The Musicals List REDUX

[Matt]

The problematic "Pass That Peace Pipe" from Good News might be at the top of my musical numbers list. Joanie McCracken (Bob Fosse's first wife and a key influence on him) is just pure irrepressible joy here, and the way the set seems to subtly and imperceptibly expand to accommodate more and more tightly packed dancers is just amazing to see.

My #2 might be the 6+ minute "I Left My Hat in Haiti" from Royal Wedding—one of those numbers where MGM pulls out all the stops. It starts as a solo Astaire song-and-dance, then expands to include extreme Technicolor hues, a couple dozen dancers, a highly mobile camera, the old MGM conveyor belt, moving sets and scrims, pounding drums and blaring brass, and live animals.

In a similar but lesser vein is Ann Miller's "The Lady from the Bayou" in Hit the Deck. She's impossibly sultry and barefoot, heavily made-up, and accompanied by 6 male dancers in the tightest jeans and t-shirts you've ever seen. They slide around on the floor, Miller walks on their backs, they toss her around like a rag doll. It's not a particularly great number—the song isn't much and it feels too short—but it's colorful, lively, and fun and a little sexy.

I could probably include every number from All That Jazz in my list, but I'm really particular to the opening, which isn't really a musical number but a dance audition montage set to George Benson's "On Broadway." It includes one of my favorite shots in Fosse's oeuvre, a close-up of a dancer's foot moving forward with the camera slowly pushing forward along with it. And several rapid cuts between dancers leaping into the air, or their hands rising into the air, or spinning so that the motion just seems to continue beyond the cuts. The whole thing is just so beautifully staged and cut, and it introduces Joe's wife and daughter and the producers of the show, and wordlessly gives you a lot if insights into Joe's character. There's a lot going on in just one little scene.

But then again, on the topic of Fosse, I might have to put "Mein Herr" from Cabaret at the top. We all know it's a tremendous performance by Liza and she makes it look so easy. There's a video of Broadway's extremely in-shape Aaron Tveit (star of, among other things, Fox's Grease: Live!, which seriously might have to go onto my full list) doing the singing and choreography live, without half the verve or finesse of Liza's dancing, and he is soooo winded and wiped-out by the end. Corbin Bleu (of High School Musical fame) did the same. With both these men's performances in comparison to Liza's, I'm reminded of Samuel Johnson's quip about women preachers: "..like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all." Of course, part of what makes the Fosse version work so well is the integration of the deadpan backup dancers into the staging, and you can't get that on a stage.

Then again, who am I kidding? The ne plus ultra of musical numbers might always be Judy Garland's full "Born in a Trunk" flashbacks-within-a-film-within-a-film sequence from A Star is Born that's so big it overlaps itself. Or at the opposite end of the spectrum from all these showy numbers, the one-take "The Man That Got Away" number from the same film. As flabby as the final product might be, she's at the height of her singing, dancing, and comedic powers in this film, and no more so than in these two numbers.

With the exception of All That Jazz, I don't think any of these full films would make my top twenty, so it will be a lot of fun to have this separate list to be able to call out the best moments in otherwise okay-to-good films.

[Never Cursed]

Alright, I'll do the numbers list! Precise rules to come in the next couple days, but it'll be a sliding scale of 25-50 numbers using the same stipulations for points as the main list

[Never Cursed]

The Musical Numbers List
(ends December 26)

PM me, Never Cursed (not domino), a list of 25-50 musical numbers by the morning of December 26. The list will be tabulated in the same fashion as the main list (i.e., your top 25 will "weigh" the same amount regardless of how long your main list is).

A number is a more-or-less uninterrupted sequence in a film containing musical instrumentation, almost always paired with sung vocals and/or choreography. The boundaries between numbers in films are often permeable, and I am happy to count several songs performed continuously or extended sequences using many pieces of music as one number and thus one vote in the list, as in several of the examples listed below. However, even films which use a score that runs throughout the entire work (The Tales of Hoffmann, Zulawski's Boris Godunov, Les Parapluies de Cherbourg) have obvious breaks between numbers or sequences, and ballots should include discrete sections of these films rather than entire acts of a film.

You can vote for a maximum of two numbers from an individual film.

