Top 100 Musicals

Sittin' on top of rankings is Gene Kelly's Singin' In The Rain
Sittin’ on top of rankings is Gene Kelly’s Singin’ In The Rain when looking at critic and audience rankings

Want to know the best Top 100 Musicals movies?  How about the worst Top 100 Musicals movies?  Curious about Top 100 Musicals box office grosses or which Top 100 Musicals movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Top 100 Musicals movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information…and alot more.

Over the years we have received many requests to do UMR pages on genres.  Besides doing a Sports movie page we have pretty much ignored those requests.  We ignored those requests because we could not figure out a way to put together a page on a whole genre. Recently we stumbled across a book called Musicals by Daniel Cohen.  In that book Cohen looked at the best of the best musicals from the 1920s to the mid 1980s.  At the end of the book was a filmography of all the movies in his book.  That seemed like a great starting point for us to finally do a UMR page on musicals. Here are rules we used when putting together this page.

(1) If Cohen listed the movie in his book…the movie made the page. (2) Although we are not really huge musical movie fans….a few of the musicals we actually like….did not make his book.  So we added our favorite musicals like Paint Your Wagon (Clint singing…. how did that not make the book?) and The Rocky Horror Picture show.  (3) Then we included movie musicals made after Cohen’s book was published.  (4) We did not include Biopics.  Yes movies like The Buddy Holly Story, Coal Miner’s Daughter and La Bamba have lots of music but almost all of it occurs on a stage or in a studio.  (5) We also did not include album movies like Purple Rain and Pink Floyd’s The Wall or most of the Disney animated classics….with the exception of Beauty and The Beast which was on every Best Musical Movie list we saw.  (6) In the end we actually ended up with way more than 100 movies….279 to be precise.  So since we researched them….we figured we would include them.  (7) Can’t find a musical on the table?  If it was before 1984….it is not our fault….you have to blame Daniel Cohen.  If the movie is made after 1984….then we will take the blame.  BUT….leave a comment detailing the missing movie…..and we will include it.  Enjoy!

Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire are well represented in this collection of Top 100 Musicals….13 Rogers movies made the list and 27 Astaire movies made the list.

Top 100 Musicals Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table

The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort Top 100 Musicals movies by the stars of the movies
  • Sort Top 100 Musicals movies by actual domestic box office grosses
  • Sort Top 100 Musicals movies by adjusted worldwide box office grosses using current movie ticket cost
  • Sort Top 100 Musicals movies how they were received by critics and audiences.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Top 100 Musicals movie received.
  • Sort Top 100 Musicals movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score.  UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
  • Use the search and sort button to make this table very interactive.

Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Top 100 Musicals Table

  1. 194 Top 100 Musicals movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark.  That is a percentage of 69.53% of his movies listed. The Sound of Music (1965) was the biggest box office hit.
  2. Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter.  224 of Top 100 Musicals’s movies are rated as good movies…or 80.28% of his movies.  Singin’ in the Rain (1952) is the highest rated movie while At Long Last Love (1975) is lowest rated movie.
  3. 168 Top 100 Musicals movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 60.21% of his movies.
  4. 66 Top 100 Musicals movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 23.65% of his movies.
  5. An average Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score is 40.00. 235 Top 100 Musicals movie scored higher that average….or 84.22% of his movies. West Side Story (1961) got the the highest UMR Score while At Long Last Love (1975) got the lowest UMR Score.
Julie Andrews has 3 of the best reviewed musicals in the Top 30
Julie Andrews has 3 of the best reviewed musicals in the Top 30

Possibly Interesting Facts About Top 100 Musicals

1. The combined adjusted domestic box office gross for these 279 movies is $48.67 BILLION!

2. The 279 movies on this table received 573 Oscar® nominations.

3. The 279 movies on this table won 146 Oscars®.

4. 34 of these movies received Best Picture Oscar® nominations

5. 8 of these movies won the Best Picture Oscar®.

6.  The Great Ziegfeld (1936), An American in Paris (1951), Gigi (1958), West Side Story (1961), My Fair Lady (1964), The Sound of Music (1965), Oliver! (1968) and Chicago (2002) are the 8 Best Picture Oscar® winners.

 

Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences.  Golden Globes® are the registered trademark and service mark of the Hollywood Foreign Press.  Emmy® is a registered trademark.

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85 thoughts on “Top 100 Musicals”

  1. Wow. I love musicals. I do not care for the current ones in the past twenty years, except for Grease, phantom of the opera.

    Reply

    1. Hey Tonya. Thanks for stopping by. So did I exclude some of your favorite musicals? Grease is closing in on 40 years….that is scary. Thanks for the comment.

