Sunday, Jul 6, 2008
Leaving the theater I began fantasizing about what a new movie of "My Fair Lady" could be like, replacing in my head the anonymous performances I'd just seen with the likes of Bob Hoskins as Alfred Dolittle, or Emily Watson or Rachel Weisz as Eliza. And who would be a good Higgins? Hugh Grant? Eddie Izzard? But, of course, back in October, the movie musical was a dead genre.
The reasons for that are complicated, but at the root are two movies: "West Side Story" and "The Sound of Music," two of the stinker musicals of all time (I know that's considered heresy regarding the former) and, at the time, the two most successful movie musicals ever. Hollywood responded by trying to outdo itself with ever bigger productions, and in the late '60s, turned out a string of ruinously expensive flops: "Dr. Dolittle," "Star!" "Camelot" (which at least is a fascinating failure, with a great performance by Richard Harris and a riveting, eccentric one by Vanessa Redgrave), "Paint Your Wagon" and "Hello, Dolly!" There were good movie musicals in this period: "Funny Girl," "Oliver!" "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" (a special case: The songs are dreadful, but the performances by Petula Clark, Sian Phillips and, especially, Peter O'Toole are superb), and, a few years later, "Fiddler on the Roof" and "Cabaret."
Something else had happened. As Pauline Kael noted in a piece at the time, somewhere along the line, musicals came to be regarded as family entertainment. That was death for the old conception of musicals as snappy and cynical. With Rodgers and Hammerstein ruling the roost, shows with the attitude and sophistication of "Pal Joey" or "Guys and Dolls" didn't stand a chance. But "family entertainment" and the idiotic Rodgers and Hammerstein conception of songs growing "organically" out of a show (who goes to a musical expecting realism?) was also a gravestone for the light, offhand, romantic-comedy tone that had defined the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movies and the great "small" movie musicals of the '30s like "Hallelujah, I'm a Bum!" (recently restored on DVD and one of the joys of American movie musicals).
The success of "West Side Story" and "The Sound of Music" came a few years before the changes that would come to be felt in society and therefore in movie audiences, changes that were already in place when the studios kept trying to duplicate their success. Kael wrote that the late '60s should "be the best time for movie musicals since the early '30s, when the talkies took up the great revue stars of the stage -- Fanny Brice, Astaire, and the Marx Brothers and all the rest."
She went on to argue that the studios, tied to the old way of doing things, were more willing to risk millions on an elephantine production than considerably less on a smaller movie musical. "Don't the studios," wrote Kael, "know that there is an audience for Aretha Franklin and Grace Slick and Janis Joplin and Flip Wilson and dozens of others? American movies did less with Ray Charles in the '50s and '60s than they did with Fats Waller in the first years of talkies."
This is the chance that studios have right now, not only with the explosion in hip-hop and dance music, but with the comic stars who have emerged over the last few decades. There is an audience right now for Missy Elliott and Kylie Minogue and Beyoncé Knowles. What could established comic talents like Bill Murray and Lily Tomlin do in a musical? What could Steve Martin do if he were ever given another chance after "Pennies From Heaven," for my money the greatest American movie musical ever made?
Since movie musicals have always depended on great comic supporting characters, think of what Cedric the Entertainer or Wanda Sykes could do. What about the performers who seem to be descended from Eric Blore, Edward Everett Horton, Franklin Pangborn and Eugene Palette, the great eccentric character actors of the '30s and '40s? I'm thinking of people like Steve Buscemi, Jon Lovitz, David Hyde Pierce, Brittany Murphy, Philip Seymour Hoffman and others. Think of how charming those two actresses with the '30s sweetheart faces, Emily Watson and Maggie Gyllenhaal, might be in a musical.
Part of the excitement of watching "Chicago" is not just imagining the new talents that could brighten movies but imagining the new sides that established performers might be able to show off. There's a special excitement in seeing Zellweger and Zeta-Jones and Gere, performers we thought we knew as well as we could, sing and dance -- spectacularly. And there are others.
Get Salon in your mailbox!