Musical numbers should be from films that otherwise qualify for the main list (i.e., are feature-length narrative or revue film musicals). Musical numbers in otherwise non-musical films, like "Llorando" from Mulholland Dr., are not eligible, though I will accept special cases where the film is largely about musical performance and there is a great deal of music and/or dance performed on-screen. An obvious example of such a case is "The Ballet of The Red Shoes" from the eponymous Powell and Pressburger film, which is eligible.

Please format your list of submissions with the title of the number or identifying information about the number followed by the title of the film. IMDB is a useful resource for films that do not provide clear titles for numbers. For instance:

1. "Dancing in the Dark" (The Band Wagon)
2. "Stillman's Gym/Baby, You Knock Me Out" (It's Always Fair Weather)
3. "Beautiful Girl Montage" (Singin' In The Rain)
4. "The Ballet of the Enchanted Dragonfly" (The Tales of Hoffmann)
5. "That One Part in Hellzapoppin' With The Crazy Aerials" (Hellzapoppin') (It's actually called "Congaroo")

[soundchaser]

It's hard to watch Girl Crazy without thinking of what would become of both Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland in their later years. That this almost unbearably charming and bright pair could develop into such malformed adults - personalities twisted into egomania and, conversely, a totally shattered sense of self - makes it hard to go back to this stuff with fresh eyes.

But even trying to set that aside, what's here is no great shakes. The script is largely to blame, but the charisma vacuum that is the cast outside of its leads certainly doesn't help. There are some highlights, namely the "I Got Rhythm" finale, which is seriously great, even by Berkeley's standards. It's less abstracted than some of his other work, but that fits here, in what's a much more straightforward "fish out of water" comedy. It would be odd for Garland and Rooney to be totally swept up into the void, and Berkeley smartly lets their syncopated dancing together be the high point of the whole number. Garland's "Embraceable You" is pretty good, too - definitely the best of the non-Berkeley dances here. I'm less sold on the rest. (The instrumental "Fascinatin' Rhythm" with Rooney's piano solo is pretty good, but it does nothing to save the fundamentally boring story.)

I haven't seen any other Garland/Rooney musicals, but supposedly this is the best of the bunch? Not a promising start.

Also, man, Letterboxd reviewers do NOT like Mickey Rooney. Have they never seen Drive a Crooked Road?

[domino harvey]

He’s an acquired taste (that I don’t have) but I think he catches strays in perpetuity from a lot of folks for Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I think Drive a Crooked Road is excellent (as is his other noir, Quicksand) and the Human Comedy is all but forgotten (it was once an Important Movie) but worth seeing as well (not a musical)

The Garland/Rooney movies are functionally all the same (let’s put on a show) but some are better than others. Not really worth finding out which ones are which though

[soundchaser]

I like him a lot as Santa in the Rankin/Bass TV movies, but I recognize that's well into his "elder statesman" period.

[knives]

I in all honestly like him a lot and have to assume it’s not just nostalgia though it might be. The Black Stallion and also Captains Courageous are two other roles that I think work really well.

[domino harvey]

Camelot (Joshua Logan 1967) One of my last major unseen musical from the period, this loose musical adaptation of the Once and Future King is simultaneously impressively ornate and well-designed in its sets and yet frustratingly bound to them for all action of the film, much of which is described as it occurs offscreen. The songs are all bad and forgettable, which I expected going in and hardly merits mentioning. Richard Harris as the eyeliner wearing, somewhat fey King Arthur is a choice and in a film that doesn’t make many, I’ll give it some partial credit. Vanessa Redgrave is actually quite sexy in this, but I doubt I’m alone in finding her much more interesting in the first act when she’s flirting and collaborating with Harris and much, much, much less so in anything involving Franco Nero. David Hemmings’ bratty Mordred feels like the biggest missed opportunity here. This was released at the cusp of the flower power movement, and it would be so easy to lean in a little more into his antics as being more generally anti authority. As a villain, though, he’s too inert and his animosity is too cruel in contrast to how Harris plays the king. I guess I can also award minor points for admitting this three hour musical doesn’t feel that long, but ironically it’s because so little does happen in it that it breezes by like waiting for your oil change and spacing out in a cracked vinyl chair. 50s/60s musical inclinations in this direction (R&H etc) are such an unknowable mystery in the gulf of taste. You can keep it, Kennedys!

