Get Happy with Movie Musicals!

Nowadays, Movie Musicals are basically geared towards kids. I think the last decent movie musical I saw was "Moulin Rouge" with Nicole Kidman. In the 1930's all the way to the 1950's Hollywood turned out fabulous, happy, uplifting movie musicals and  they're only a rental away.

It was during the great depression and on into the war years of the 1940’s that the world’s songwriters produced hundreds of upbeat, inspirational tunes that kept people optimistic about the future and put a spring in their step. It was a time when audiences flocked to movie theaters in an effort to forget their troubles and “get happy” while filmmakers worked overtime keeping up with the demand for "feel good" musicals.

The films of the 30’s and 40’s can teach us a lot about our own hard times. Victims of the depression and families living through WWII didn’t sit around feeling sorry for themselves, blaming others for their problems. Instead, they sang songs of promise like Over the Rainbow and We’re in the Money. They were fortified by high spirited, motivating musicals like 42^nd Street and Yankee Doodle Dandy. People everywhere found themselves celebrating the end of the depression and the war long before it actually came to pass. Although success seemed impossible to achieve, simply imagining it was thrilling and singing about it was exhilarating. I personnally believe hundreds of thousand of people singing about their hopes and dreams, helped make it happen.

Of course, President Roosevelt had a hand in the equation too, like putting together The New Deal which stimulated employment and bolstered the arts and entertainment industries. President bashers who called his program overly socialistic were soon defused after taking in a Hollywood feel good movie such as The Little Colonel. In that delightful 1935 musical, movie politics reached a new level of correctness when tap dancing Shirley Temple and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson shattered the long-standing Hollywood taboo of interracially paired partners.

Today, socially responsible movies and government programs equating to The New Deal are slow to come by. Our lack-fearing governments cut programs for the arts while profit-hungry filmmakers opt for disaster movies over success stories. It’s really sad. Why can’t we learn from the past? In times of unbridled fear and widespread unemployment, the entertainment industry of the 30’s and 40’s proved to be good medicine. The movies and songs of the time were a powerful force in boosting moral and getting people motivated to make a difference.

Choreographers like Busby Berkeley, songwriters George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and so many others propelled a stagnant population into action and turned fear into hope. James Cagney personified the unstoppable American spirit as George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy. In 1942, Betty Grable, who had become Hollywood's top wartime pin-up girl showed off her million dollar legs in Springtime in the Rockies and Hollywood’s romantic, screwball comedies showed a nation how tension could turn into bliss in a moment’s time. Audiences ate it up and radiated the same healing energy.

Every once in a while a modern piece of entertainment will come along that lifts our spirits and dispels our poverty consciousness. One example is Pixar’s delightful, award-winning animated film, WALL-E. Working selflessly to clean up a world destroyed by the over-accumulation of garbage, Wall-e the little android, finds daily inspiration in an upbeat tune, Put On Your Sunday Clothes, salvaged from the old musical, Hello Dolly. The song is addictively heartening and more than succeeds in supporting the film’s uplifting message.

Check it out.

We can always turn to Hollywood for inspiration, or we can sing out our heart's desire ourselves. A one or two-line cheery ditty keeps you positive and is remarkably effective in transforming dreams into reality.

My favorite happy tunes are funky, jazzy, urban, vaudevillian and Broadwayesque. Maybe that’s because I grew up in same neighborhood as Woody Allen and a lot of us were funky, jazzy movie-crazed overly optimistic Brooklynites. Maybe my semi-unconscious Pollyanna persona and view of the world simply stems from the fact that for years I wrote and produced programs about 30’s and 40’s movie stars for the Turner/Time Warner networks. And if you're wondering, I'm decades younger than Woody.

Still, you don’t have to be a Broadway musical maven to sing a happy tune in the shower or the street or to your pet Zhu Zhu. Just give it a try. If you'd rather just watch - rent a Marx Brothers movie. And while you're thinking about it, get happy listening to the infectious mood lifting music videos below.

It got the Brits through the war and it can get us all through the hard times. Check out this kinky modern media version of The Sun Has Got His Hat On. Jolly good fun.

We’re In the Money - lyrics by Al Dubin, music by Harry Warren. This is the famous opening song from the film Gold Diggers of 1933, performed by Ginger Rogers. All musical scenes in the film including this one were choreographed by the legendary Busby Berkeley. Love those racy costumes… and the second verse is in “Pig Latin”!

You’re never too young to appreciate Jiminy Cricket singing When You Wish Upon a Star. This uplifting tune is from the soundtrack of Disney’s Pinocchio - 1940

The original 1936 Pennies From Heaven by Johnny Burke and Arthur Johnston was first introduced by Bing Crosby in the movie of the same name; however, this version, from the 1981 movie Pennies From Heaven with Steve Martin, Bernadette Peters and Vernel Bagneris (singing the title song), is brilliant.

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