13 Movie Musicals of the 1950s Ranked, Plus, Where to Watch Them
The 1950s was the decade of the American Dream. World War II and the Depression were fading in the rearview mirror and the future looked bright. The age of television was just dawning, but there was still something special about movies that kept theaters filled: singing, dancing, and a good time for all, in Technicolor and VistaVision.
No matter what real life lay outside theater doors — nuclear bomb tests, saddle shoes and bobby socks, the Korean War, suburbia, McCarthyism, McDonald’s, T-birds and Furys, rock ‘n’ roll, Disneyland, Brown v. Board of Education, Howdy Doody — Hollywood movie musicals promised a vintage world of imagination, magic and toe-tapping pizzazz.
Sometimes there was polish to these movie musicals: tuxedoes and ball gowns, shiny shoes dancing on glittery floors. Other times they took us to distant places like Paris or the South Pacific, or into the golden past, be it a frontier farm out west, an old South riverboat floating down the Mississippi or a cab up Broadway in the Roaring ’20s.
We wish we had room to dance through them all, but here are 13 of the top movie musicals of the 1950s.
1950s Musicals
November 2020
Bright and brassy, toe-tapping musicals from the 1950s
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It’s the 1850s, and a grizzled woodsman named Adam (Howard Keel) woos and marries Millie (Jane Powell), a pretty young cook. But when they return to Adam’s farm, she finds their cabin occupied by his six grungy brothers. What to do? Millie tries to teach the boys the manners needed to secure their own wives, but things go off the rails when instead they kidnap six local girls. Choreographer Michael Kidd worked some incredible magic transforming mundane farm chores like chopping wood and raising a barn into dazzling dance routines. Top songs: “When You’re in Love” and “Lonesome Polecat.” The film won an Academy Award for Best Music and is considered one of the finest movie musicals of the decade.
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High Society
Leave it to Grace Kelly to command center stage. In 1956’s High Society (a remake of the 1940 comedy The Philadelphia Story), she plays Tracy Samantha Lord, a socialite with three men wooing her: fiancé George Kittredge (John Lund), ex-husband and jazz musician C.K. Haven (Bing Crosby), and tabloid reporter Mike Connor (Frank Sinatra), who has come to town to cover the big wedding and fallen hard for her. Top songs: “True Love” and “You’re Sensational.” It was Kelly’s only appearance in a musical and her last film appearance before she quit the business to become Princess Grace of Monaco.
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Carousel
Based on the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein Broadway musical, Carousel (1956) starred Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones as carnival barker Billy Bigelow and mill worker Julie Jordan. Billy has been dead for 15 years and is called back from heaven to help with a problem on Earth. Many years before, Billy and Julie had fallen in love and gotten married, only to suddenly both lose their jobs. Billy and a friend attempt to rob the mill owner; they were foiled and Billy was killed trying to escape. Now Billy has a chance to finally do some good, finding a way to let his aggrieved wife and daughter know he will always love them. It was only one of three Rodgers and Hammerstein imports from Broadway that failed to garner an Academy Award nomination. Top songs: “If I Loved You” and “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”
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Show Boat
The 1927 stage musical by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II was so popular that two film versions had already been made, in 1929 and 1936. The 1951 MGM movie produced by Arthur Freed pulled out all the stops for this old South tale of high-stakes love aboard a musical theater sailing down the Mississippi. The film stars Kathryn Grayson, Howard Keel and Ava Gardner, who was just then achieving leading-lady status. Show Boat was one of the top-grossing films of 1951. Top songs: “Ol’ Man River,” “Make Believe” and “You Are Love.” Lena Horne had originally been considered for the part that Gardner was eventually offered, but executives were nervous about casting a glamorous Black actress in a lead role.
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Based on the 1949 stage musical, the Howard Hawks-directed Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)stars bombshells Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell as two showgirls with different tastes in men. Brunette Dorothy (Russell) likes fit, good-looking men; blonde Lorelei (Monroe) prefers men who love to give women diamonds. The two embark on a cruise to France, tailed by a detective hired by Lorelei’s wealthy fiancé’s father. Critics panned the movie, but audiences went crazy for the pairing of Monroe and Russell. Who can forget Marilyn’s performance of “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” in that iconic pink dress? Or the spectacle of Monroe and Russell at a promotional event for the movie, swinging low to set their prints in wet cement outside Grauman’s Theatre?
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An American in Paris (1951) is a song-and-dance feast from the George Gershwin songbook. George had passed in 1937, and MGM’s Arthur Freed purchased the Gershwin catalog from brother Ira. Jerry Mulligan (Gene Kelly) is an ex-GI who stays on in Paris after the war to become a painter. He falls for Lise Bouvier (Leslie Caron), but an American heiress (played by Nina Foch) is in pursuit of his paintings and more. The lush Gershwin score — orchestral and jazzy at once — is supremely matched by Kelly’s dazzling dance moves. The showstopper at the end is a 17-minute dance featuring Kelly and Caron set to Gershwin’s orchestral masterpiece “An American in Paris” and filmed on 44 sets in MGM’s backlot. The film won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and that year Kelly received an honorary Academy Award for his career achievements, specifically in choreography.
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White Christmas
Paramount’s White Christmas (1954) starred the paired song-and-dance tandems of Bing Crosby/Danny Kaye and Rosemary Clooney/Vera-Ellen and featured the songs of Irving Berlin, including the title song “White Christmas,” which Crosby had popularized in 1942’s Holiday Inn. Capt. Bob Wallace (Crosby) and Phil Davis (Kaye) are bonded in battle during World War II, and stateside they pair up in a successful touring show. While in Florida they meet up with sister act Betty and Judy Haynes (Clooney and Vera-Ellen). They board a train for Vermont and end up at a struggling country inn run by the boys’ former Army commander, Gen. Waverly (Dean Jagger). Top songs: “Snow,” “Love, You Didn’t Do Right by Me” and, of course, “White Christmas.” It was the top-grossing film of 1954 and went on to become a perennial holiday movie favorite.