Monsieur Aznavour (Grand Corps Malade & Mehdi Idir 2024) Standard issue musical biopic with a staggeringly miscast Tahar Rahim as Charles Aznavour. In the last ten minutes of the film he indeed does look startling like him, but there’s a lot more movie here before that and beyond questionable physical resemblances, Rahim reduces Aznavour too frequently to a grotesque caricature painted in broad strokes. There’s exactly one unexpected moment in the entire film, when the filmmakers bleed a recording session into a rap song’s interpolation of the Aznavour track, but it sticks out because its anachronism is out place with everything else here. And focusing exactly thirty seconds total on Aznavour’s film career is also a missed opportunity within this medium. I mean, hello? I enjoyed Patients by these directors a lot, but this felt like the worst kind of shallow, technically accomplished but empty filmmaking that exemplifies so much of awards bait (and this even failed at that beyond a pity Cesars nom for Rahim)

[swo17]

I guess this is ineligible but S04E06 of Game Changer aka "Welcome to Mountport" is worth a viewing concurrent to this project. It's a half-hour game show episode in which the contestants improvised a musical. Here's how it starts

[soundchaser]

I'll second swo's recommendation. The spin-off series that followed didn't appeal to me as much, but "Mountport" is stunning. I'd vote for it if it were eligible.

On a different note, slowly working my way through some MGM filler. The Affairs of Dobie Gillis is a baffling one - some truly transcendent song and dance numbers ("You Can't Do Wrong Doin' Right" is on my longlist now), but an absolutely unbearable set of leads. Even Debbie Reynolds gets sucked into the vortex of insufferability with Bobby Van at its center. What on earth is his appeal?

[domino harvey]

Even Debbie Reynolds gets sucked into the vortex of insufferability with Bobby Van at its center. What on earth is his appeal?

Watch Small Town Girl and you’ll get what Van can bring (and what perhaps no one else could have done). TV show of Dobie Gillis was way better (and had Tuesday Weld and Warren Beatty in it early on), but I do like the movie as an apologia for selfishness, which does seem sort of eternally youthful

[Matt]

Bobby Van... What on earth is his appeal?

Watch Small Town Girl and you’ll get what Van can bring (and what perhaps no one else could have done).

Good lord yes. He should be a legend for the hopping number alone. He's also fun on old episodes of Match Game with his wife Elaine Joyce.

[brundlefly]

I guess this is ineligible but S04E06 of Game Changer aka "Welcome to Mountport" is worth a viewing concurrent to this project. It's a half-hour game show episode in which the contestants improvised a musical. Here's how it starts

I'll second swo's recommendation. The spin-off series that followed didn't appeal to me as much, but "Mountport" is stunning. I'd vote for it if it were eligible.

Thirded. This single half-hour improvised musical brought me more joy than most anything I've seen in the past few years, even though the phrase "improvised musical" was before among the least enticing phrases I'd ever heard. "Mountport" is utterly re-watchable. The songs are winners. It strikes such a perfect mix of sincerity and flippancy that it has made me tear up. I want to be watching it again right now. (It's also remarkably wholesome, and if it weren't for host Reich's swearing, would be perfect for children.)

Zach Reino and Jessica McKenna are masters at working both musical and story tropes. It's a joy watching them process real time reactions to what the other is planting (as in this Good Will Hunting song). Reino is a natural at clean melody and dropping fills (this mock-Supremes song is dandy). McKenna can treasure untangling knots she's made for herself. Play it by Ear, the show soundchaser mentioned, has its highlights, but it is heavy on Theater Kid Energy and (at least as far as I've gotten through its run) has not produced anything as crystalline as "Mountport."

(Further afield from topic, another worthy Game Changer episode that uses the format as an excuse to platform talent brought in the Improvised Shakespeare Company to do "A Game Most Changed".)

[Tom Amolad]

I'm not quite sure where to post this, but it concerns a British musical from 1930 ("Why Sailors Leave Home") and an actress who became the subject of a rather more famous musical (Jean Ross, treated not entirely acccurately by Christopher Isherwood as Sally Bowles). I just came across this bit from an interview with her daughter Sarah Caudwell (the author of some fabulous comic novels).

Jean decided that sexual inexperience was hindering her stage career, so she deliberately set out to lose her virginity. 'She went off and had an affair with a fellow actor because she thought this would give her the experience to play great tragedies,' says Sarah. She was never a Lady Macbeth nor a Cleopatra; instead she secured a part on a film called Why Sailors Leave Home. Again this proved a great source of embarrassment to her parents.

