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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.

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

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")

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?

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

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

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.