If La La Land takes the Best Picture award at the Academy Awards on Feb. 26 as expected, it will be the 11th musical to do so. The simple romance between an actress and pianist in present-day LA racked up an untenable 14 nominations. Two of the best, Meet Me in St. Louis and Singin' in the Rain, weren't even nominated. Two other great ones, Wizard of Oz and Cabaret, didn't pick up the Best Picture award for good reasons �" see Gone with the Wind and The Godfather. While Academy choices of Best Picture musicals may not all fondly endure, most offer more sonic pleasure than the insipid little ditties of La La Land .
Broadway Melody (1929) is as creaky as creaky can be, but it is essential viewing for the committed student of film musicals. As the second Best Picture winner, it was the first talkie and first musical so honored. Its merits are hard to decipher today, though Bessie Love's performance avoids the pervading rigor mortis. The thrill of movie sound and singing was brand-new, and director Harry Beaumont's camera is surprisingly fluid for the time. The backstage story wasn't fresh even then, but Broadway Melody became the template for many later musical retreads.
The Great Ziegfeld (1936) is an over-baked, half-risen MGM soufflé, aided by showcases for Fanny Brice and Ray Bolger and the welcome presence of William Powell and Myrna Loy. It's most remembered for its magnum production numbers. "A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody" still dazzles for the very reason it wasn't created by software, but rather was the result of an army of technicians, musicians, craftspeople, and artists working at the capacity of their powers at the mightiest studio of them all. Luise Rainer's brief and mannered performance as Ziegfeld's first wife also won an Oscar, demonstrating MGM's get-out-the-vote prowess.
Going My Way (1944) continued the Academy's tradition of questionable Best Picture musicals. As drippy as vanilla ice cream at a Fourth of July picnic, Going My Way is an Oscar oddity. Scene-stealer Barry Fitzgerald was nominated twice for the same performance in both the Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor categories. He won for the latter, while a warbling Bing Crosby in the same film took Best Actor. War-weary audiences loved the sentimental tale of lovable Irish Catholic priests, and it became one of the biggest moneymakers of the 1940s. The fact that it beat Double Indemnity and Gaslight for Best Picture looks scandalous today.
La La Land owes plenty to An American in Paris (1951), from its wistful lovers yearning for creative fulfillment, to its painterly set-pieces, dream ballet, and use of music to interrupt the movie's tenuous hold on realism. Though An American in Paris is unfavorably compared to actor-choreographer Gene Kelly's subsequent masterpiece Singin' in the Rain, it remains a worthy Best Picture choice, from its peerless treatment of George Gershwin's melodies ("I Got Rhythm" and "Our Love is Here to Stay" are fairly irresistible), to director Vincente Minnelli's innovative use of color, and the unsurpassed extended ballet that closes the film. A recent Tony-winning Broadway reworking suggests the film has legs.
Gigi (1958) is an original screen musical made when such things were on the endangered species list. A velvety beautiful film, Gigi had the finest pedigree of the day. Starring Leslie Caron and Maurice Chevalier, it was produced by MGM from a novella by Colette, directed by Minnelli, composed by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, and designed by Cecil Beaton. Gigi's reputation suffers from the notion that its story of a courtesan in training exploits women. But its titular pupil winds up with exactly whom and what she wants, and gets there with a lilting score and some of the most sumptuous Parisian location filming you'll ever see.
As original screen musicals disappeared, Broadway adaptations came to dominate the genre in the 1960s. West Side Story (1961), for all its musical and choreographic brilliance, was not a stage hit of the highest order, lasting just 732 performances. The film, however, did terrific business and won 10 Oscars, the most of any musical before or since. Stars Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer did rudimentary dancing, and their singing was canned, but everyone around them crackles with an electric energy inspired by Leonard Bernstein's great score.
More than any other winner, My Fair Lady (1964) reveals the hazards of a Broadway-to-Hollywood adaptation. The Lerner-and-Loewe smash was transferred with such reverence it looks like a stage recreation on expensive sets. Every note of its sacred score is preserved, as is every squint from its priggish anti-hero Henry Higgins, played by originator Rex Harrison. Choosing Audrey Hepburn over stage star Julie Andrews for Eliza Doolittle was the most obvious gesture by Warner Bros. that this Lady had "gone Hollywood." Ensuing box-office was spectacular.
After winning an Oscar the previous year for her screen debut in Mary Poppins, Andrews went on to star in the most popular musical of all time. Adjusted for inflation, The Sound of Music (1965) remains the third all-time biggest box-office. Something about Andrews' crystalline voice, the Austrian Alps, nuns, Nazis, and children needing new play clothes combined so effectively that Hollywood has yet to reformulate its success, despite many attempts.
The British-made Oliver! (1968), then as now, elicits mixed reactions. Its score is boisterous ("Consider Yourself"), delicate ("Where is Love?"), or torchy ("As Long As He Needs Me"), but something about its lovable-hateful villains, fetid Dickensian setting, child abuse, and murder competes with the film's strained upbeat spirit. Oliver! appeared when gargantuan, overpriced musicals were losing big bucks, and it would be the last musical to win Best Picture for 34 long years.
The most recent musical winner, Chicago (2002), solved the supposed problem of people busting out in song by staging numbers in the leading lady's fermenting imagination. With its rat-a-tat razzle-dazzle, quick edits, nourish lighting, and absence of slut-shaming, Chicago is the most Bob Fossesque musical Bob Fosse didn't make. He directed the stage original, but died before it landed on the big screen.
Will La La Land take its place among these winners? I bet yes. It's winning awards right and left, and everybody's green-lighting musicals again. When a genre is perceived as reborn because of one film, the industry love runneth over. Even more, Hollywood loves itself and the myths it spins.