'Jean was told they wanted a girl who looked Arabic and could speak the language. She took the part, not admitting that she could only remember the words she wasn't supposed to use. So she did the love scene with the sailor who had left home, saying in Arabic: 'You frightful son of a bitch. I hope you rot in hell.' No one knew any better until the film was shown in Alexandria.'

This would seem to be Jean Ross's only film appearance. (She went on to do stage work with Max Reinhardt in Berlin). Is the film, or even this clip, anywhere to be had?

[Never Cursed]

The last few months have been UNBELIEVABLY busy for me, so this is all I've had time to get to:

Boris Godounov (Andrzej Żuławski): Apparently this is mad-genius Żuławski's last swing-for-the-fences, large-budget, high-concept production, and it's...shockingly good for a genre so far away from the rest of his '80s work. Though many auteurs were either naturals for the form or were able to channel their approaches into excellent musicals, Żuławski and Michael Powell are the only two I can presently think of who are able to make a direct opera adaptation work (though I should get around to Bergman's Magic Flute). I don't think it's a coincidence that both of them do so by leaning as hard as they can into the performed artifice of the operatic form. But where Powell's bejewelled, setbound masterpiece The Tales of Hoffmann is drawn from an approachable and cosmopolitan comic opera, Żuławski is adapting both a very serious, disturbing story and one that requires a synopsis to make any sense of. (I was glad to have some Russian history buff friends explain the context of the film to me before actually seeing the film, and I doubt it would even be comprehensible if one went in blind). With all this in mind, Żuławski's decision to populate his film with several different layers of fourth-wall-breaking, both on the level of frenetic cutting between locations and the operatic stage and exposing the cameras, lighting equipment, and crew used to accomplish specific shots, is a dizzying, strangely grounding, and cathartic method. It at once visually bounds his story and makes his trademark frenetic blocking possible by incorporating rather than shooting around multiple setups. On paper, it's a choice that sounds like a terrible gimmick for gimmick's sake, but Żuławski makes it work quite well. I presume all of his movies are full of rage, but this is the sole example I've seen where he controls and channels it. Fierce, compelling, and worth seeking out even as it languishes in distribution hell (the sole legal way to see it with English subs is to import a French blu-ray).

Daddy Long Legs (Jean Negulesco): There's a limit to what I can add to what domino, who has been beating the drum for this movie for literal decades, has already said about it, but this is an unfairly pilloried masterpiece and one of the best musicals of an overstuffed decade. The principal objections raised to it, namely the age-difference of the central romance and the extreme length of the dream/nightmare ballets, are in fact two of its greatest strengths. That Astaire and Caron at once cannot and must fall in love is, in typical Altman fashion, the actual plot of the film (to the point that I wondered if that disciple of the other Altman was thinking of this movie when he made his own questionable age gap romance flick). The problem of their relationship is what differentiates the movie from other musicals, imbues it with its somewhat uncomfortable humor, and allows for the inevitable third-act acceptance of the coupling to be so impactful. The dream ballets twist this component of the film and give it shape and space in delightful choreographic form (probably at its best in the sequence when Astaire adopts the dress of a David Niven-esque playboy and mows down a throng of women). In other words, I don't think the movie is advocating for what it is depicting so much as it is just depicting it playfully and with great style and craft. What more can you ask of most comedies?

Oh, and I like Sluefoot too. Sue me. So, so many of Astaire's musicals have a dumb dance craze number, so why not have it be attached to a song that's actually fun?

The Hole (Tsai Ming-liang): Unfortunately this is very bad and condescending as a musical - Tsai recognizes that musical numbers can represent people's hidden or libidinal desires, but he doesn't stage them with much wit (save one semi-long take at the end of the number with the female backup singers) and uses them to poke fun at rather than explore his main characters. If there is a purpose to his using the songs of the same peppy pop singer, it isn't apparent to me as an outsider to that musical scene. In other words, I think the musical aspects of this ostensible music are ineptly strung together, the semantic contents of a musical assembled without its genre syntax. The movie's apocalypticism isn't much more productive, and the much-discussed disease is a mere collection of Meaningful Symptoms. I've enjoyed other Tsai movies (Goodbye Dragon Inn and Stray Dogs), but this feels like a collection of tropes and techniques in search of a point.

