Best Little whorehouse in Texas?
I wonder if one could be made about TER and the people who connect through it??

Wher else would you get both "Singin in the Rain" and Beethoven's Nith Symphony with visuals which wont quite running in your brain, for decades [psycho-synaptic conditioning which, ironically, is a primary theme of the movie]

so is All That Jazz.  Chicago is really well made and fun.  All the performances are amazing given their pedigrees.

Singing in the Rain...Loved it.!! Also, Funny Girl....Barbra..She's the best...Kiss Kiss,Robyn

The Man of La Mancha

All ranges of human emotion from despair and hopelessness to triumph of the spirit. Most uplifting musical I ever saw.. Les Miserables comes a distant second. But Man of LaMancha is the greatest..

America's great contributions to the world of music are the musical theater and jazz.  Here's a sort of personal top 10.  Some of the others mentioned in this thread are also among my favorites.  
And there are many more great ones.

Oklahoma
South Pacific
Show Boat(the 30's movie, with Paul Robeson, not the remake)
Kiss Me Kate
Singin In the Rain***
Paint Your Wagon (NOT the movie, which was completely miscast and f***ed up everything.)
The King and I
Kismet
Brigadoon
Anything with Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald.

Guys and Dolls
West Side Story (most fantastic collaboration of talent ever)
Oklahoma
Man of La Mancha
South Pacific(especially the song "You've Got to be Carefully     Taught"
And more recently:

Les Miserables (most opera-like musical)
Rent
La Boheme
The Producers, which turned out as funny or funnier than the film.

Worst rip-off in Broadway history:

Evita

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I hate "bonnet" musicals -- My Fair Lady, Meet Me In St. Louis, The Music Man, Oklahoma. They're so ... so ... ASEXUAL. And The Sound of Music? BARF-O-RAMA. Julie Andrews is beautiful in that perfectly symmetrical picture-post-card take-this-girl-home-to-mother sort of way, and has a wonderfully clear and effortless voice, yes. But do I find her captivating? Gawd no! Could you EVER imagine her in something nasty, like stockings or a merry-widow or the musical Chicago? No bloody way. She wasn't type-cast as a nanny TWICE (and then the SEQUEL!) for no reason. She comes across as just about as anatomically incorrect as those strange gaps between the legs of a Barbie Doll or a G-I-Joe.

My favorite musicals are RAUNCHY and EARTHY and deep-down PASSIONATE. Pal Joey. Forty-Second Street (not so much, but almost). Guys and Dolls. Anything Goes. Or ...

... all time sexiest Broadway-style musical production ever ...

Kiss Me Kate.

It's too darn hot ... too darn hot ...

After one of the dancers falls injured and is carried off, the director asks the remaining dancers what they will do when they can no longer dance. "What I Did For Love" expresses the emotional drive that keeps these dancers focused, ever hopeful and free of regrets.  http://www.musicals101.com/chorus2.htm

WHAT I DID FOR LOVE

Kiss today goodbye,
The sweetness and the sorrow.
Wish me luck, the same to you.
But I can't regret
What I did for love, what I did for love.

Look my eyes are dry.
The gift was ours to borrow.
It's as if we always knew,
And I won't forget what I did for love,
What I did for love.

Gone,
Love is never gone.
As we travel on,
Love's what we'll remember.

Kiss today goodbye,
And point me t'ward tomorrow.
We did what we had to do.
Won't forget, can't regret
What I did for love

Music Marvin Hamlish / Lyrics by Edward Kleban
http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/achorusline/whatididforlove.htm

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there's nothing I hate more than a good musical.  I don't know why that is - I love music.

-Anya

Okay,

You forgot Carousal, Camelot, My Fair Lady, The Most Happy Fella,
Guys and Dolls, Gypsey, and Sound of Music..

Like your List. Totally agree with you on South Pacific. It was extremely bold for 1949 to be dealing with issues of racial prejudice, but that musical really was a plea for tolerance...

Evita was a rip off. However I finally did see an Andrew Loyd Webber Musical I liked... Phantom of the Opera was magnificent..


The most powerful song from any musical is Aldonza's song(Man of La Mancha) after she is raped... Never forgot that scene......

I am surprised you feel that way. Musical's are truly an American idiom that were developed here.. Long heritage. There is such a diversity of style, that surely you must have found one that you liked? Some of them today are more operatic or rock like.. For example ever see Chess?  Or even Tommy,by the Who is many respects a musical.. Curious as to why you would hate them...

Beautiful music and production, and a fantastic story. What else do you need?

Miss Saigon.

You can apply that logic to about almost anything.. Every medium has its good and its bad.. Curious as to what would turn somebody off to a whole category...