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The King and I
Rodgers and Hammerstein continued their dominance of the Hollywood musical with The King and I, a Broadway hit in 1951 and box-office smash in 1956. A widowed Welsh mother, Anna (Deborah Kerr), becomes a governess and English tutor to the wives and many children of King Mongkut of Siam (Yul Brynner). Anna and the stubborn king clash over many English customs Anna is trying to teach, but with European nations now vying for the independent country’s business, the king knows he must adapt. Brynner came from the Broadway production, and the role of Anna passed to Kerr when Broadway actress Gertrude Lawrence died suddenly of cancer. Top songs: “Getting to Know You” and “Shall We Dance?” The King and I was the fifth highest-grossing film of 1956 and was nominated for nine Academy Awards, winning five, including Best Actor in a Leading Role for Brynner, Best Costume Design and Best Sound Recording.
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Carmen Jones
The 1878 Bizet opera about a cigarette maker named Carmen and a Spanish calvary officer was remade for Broadway in 1943, keeping the music of Bizet with a new book by Oscar Hammerstein II, who updated the proceedings to an African American military camp during World War II. Otto Preminger directed the 1954 Hollywood version starring Dorothy Dandridge as Carmen Jones, a worker in a parachute factory who gets tangled up with Corporal Joe (Harry Belafonte). Joe had been transporting her to jail when his jeep gets stuck, leading to a little romance between the two, much to the dismay of Joe’s fiancée Cindy Lou (Olga James). Dandridge and Belafonte were both accomplished singers, but neither had sung opera; so Marilyn Horne and LeVern Hutcherson supplied the vocals. Preminger tackled many uphill battles getting a movie with an all-Black cast made in Hollywood those days, but the film was a respectable success at the box office. Carmen Jones earned a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture — Musical or Comedy and a Best Actress Academy Award nomination for Dandridge, the first time an African American had been considered for that acting award.
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Guys and Dolls
A smash Broadway hit in 1950 earning a Tony for Best Musical, Guys and Dolls (1955) didn’t take long to make it to the big screen. Hollywood heavyweights Frank Sinatra and Marlon Brando play high rollers Nathan Detroit and Sky Masterson; Vivian Blaine reprises her Broadway performance as nightclub singer Miss Adelaide; and Jean Simmons is the prim Sergeant Sarah Brown of the Save-A-Soul Mission. There’s a big craps game, a romantic dinner, New York City high jinks, and lots of high-energy song and dance. Composer and lyricist Frank Loesser wrote three new songs for the movie, including “(Your Eyes Are the Eyes of) A Woman in Love” and “Adelaide,” written specifically for Sinatra.
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South Pacific
Another Rodgers and Hammerstein import from Broadway, South Pacific was one of the most popular movie musicals of the ’50s. The producers originally wanted Ezio Pinza and Mary Martin to reprise their Broadway roles, but when Pinza died suddenly, casting went to veteran musical actress Mitzi Gaynor and newcomer Rossano Brazzi. Set on a South Pacific island during World War II, the film stars Gaynor as a naive young nurse who falls in love with a secretive French planter (Brazzi) who the Navy wants to scout out nearby Japanese-held islands. Top songs: “Some Enchanted Evening,” “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair” and “Bali Ha’i.” South Pacific dominated the box office in 1958 and was the highest-grossing Rodgers and Hammerstein movie musical until bested by The Sound of Music in 1965. The soundtrack album was No. 1 on the charts for over seven months.
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Oklahoma!
A hit on Broadway (running for an incredible 2,212 performances starting in 1943 and revived again in 1951), the Rodgers and Hammerstein production made it to the big screen with very few changes. Set in the Oklahoma Territory prior to statehood, farmers and cattlemen struggle for dominance while their individual counterparts — cowboy Curly McLain (Gordon MacRae) and field hand Jud Fry (Rod Steiger) — vie for the affections of Laurey Williams (Shirley Jones). Showstopping numbers include “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’” and the title song. Oklahoma! was the first movie filmed in 70mm widescreen (it was also filmed in 35mm Cinemascope), playing in select theaters during the film’s opening “roadshow” (a practice that became common in the ’60s).
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Arriving at the dawn of television, Singin’ in the Rain (1952) looks back at how an earlier generation of Hollywood made the leap to a new technology — by singing and dancing. And boy, do they get it right!
Set in 1927, silent film stars and onscreen power couple Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) and Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) have great celebrity flash but little romantic spark. Both struggle to find their way into talkies. Don may do fine — he is an accomplished song-and-dance man — but Lina’s voice sounds like fingernails down a blackboard. Don takes a shine to chorus girl Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) and looks to pair with the better singer, but Lina isn’t going to be left behind.
The movie shines in so many ways, with the talents of the writing team of Betty Comden and Adolph Green matched superbly with the songwriting genius of Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown. Songs like “You Were Meant for Me,” “Broadway Melody Ballet” and the title song will have you dancing in the rain, which Kelly does as effortlessly as if there were sunshine in his shoes. Singin’ in the Rain did only so-so at the box office and garnered only two Academy Award nominations, but the movie has aged wonderfully, becoming a perennial favorite. The American Film Institute gave it a No. 1 ranking for best movie musical ever and ranked it the fifth best movie of all time.
