Spirit Re-cut of Mine from Pocahontas
I’ve never seen Spirit (its not by Disney), but this recut with the Disney’s Pocahontas song was done pretty well and by golly, I like it.
Make Em Laugh
A great sequence from Singin in the Rain.
Allegedly stolen as a re-working of Be A Clown.
Be A Clown
Gene Kelly and Judy Garland From the 1948 musical “The Pirate”. Aurthur Freed allegedly plagiarized this classic Cole Porter song for “Singing in the Rain”…he called it “Make em laugh“. Whilst Irving Berlin was visiting the set, he told author Freed:”Who wrote that song?” very sarcastically.
UPDATE From StraightDope.com:
The finale of The Pirate (1947), with a score by Cole Porter, is a number performed by Gene Kelly and Judy Garland called “Be a Clown.” In Singin’ in the Rain (1952) Donald O’Connor does a famous routine to a song called “Make ‘Em Laugh,” whose music is identical to that of the earlier song and its lyric nearly so. Its authors, however, are listed as Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed, who wrote the rest of the movie’s score. How come? Were there any lawsuits? Both movies were produced by Arthur Freed, which may mean something. –Elizabeth B., Chicago
Dear Elizabeth:
Arthur Freed, the producer responsible for most of the MGM musicals of the 40s and 50s, began his career as a songwriter. “Singin’ in the Rain” was part of Brown and Freed’s score for MGM’s first “all talking, all singing, all dancing” musical, The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (the song has since been used in five other films, counting A Clockwork Orange).
In 1952, Freed decided to use his songbook as the basis for an original musical, as he had done with Jerome Kern’s songs in 1946 (Till the Clouds Roll By) and George Gershwin’s in 1951 (An American in Paris). Freed assigned Betty Comden and Adolph Green to build a screenplay around the available material, with Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly to direct. When the time came to shoot, Donen decided that Donald O’Connor needed a solo number, and couldn’t find anything that worked in the Freed catalog. Donen suggested that Brown and Freed write a new song, pointing to Porter’s “Be a Clown” as the sort of thing he thought would fit in at that point in the script. Brown and Freed obliged–maybe too well–with “Make ‘Em Laugh.” Donen called it “100 percent plagiarism,” but Freed was the boss and the song went into the film. Cole Porter never sued, although he obviously had grounds enough. Apparently he was still grateful to Freed for giving him the assignment for The Pirate at a time when Porter’s career was suffering from two consecutive Broadway flops (Mexican Hayride and Around the World in Eighty Days).
Good Man Charlie Brown at Tony Awards
From the mid 90’s. I watched this cast do a segment on the Rosie O’Donnel show and liked it. Didn’t become familiar with he musical until my high school did it the year after I graduated.
Video from the 53rd TONY AWARDS YOU’RE A GOOD MAN, CHARLIE BROWN with KRISTIN CHENOWETH, B.D. WONG,ANTHONY RAPP. MY NEW PHILOSOPHY & HAPPINESS
Pocahontas: Mine Mine Mine
A wonderful token villain song of greedy, capitalism, and general plundering of natures recourses in disregard for anyone or anything but your own self gain. Its meant as a precautionary “look how bad they are” tale, but I of course love it for the bad reasons. The song also serves as a “just in case you forgot” moment that the entire movie is propaganda to remind us that Natives = good and noble, Whites = bad and greedy.
The Muppet Show: Time in a Bottle
I watched this many times on a Muppet Special I had on VHS that was essentially a clip show. One of my all time favorites.
An unnamed scientist conducts self experiments with rejuvenating drugs in his laboratory. Jim Henson voices the line of Muppets who drink the series of different potions and becomes younger after each verse until he reverted to his initial age to sing the final line of the song. He changes his voice gradually on each verse from the gruff old man to the fresh faced young chemist, delivering the last line in a melancholy and familiar tone. Just wonderful.
From episode 31 of “The Muppet Show” with special guest star Edgar Bergen.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame: A Guy Like You
The 3 Disney added characters of talking Gargoyles sing a cheer up song to Quasimodo.
Charlie Chaplin: Modern times
Opening of the movie. Modern Times is a 1936 comedy film by Charlie Chaplin that has his famous Little Tramp character struggling to survive in the modern, industrialized world. The film is a comment on the desperate employment and fiscal conditions many people faced during the Great Depression, conditions created, in Chaplin’s view, by the efficiencies of modern industrialization. The movie stars Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Henry Bergman, Stanley Sandford and Chester Conklin. It was written and directed by Chaplin, and marked the final screen appearance of the iconic Tramp character.
In 1989, this film was deemed “culturally significant” by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
Modern Times is often hailed as one of Chaplin’s greatest achievements, and it remains one of his more popular films. The iconic depiction of Chaplin working frantically to keep up with an assembly line inspired later comedy routines including Disney’s Der Fuehrer’s Face, an episode of I Love Lucy titled “Job Switching”, and most recently, an episode of Drake & Josh.
This was Chaplin’s first overtly political-themed film, and its unflattering portrayal of industrial society generated controversy in some quarters upon its initial release.
It is important to note that in this Chaplin film, Modern Times, that all the sounds in the film only came from and through machines such as a television or display (Boss yells at him through this device), a phonograph, radio, and machines (sounds of machinery). The reason this is important because all these sounds are used to dehumanize the main character, a factory worker. Also, this film gives us an aspect of how the average factory felt like in those times, because you see how the main character is put under immense pressure (by the head boss and his supervisor) to perform his duties, far beyond his physical abilities.