Damn I knew I liked you. Those are 2 of my favorites...add to them "Brigadoon" and "On the Town"..the only flick I ever liked Sinatra in....

hairdo, and my eyelashes all in cuuuurls....I float like the clouds on air dooo...I enjoy being a girl....


Damn I love that movie.

Was Debbie does Dallas a musical..............??

LOL there Ferangi,  thou i have to vote for Paint Your Wagon and the Phantom of the Opera, as well as CATS.

There.. You found two.. Really good ones. THe genre is so wide that there is something for everybody.. I love them, but it is not something I go out and see every weekend. Maybe one or two a year..

Totally forgot, Guys & Dolls...I can't believe I didn't remember, I lost my virginity to a guy that reminds me so much of Brando in that musical..Hubba Hubba...Back-seat of a 57'Chevy...steamed windows and all...I became a Woman....what a night...Oh Baby..!!

Totally forgot, Guys & Dolls...I can't believe I didn't remember, I lost my virginity to a guy that reminds me so much of Brando in that musical..Hubba Hubba...Back-seat of a 57'Chevy...steamed windows and all...I became a Woman....what a night...Oh Baby..!!

Sinatra was always better as a dramatic actor on film than as a singer in a musical.  Note:  From Here to Eternity, and my personal favorite Sinatra role in a most chilling firm, "The Manchurian Candidate".

Actually I just posted here to thank you, Lass, for completely draining my cell phone of available minutes this afternoon (still your AM I suppose).  It was the highlight of the week.  See you soon.

F.

Aldonza'a Song should have been posted as a song that would bring you to tears.  It did that to me, and still does when I listen.  They just opened a revival of La Mancha on Broadway.  I should get tickets.

Perhaps you're not picking anc chosing them properly.  They are an acquired taste I think, and it took many years for me to enjoy musicals.  You just have to sort through a lot of drivel that comes out disguised as musicals that people run to see.  There are also different types of musicals.  Many of my friends only enjoy certain types.  My taste runs toward classical music and opera, so something like Les Miserables or La Boheme is more appealing than most.  If you're more into comedic entertainment then there's a huge volume of wonderful musicals out there (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, The Producers, etc.).

If your taste runs more towards modern rock-type music, the Tommy, truly a rock opera, and Aida (Sir Elton John) may be for you.

.....the only instrument played in that show was the skin flute.

Actually,the only thing stranger was the author of the novel, Anthony Burgess.  He was my undergrad English Lit. professor.

I think there was some drumming to on the bongos.. or ass cheeks.

But I did not hear any real lyrics except for slurping..

The Phantom of the Paradise is one of Brian de Palma’s most enjoyable hour-and-a-halves. It was written back in 1969 when De Palma was still in experimental form. De Palma has designed the film as a parody of the oft-filmed The Phantom of the Opera (1925) - all conducted as a hilarious parody of seventies glitter rock. Although not just satisfied with The Phantom of the Opera, De Palma also throws in spoofs of Faust, The Picture of Dorian Grey and the Universal Frankenstein films. Not to mention a really funny parody of the Psycho (1960) shower sequence - the first and funniest of numerous Hitchcock quotes that would turn up in De Palma’s films - here The Phantom slips on the soap in the shower as he tries to swing his knife. Just as much as the horror genre, De Palma conducts wild and hilarious swings at 70s glam rock - with De Palma and songwriter/star Paul Williams winding in send-ups of every imaginable musical style from The Beach Boys to Alice Cooper to retro-50s rockers like Sha Na Na.

The above is from a review by Richard Scheib.

The film is available on DVD.

One of my favorites also.  The last thing that Rogers and Hammerstein wrote together before Hammerstein died. One of my favorites is Edelweiss.. Simple tune that conveys so much love and regret a man has for his country that he is going to have to leave.

Still...if you ever want to be really inspired see Man of LaMancha if it ever comes to town.. and get the original broadway recording...

Barbara is great.. Very few can hold a candle to her.. But in terms of broadway star power.. sorry. that award goes to either Ethal Merman or Mary Martin.. Both who don't have anywhere the range or beauty of Barbara's voice, but somehow take command of a show tune, and belted them out like nobody else...

I think Barbara could have done alot more on Broadway if she had wanted too.. Actually a shame..

I would think that would fall right down in your area...

Or La Cauge Falle?  CHicago?

WHo is in it? By the way I thought about posting the lyrics to that song it could go under most passionate lyrics category, but I thought it would be way to heavy..It would blow everybody away..

Its the only musical that consistently brings tears to my eyes every time I play the damn CD.. Especially that song, and then the finale, when all the prisoners unite to sing the Impossible Dream to Cervantes, as he is lead up by the guards to face his real trial...

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I think it would have come off the same even if they did it in the style of Kabuki.