Your Five Favorite Songs and Dances [by David Lehman]

I sometimes think that the ideal form for some poems may be the table of contents. Inveterate list-maker that I am, I am quite certain that the list or catalogue qualifies as a distinctively American form though hardly an indigenous one. Whitman’s lists in “Song of Myself” rank at the top of anyone’s list of great nineteenth-century list poems, and I’d argue that Cole Porter’s You’re the Top should occupy a similar position in the modern period.

Today, with Hollywood on my mind, I thought I’d offer up a pair of top-five lists, one devoted to the best performance of a song, the other to the best dance sequence, in classic American movies.

Songs:

1)      Over the Rainbow / Judy Garland / Wizard of Oz / Harold Arlen (music), Yip Harburg (words)

2)      As Times Goes By / Dooley Wilson / Casablanca / Herman Hupfield

3)      The Man That Got Away / Judy Garland / A Star is Born / Arlen & Ira Gershwin

4)      Well, Did You Evah? / Sinatra and Crosby / High Society / Cole Porter

5)      I'm Through with Love / Marilyn Monroe / Some Like It Hot / & Gus Kahn with Matt Malneck and Fud Livingston

6)      Bye, Bye, Baby / Marilyn Monroe, Jane Russell and male chorus / Gentlemen Prefer Blondes / Jule Styne & Leo Robin

7)      NY NY / Kelly, Sinatra, Jules Munshin / On the Town / Bernstein with Comden and Green

I see I got carried away and listed seven. Just think of it as a five-way tie for third place.

Dances:

1)      “Singin' in the Rain.” Gene Kelly. Singin' in the Rain. Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed.  

2)      “Never Gonna Dance.” Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Swing Time. Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields,

3)      “Cheek to Cheek”: Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Top Hat. Irving Berlin.

4)      “Yankee Doodle Dandy”. James Cagney. Yankee Doodle Dandy. George M. Cohan. 

5)      A toss-up between Astaire and Cy Charisse at the “Dem Bones Café” in The Band Wagon (Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz) and “America” (choreography Jerome Robbins; Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim), in West Side Story.

One virtue of such lists is that they reward the impulse toward inclusiveness.

Another is that they invite readers to counter with a rival list after voicing their outrage: How could he have left out “Comedy Tonight” from Richard Lester’s 1966 film version of Sondheim’s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum? Or "Wilkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome," the great opening number featuring Joel Grey and chorus in Cabaret (1972)? How about Gene Kelly and Vera Ellen doing Rodgers’s “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” in On Your Toes, or Kelly on roller skates in It’s Always Fair Weather, or Dan Daley's drunk scene in the same movie, or the ballet that Kelly and Leslie Caron perform in Gershwin’s An American in Paris? About my own list, I note only and without comment that among composers only Harold Arlen and Leonard Bernstein appear more than once; among the performers, this is true of Sinatra, Astaire, Kelly, Marilyn Monroe, and Judy Garland.

And, David, can you really overlook the Bernard Herrmann song that loudly serenades Charles Foster Kane at the top of his career as a newspaper magnate?

And Dean Martin and company singing "That's Amore" in The Caddie ain't chopped liver.

Perhaps, in another post, I will talk about background music (like the stirring strain  Elmer Bernstein created for The Magnficent Seven or the march he wrote for The Great Escape) with a special sidebar on Herrmann's contributions to Hitchcock's movies.

Please nominate your favorites. -- DL

Comments

[The Best American Poetry]

My favorite movie dance is Fred Astaire's Bo Jangles of Harlem number in Swing Time. He's paying homage to the famous and brilliant Bill Robinson. The choreography is brilliant. Astaire is unstoppable, he seems to barely touch the dance floor, and this at the end of roughly ten minutes of grueling energetic dancing! I think his use of the shadows is among early special-effects. And a few years ago I saw his influence on Mark Morris, in a dance where the male dancer partners with a row of twenty or so females, one behind the other. There's a lot to say about "Bojangles." Find it on youtube and then find a clip of Bill Robinson and you will see how Astaire is paying tribute.

[Grace Cavalieri]

David.You make my grey skies blue. These songs make up the fabric of my life--
the beautiful illusions that are there for our taking. I cry when I hear any one of them because they're the dreams we're left with.

[Leo Braudy]

I'll just do one riposte, David: Your list of great dance moments (except for America) generally skews to the individual performer rather than the group. I'd add the three couple dance in On the Town and, especially, the barn-raising sequence from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.