Theater News

100 Years, 100 Songs — Partly Thanks to Broadway

How many of the American Film Institute’s 100 greatest movie songs can trace their roots to Broadway?

So did you see that TV special last week called The American Film Institute’s 100 Years, 100 Songs: America’s Greatest Movie Music? I was astonished to see so many Broadway titles on the list. That’s not because the songs themselves aren’t worthy. Of course they are — they’re show songs! But I wouldn’t have thought that the Film Institute would have allowed songs that originated on Broadway. After all, the Oscars, when choosing the Best Song of the Year, insist on the nominees having been written specifically for a motion picture.

But I understand why AFI embraced Broadway, and no fewer than 23 times. The songs are awfully good. Going from the lowest to the highest: “All That Jazz” (98), “Do Re Mi” (88), “Yankee Doodle Boy” (71), “Summer Nights” (70), “My Favorite Things” (64), “Tonight” (59), “Shall We Dance?” (54), “Summertime” (52), “Don’t Rain On My Parade” (46), “Luck Be A Lady” (42), “New York, New York” — the Bernstein, Comden and Green one from On the Town — (41), “America” (35), “Aquarius” (33), “I Got Rhythm” (32), “Some Enchanted Evening” (28), “Ol’ Man River” (24), “Somewhere” (20), “Cabaret” (18), “I Could Have Danced All Night” (17), “People” (13), “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend” (12) — which is awfully high for that song, don’t you think?), “The Sound of Music” (10), and “As Time Goes By” (2). Although that last-named song became popular through the 1942 film Casablanca, it’s one of ours, for it originated in a 1931 Broadway revue called Everybody’s Welcome.

Of course, all these lists are subjective, no matter how many people are in on the voting. But if the songs noted above made the cut, what about other worthy songs from the same Broadway musicals? I could list another 23 without batting an eyelash. Taking songs from the same films in the same order as I just gave them, there’s “Nowadays,” “The Lonely Goatherd,” “Give My Regards to Broadway,” “Those Magic Changes,” “Sixteen Going on Seventeen,” “Gee, Officer Krupke,” “Getting to Know You,” “Bess, You Is My Woman Now,” “I’m the Greatest Star,” “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat,” “Come up to My Place,” “Something’s Coming,” “Hair,” “But Not for Me,” “A Wonderful Guy,” “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man,” “Quintet,” “Wilkommen,” “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face,” “You are Woman, I am Man” “A Little Girl from Little Rock,” “Edelweiss” and — well, actually I can’t give an alternate title for each show without batting an eyelash because I don’t know another song from Everybody’s Welcome. I apologize.

But I’ll bet I can quickly name 23 worthy titles that were originally written for movies that should have been on the list but weren’t. Bet you can, too. I’d choose “The Tender Trap,” “My Kind of Town,” “All the Way,” “Young at Heart,” “True Love,” “It’s a Bore,” “Ah Still Suits Me,” “Mein Herr,” “Money Makes the World Go Round,” “An Occasional Man,” “Somewhere Out There,” “The Sweetheart Tree,” “Dear Heart,” “Call Me Irresponsible,” “Three Coins in the Fountain,” “Blues in the Night,” “Chattanooga Choo Choo,” “My Shining Hour,” “Belle,” “Alfie,” “Pass That Peace Pipe,” “Talk to the Animals,” and “Happy Harvest.” And that just scratches the surface of terrific Hollywood tunes.

You may have opted for “Over the Rainbow” or “Singin’ in the Rain” but I didn’t include them because they indeed made the AFI list as numbers 1 and 3. Both, as you know, have become “second-hand show tunes” — meaning that the musical theater has appropriated them in stage adaptations of films, be it on Broadway or in regional theater. In addition, I must admit that we have also borrowed “Stayin’ Alive” (9), “The Trolley Song” (26), “Swinging on a Star” (37), “The Way You Look Tonight” (43), “Fame” (51), “Thank Heaven for Little Girls” (56), “Beauty and the Beast” (62), “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” (76), “Arthur’s Theme” (79), “Springtime for Hitler” (80), “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead” (82), “Footloose” (96), “42nd Street” (97), and “Hakuna Matata” (98). This means that we’ve taken 16 of their songs while they’ve taken 23 of ours, so they owe more to us than we owe to them — for the time being, anyway. The number will soon swell to 17 when “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” (36) is heard in the stage version of Mary Poppins. Or should we make it 18, given that London and Broadway even used “Mrs. Robinson” (6) in the straight play adaptation of The Graduate? And we all fear that many more movie musicals will wend their way to the stage, where they’ll receive lackluster reviews, do middling business for half a season, then close at losses of millions of dollars.

Meanwhile, Broadway should get credit for a few other titles on the AFI list for it includes plenty of composers and/or lyricists who wouldn’t have been considered for the silver screen had they not established themselves on the Great White Way — like Rodgers and Hart (“Isn’t it Romantic?”, 73), Jerome Kern and Ira Gershwin (“Long Ago and Far Away,” 99), George and Ira Gershwin (“Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off,” 34), Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz (“That’s Entertainment,” 45), Kander and Ebb (“Theme from New York, New York,” 31), Harold Arlen (“The Man That Got Away,” 11; “Stormy Weather,” 30; “Get Happy,” 61), Irving Berlin (“White Christmas,” 5; “Cheek to Cheek,” 15; and “Puttin’ on the Ritz” — which is, by the way, attributed to Young Frankenstein and not the 1929 movie Puttin’ on the Ritz, for which it was really written). For that matter, one other Oscar-winning songwriter got her start on Broadway, albeit on stage: Barbra Streisand, who co-wrote “Evergreen,” 16.

All told, Broadway shows and/or songwriters are responsible for more than a third of the AFI’s hundred titles. As Clark Gesner would have said, “Not bad — not bad at all.” You’re welcome, Hollywood!

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[To contact Peter Filichia directly, e-mail him at pfilichia@aol.com]