged songs and just used songs that happened in the Cabaret. And I think that was perfect for his vision on that.

But it sort of set a tone that people have tried to do. And especially when they do it inconsistently, like the movie of Dreamgirls, which I think is pretty good. But they leave out the book songs until they get to like they can't leave out. And I'm telling you, I'm not going. And it's like, well, now we're having a book song after we didn't have any. You've left out all those other ones. I think that's a challenge with movies is finding the right balance of that. And of course, Wicked stands out because it has bucked that trend to a great extent unashamedly.

[1:06:01] David Armstrong: So how do we wrap this up? Looking back at 10 musicals so far that have won the Academy Award for Best Picture, how would you summarize that?

[1:06:10] Albert Evans: I think the Oscars are largely industry driven. I think that voting is not necessarily even what people actually thought was their favorite or their best movie of the year. But what would benefit them most if it won? Because the people who vote for the Oscars are people who are in the industry. And so it's always going to be skewed, I think. I don't think it's going to be an honest vote of people's actual preferences. That said, you know, it's entertaining. I don't think it's an honest reflection of what actually was the best artistically of the year. But maybe that's not what it's for. Maybe it's not actually about artistry. Maybe it's about commerce. Or some mix in between.

[1:07:03] David Armstrong: Yeah. I mean, I think people like to believe that they're being honest. But still, if you work for MGM, you're probably going to vote for an MGM movie in the 1950s.

[1:07:12] Albert Evans: Yeah. And just to circle back to what some of you were saying before, no award given by any group of people is going to be entirely representative. You just have the critics decide what should be the best picture of the year, what was the best movie of any given year. That's going to be skewed, too. They might think they are trying to judge it just on its artistry as a work of art, but they often will have agendas as well.

[1:07:36] David Armstrong: Of course. Yeah. And as we see with the Tony Awards, and if you just did a People's Choice Award, of course, that's suspect as well, because then it's just sort of a popularity contest. With these movies, most of which were the highest grossing movies of the year, at least one of the biggest hits, they seem to achieve some kind of recognition both from the public and from the industry, at least, if not from the critics. In no way will it be perfect, but it certainly is interesting. We'll see how Wicked does, because I do think it has a chance this year.

[1:08:07] Albert Evans: I do, too. And no matter what, it is certainly in the category already of it's the highest grossing movie musical ever adapted from a Broadway show. And I think it's already achieved several other landmark categories as well. It's a giant hit. So we'll see very soon. Hooray for Hollywood.

[1:08:28] David Armstrong: Thanks, Albert. It's been great to talk to you, as always.

[1:08:31] Albert Evans: Thank you, David, for having me. I'll see you at the movies.

[1:08:34] David Armstrong: See you at the movies.

[1:08:36] ♪ Musical number: "Hooray for Hollywood" — performed by Albert Evans and David Armstrong ♪

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