Saturdays spent at
double and triple-features were not, unfortunately, part of my happy
childhood. My family didn’t go to movies
very often, if at all. By the time my
mother deemed me old enough to go alone with friends I’d moved to the suburbs
and the downtown theaters were no longer close by.
I actually can’t recall
one memory of going to the theater as a young child although I must have seen
some movies on the big screen such as101 Dalmatians or Snow White and the Seven
Dwarfs.
I’ve always envied the
silver screen memories of others my age or older.
When I was lucky, I saw
movies as reruns on the televisions that sat in my friends’ living rooms. That
is how I first saw Bye, Bye Birdie (released in 1963) when I was a young
teen. One viewing and I was hooked. I
asked for the soundtrack for Christmas.
My favorite was the Telephone Hour, sung by Ann-Marget and her teen
friends. I still know many of the songs by heart.
By 1967, I was going to
the theater with friends. However, I must have seen Camelot (1967) and Oliver
(1968) with my mother because we played the vinyl soundtracks over and over on
our turntable in the living room. I saw
Gone with the Wind with a large group of teenaged girls when it was re-released
on the Big Screen in 1967. We sobbed so
many times that we left the theater to the exterior bright afternoon light with
stuffy noses, red-rimmed eyes, and a love for Clark Gable.
Those days of my youth
might have been the last of the golden days of the movie musical, however. In “Musicals on the Silver Screen: A Guide to
the Must-See Movie Musicals” (2013), author Leonard Kniffel admits that
“musicals began a precipitous decline” as early as the 1970s. Oh, there is no
denying that it was the decade of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof and Liza Minelli
in Cabaret and the revolutionary era of Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar. And then the 80s brought in fun stuff like
Fame and Dirty Dancing but the great dancing and singing movies of the 20th
Century were over.
Leonard Kniffel’s book
is rich in detail of hundreds of musicals over the past century. It begins with
The Jazz Singer (1927) and ends with The Artist (2011) with some wonderful
description in between. There are whole pages devoted to Singing in the Rain
(1951) and Porgy and Bess (1959). It’s a terrific resource for anyone with gaps
in their musical history. (And, of course, the library is a fantastic resource
for all DVDs).
If you’d like to dance
down the movie musical lane, there are other books to check out. Some were
published 10, 20 or nearly 30 years ago but are still wonderfully annotated
volumes and relevant to the golden era:
“A History of Movie Musicals: Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance” (1983) by John
Kobal, “The Hollywood Musical” (1981) by Ethan Mordden, and “Hollywood Musicals
Year By Year” (1999) by Stanley Green. Two others focus on the melodies, so to
speak, in “The American Songbook: The Singers, the Songwriters, and the Songs” (2005) by Ken
Bloom and “The Melody Lingers On: The Great Songwriters and Their Movie Musicals
(1986) by Roy Hemming.
The best way to review
the history of musicals and film is, of course, on the screen itself. “Hollywood Singing and Dancing: A Musical
History” (2008), “MGM – When the Lion Roars” (2009) and “That’s Entertainment:
The Complete Collection” (2004) are three DVDs with multiple discs and hours of
home viewing.
This summer the library
is presenting a 7-part film series focused on the Broadway Musical on the
Silver Screen.
The series began on
July 10 with the latest 2012 release – Les Misérables starring Hugh Jackman,
Russell Crowe and Anne Hathaway. Tom Hooper’s version, released Christmas Day 2012, is a magnificent
cinematic version of the 25-year old Broadway musical. My favorite characters
(Thénardier and his wife, Madame Thénardier) are played by Sasha Cohen Baron
and Helen Bonham Carter.
The series continued on
July 17 with a made-for-TV version of South Pacific (2001) starring Glenn Close
and Harry Connick, Jr. (The 1958 version
starred Rossano Brazzi, Mitzi Gaynor and John Kerr.)
Five more musicals on
Wednesdays at 6:30 PM complete our Summer Film Fest: Broadway Musicals on the
Big Screen. They are Dreamgirls (2006) on July 24, Rent (2005) on July 31,
Chicago (2003) on August 7, Evita (1996) on August 14, and Sweeney Todd (2007)
on August 21.
Film fests at the
library are a tremendous value and library staff delights in dreaming up
different themes each season. In the summer months, we screen one movie
each week. Our Simoni Room is comfortably air conditioned and seats up to
70. (Over 55 people attended the screening of Les Misérables on July 10.)
Movies begin by 6:30 PM sharp in order to end before the library closes at
9:00 PM and registration is required.
Please call the library to sign up for each movie. Movie popcorn is always provided free of
charge and it is graciously donated by the Regal Cinemas in Bellingham,
MA. All movie screenings are free to
the public and are legally licensed for an audience. That license is purchased for us by the
Friends of the Library. This summer the
Friends have also provided one door prize each week. A lucky attendee
leaves with the movie soundtrack of the musical that is shown that night.
While sing-along-voices
are not required for attendance, we hope each viewer feels free to sing and
dance during and after the show. It’s
important to note that most of the movies shown in the evening film fests are
meant for adult audiences. Many of the
films are rated PG13, but some like Sweeney Todd are rated R.
We hope we see you at
the movies!