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    1. Glad you found us. Our website turns 1 tomorrow. If your favorite actor or actress does not already have a UMR page…just sends us a comment and will do a page on that person.

      Reply

  3. Good start, but here are a few I’ve seen that were missed. Going chronologically:

    “New Moon” (1930)–Starring Lawrence Tibbett and Grace Moore, who both starred at The New York Metropolitan Opera; this was their bid for film stardom. Film is 78 minutes long, with 10 songs–that’s roughly 3-5 minutes between songs. It is a fun Pre-Code watch.

    “Show Boat” (1936)–Director James Whale’s version, this stars Irene Dunne (who has a wonderful soprano), & Paul Robeson (his version of “Ol’ Man River” is worth watching the film for); It’s a fine, if long, watch.

    “Balalaika” (1939)–Nelson Eddy gets a movie away from Jeanette MacDonald; his co-star is Ilona Massey, who would be beautiful if she didn’t sport a beauty mark that looks like a pimple. Eddy sings a beautiful version of “The Volga Boatman” that’s the high point of the film. TCM showed this 2-3 weeks ago. Music is lovely, plot is nonsense.

    “Bittersweet” (1940)–MacDonald and Eddy reunite in this version of Noel Coward’s operetta that supposedly made him cry (not for joy, either, LOL) when he saw what MGM had done to it. That said, film is relatively painless operetta with pleasant music.

    “State Fair” (1945)–This has Rodgers and Hammersteins” only score composed for the movies. The song “It Might As Well Be Spring” won the Best Song Oscar.

    “Yolanda and the Thief” (1945)–Musical people generally either love or hate. Vincente Minnelli directed this film that has a screenplay based on a Portuguese childrens story. Film flopped at box-office, but did produce minor hit “Coffee Time”.

    “Kismet” (1955)–Based on the 1953 Broadway musical, film is very enjoyable, IMHO, despite Vincente Minnelli’s directing it in his sleep.

    “Hit the Deck” (1955)–Plot is nonsense, music is enjoyable in this film; song “Hallelujah” was excerpted in “That’s Entertainment” (1974).

    “At Long Last Love” (1975)–I can’t top this review: “Sixteen beautiful Cole Porter melodies are destroyed in this film” The critic was SO right!

    Reply

    1. Hey film lover 293…thanks for the suggestion…let’s see.
      New Moon” (1930) Added to the page…and coming in at 191st place

      “Show Boat” (1936) Was already on the page….in a nice comfortable spot of 22nd place…the Show Boat (1951) was all the way down in 94th place

      “Balalaika” (1939)–Added to the page…and coming in at 163rd place

      “Bittersweet” (1940)–Added to the page…and coming in at 161st place

      “State Fair” (1945)–Was already on the page in 80th place

      “Yolanda and the Thief” (1945)– Added to the page…and coming in 123rd place

      “Kismet” (1955)–Added to the page…and coming in 181st place

      “Hit the Deck” (1955)–Added to the page…and coming in 147th place

      “At Long Last Love” (1975)–Added to the page…and coming in dead last 224th place

      Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964) – somehow this movie got lost from my database to the internet page…..but it was found and put on the page…and sits in 131st place

      Thanks for the suggestions…..but they did not crack the Top 100.

      Reply

  4. Whoopee starring Betty Grable? REALLY? She had a bit part and was barely seen. The actual star of the film is EDDIE CANTOR, who had also starred in the film on Broadway for Ziegfeld and was one of the biggest stars of the last century, although, because he made so few films, he has been largely forgotten now.

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    1. Hey Sharon. You make a valid point. In our program….it automatically searches for stars that are in the movie and have a UMR page. In this case we do not have a Eddie Cantor page but we do have a Grable page. I have gone back and manually made Cantor the first name you see. I also did the same thing with The Music Man….which had Ron Howard as the star….and no sign of Robert Preston….thanks for pointing our mistake out….it was greatly appreciated….and that is without sarcasm.

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  5. My Oh My – I knew there were a lot of musicals made so many years ago but I had no idea there were so many musicals. Boy, the data you have collected is so interesting. I have seen many of these movies – it is so good knowing that many of them have been preserved for future generations to enjoy. TCM is showing a lot of old movies on the TV lately and some of them are musicals. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE INFORMATION. I have The Jolson Story and Jolson Sings Again and have watched them many times and still enjoy the music and the story.

    Reply

    1. Hey Bern1960. And this is only a small portion of musicals….I imagine there are over 1000 movies that could be considered a musical. The Jolson Story and Jolson Sings Again…did pretty well in the rankings….the same can not be said for one of your favorites…The Jazz Singer with Neil Diamond. Glad you enjoyed the page..thanks for stopping by and commenting.

      Reply

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