Honeymoon (Michael Powell): A huge disappointment given the pedigree and obvious talent of everyone involved. Powell's directing work is surprisingly unconfident, and he leans way too hard on the least interesting element of the film, namely, its structure as a travelogue. The result is not so much a movie as a sequence of staged exhibitions of locations, stereotyped regional "culture," and technically impressive but empty dance sequences. A good tourist picture could have been made out of any one of these elements, but Powell doesn't seem to know what to do when he is out of the studio (forget The Pajama Game, this is an excellent demonstration of the crushing weight that real locations can impose on musical numbers), and neither of the leads are well-suited to their parts. Anthony Steel is completely DOA, and Ludmilla Tchérina, excellent in several of Powell's other films, is not a good match for an endless stream of wittering dialogue. I also don't understand why she was kept out of the big centerpiece ballet with the Léonide Massine appearance - why not use her? It doesn't surprise me to hear that their parts were written for other people (Paul Scofield and Moira Shearer, respectively), but, given how the film turned out, it doesn't surprise me that they turned the movie down.

I Love Melvin (Don Weis): Super-cute folk misadventure musical following lovable dreamers Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds. I was worried going in that the movie would be some kind of Singin' In The Rain b-side, but its lower stakes and focus on a bunch of nice if (madly) driven social strivers makes it quite distinct. TWBB did a very good job dissecting how the movie seizes upon the potential for O'Connor and Reynolds to play with the gender roles of the time, but the thing I liked the most about their pairing is that

Spoiler

they don't end up remarkably bettered at the movie's close. A big production like Singin'... or The Band Wagon all but requires the leads to not just find each other, but also vocational success through each other, and I liked how similar their "happy ending" was to their very first meet-cute. Ultimately these are two ordinary people who complete each other in a very ordinary way, in spite of the bizarre circumstances that led them to each other. The movie has an uncomplicated if tricky optimism to it that I found refreshing when placed alongside many others that attempt, successfully or otherwise, to be clever or smart. Sometimes you don't even need that.

The numbers are all very impressive too - what at first appears to be the worst one of the bunch (the "kid gives advice" song) quickly becomes the best as O'Connor straps on a pair of roller skates and zips in and around a gazebo. It's such a perfect encapsulation of his character, flying deftly and just a little too fast at play with another kid. If there's one thing he took from his Singin'... co-star Gene Kelly, it's the latter's ubiquitous sense of play and joyful immaturity. Though even if you've seen the movie, you haven't seen all of the film's musical numbers, as MGM shot what is either an alternate version of the opening number or an extended ending that survives!

It’s Trad, Dad! (Richard Lester): The first and only Termite Art musical? Fun songs, great jokes, mostly ad-libbed and at the expense of everyone in the film or watching the film, and not a single thing else. It makes for an interesting comparison with obvious antecedent The Girl Can't Help It (and Gene Vincent even sings in both movies), which trods similar ground in a funnier and more satisfying way. Tashlin's film isn't quite as anarchic, though, despite being even more of a live-action cartoon than Lester's, a difference that I'll chalk up to Lester's willingness to jump into the realm of the non-sequitur. Some of the song choices are very, very strange, though - maybe this was a licensing or song ownership thing, but I'm not sure why you'd get Del Shannon and Chubby Checker to show up in your movie and not have them sing their big hits. Props to the movie for introducing me to Gene McDaniels, though - his Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse is worth a listen for the funk-heads out there.

Love Me or Leave Me (Charles Vidor): Exhausting, misogynistic biopic following Doris Day's showbiz career being continually disrupted and screwed over by her repulsive lowlife husband James Cagney. That his character's basis was a huge piece of garbage in real life seems indisputable, so I'm not sure why the film makes Cagney (nominated for an Oscar despite turning in a mannered, tin-eared, awful caricature performance) a co-lead and grants him a modicum of redemption after spending two hours tormenting and abusing Day. He terrorizes, beats, and rapes her, to say nothing of the violence he inflicts upon other people, but you gotta understand - he was lonely and in love! He's not well-constructed as a character - some kind of creeping fall into darkness would have been more appropriate for Cagney's arc than him being a selfish monster from the beginning. Day plays the put-upon victim in a way that runs contrary to her typical screen presence and strengths as an actor. The part demands someone who projects vulnerability and social weakness and who doesn't seem capable of going blow-for-blow with Cagney (apparently Day was cast after Ava Gardner refused the part, which, uh, good for Ava Gardner?). Day's real love interest Cameron Mitchell has no traits other than playing piano and being in love with Day. And there are a bunch of musical numbers, most of which consist of Day standing stock-still in the middle of a stage and belting out a song with Meaningful Subtext. Overall this movie does a good job of confirming that the worst, most maudlin traits of Hollywood musical biopics have a storied history.

