Showcasing the talented triple threats who can act, sing, and dance, these movies transport viewers to the utmost fantasy lands where characters break into song when emotions overflow, sometimes accompanied by elaborate, synchronized dancing. With theatrical flair, emotional performances, and beautiful songs, musicals account for some of the most entertaining movies of all time.
The ’60s movie musicals started strong with West Side Story. In this Romeo and Juliet style story, Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer, starred as two young adults from rival New York gangs who fall in love, causing additional tension between their respective groups. The 1961 film is considered AFI’s second best musical of all time and won ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Three years later, My Fair Lady, based on George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, was released. Audrey Hepburn played Eliza Doolittle, a flower girl who takes speech lessons from a snobby professor to become a woman of high society.
The Beatles began their movie career in 1964 with A Hard Day’s Night. It was followed by Help!, Magical Mystery Tour, the animated Yellow Submarine, and Let It Be, a documentary about the making of an album which inevitably filmed tension within the band, capturing the beginning of their break-up.
That was also the year of Mary Poppins, one of Disney’s most popular musicals, starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke in the story about a magical nanny who helps the family of an unhappy banker. Andrews captivated audiences again in 1965’s The Sound of Music. As a woman who leaves an Austrian convent, and becomes the governess for children of a widower in the Navy. The beautifully shot film won five Oscars, including Best Picture.
Broadway star Barbra Streisand made her film debut in the 1968 movie adaptation of Funny Girl. Loosely based on the life of Fanny Brice, the movie tells the story of a plain woman who becomes a star in New York while dealing with the complications of her marriage to a gambler. It includes two of Babs’ biggest hits: the high energy “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” and the softer emotion-filled “Funny Girl.”
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