Mahler (Ken Russell): Practically incomprehensible if viewed without the context of Russell's specific attachments to the titular figure (and gripes with how seemingly everyone else in the world viewed/views him - I wonder what Russell would have said about Lydia Tár), but fun in spots. The real issue, as with the other stuff by Russell I've seen, is how seriously he takes most of his overamped material - the campy, goofy, gratuitous parts of the movie are so much more entertaining than the more typical stretches of biopic/artist-at-work stuff. I don't think either half actually says anything profound about Mahler or his music (he was super driven and had a tempestuous but hyper-attached relationship to his wife? Ya don't say?), so why not consistently go to the aesthetic extremes of him converting to Catholicism to appease Sexy Dominatrix Cosima Wagner?

The Pajama Game (Stanley Donen): Something's gone pretty wrong in the execution if I end up with knives out for the lefty Technicolor Doris Day vehicle. I think this was at once a case of too many cooks and too great a sense of reverence for the Broadway show. The supporting cast members that the movie retains from the stage production are all broad, dreadful muggers (the rummy shop steward is especially awful, and his climactic act of "comic" violence is misplaced and should have been excised), and John Raitt is a useful teaching example of a talented stage actor whose skills do not translate at all to film. Pity that Howard Keel had just been kicked out of MGM, as reteaming him with Day would probably have been the studio's best option. Most of the songs stink too, though "There Once Was a Man" and the goofy "Steam Heat" are fun. Unlike domino, I don't even think the location shooting is all that problematic - it gets in the way of the picnic sequence, but not that much else. The real issue is that no one in these sequences except Day knows what they're doing.

Royal Wedding (Stanley Donen): Take a shot every time they say the title! Not much to latch onto outside of the numbers that Astaire is involved in, but at least they're pretty well-choreographed, though the big Caribbean climax is a lousy waste of money that's just big for its own sake. Also, is it (and the movie in general) a little incestuous, or is that just me? MGM could have saved about a half-million dollars and ended the movie on the number that people actually remember from the movie. Astaire's British romantic partner is pretty dreadful too, but you should read her Wikipedia page to see who she was and what else she was up to during her life. I actually said "what the fuck" out loud when I saw whose daughter she was.

[Matt]

Oh, and I like Sluefoot too. Sue me. So, so many of Astaire's musicals have a dumb dance craze number, so why not have it be attached to a song that's actually fun?

Excuse me, are you maligning the "Ritz Roll and Rock" number from Silk Stockings? If so, good for you, because I can't skip it fast enough every time I watch this otherwise pleasant musical. Got to be one of Cole Porter's lowest moments as a songwriter. Worse even than "Niña" from The Pirate.

Royal Wedding (Stanley Donen): Astaire's British romantic partner is pretty dreadful too, but you should read her Wikipedia page to see who she was and what else she was up to during her life.

You know it's going to be a good read when there's a whole separate "Alcoholism" section in addition to a "Personal life" section.

You can tell they wanted to cast a Deborah Kerr type in this film and somehow ended up with an nepo baby with all the screen appeal of a rusty nail.

[Never Cursed]

Oh, and I like Sluefoot too. Sue me. So, so many of Astaire's musicals have a dumb dance craze number, so why not have it be attached to a song that's actually fun?

Excuse me, are you maligning the "Ritz Roll and Rock" number from Silk Stockings? If so, good for you, because I can't skip it fast enough every time I watch this otherwise pleasant musical. Got to be one of Cole Porter's lowest moments as a songwriter. Worse even than "Niña" from The Pirate.

I still need to see Silk Stockings (say that three times fast), so no! This was more about the climactic numbers from some of his '30s musicals - "let's do the Carioca/Piccolino/Continental" etc. Obviously the choreography is on point in all of these numbers, but the songs are usually not so hot. The best one is whichever one is in The Gay Divorcee, obviously.

And don't say anything bad about "Niña"!

[domino harvey]

Silk Stockings is def one I’ve come around on, though “Stereophonic Sound” has always been an all timer. I’m due a rewatch on Pajama Game too. Welcome to the Daddy Longlegs team - as Phil Silvers says in Lucky Me, we’re a small group, but we’re bad