In honor of ‘The Color Purple’: Movie musicals inspired by classics

Susan King
·5 min read
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Alice Walker published her acclaimed novel “The Color Purple” in 1982. It sold five million copies; Walker became the first Black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize and she also received the National Book Club Award. Three years later, Steven Spielberg directed the lauded film version which made stars out of Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover. It earned 11 Oscar nominations. The story revolves around a young woman who suffers abuse from her father and husband for four decades until she finds her own identity. Not exactly the stuff of a Broadway musical.

But the 2005 tuner version received strong reviews, ran 910 performances and earned ten Tony nominations, winning best actress for LaChanze. The 2015 production picked up two Tonys for best revival and actress for Cynthia Erivo. The movie musical version opened strong Christmas Day with $18 million and is a strong contender in several Oscar categories especially for Fantasia Barrino and Danielle Brooks.

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“The Color Purple” is just the latest movie musical based on a straight play or movie. In fact, the upcoming movie musical “Mean Girls,” penned by Tina Fey, is based on her popular 2004 high school comedy and her 2018 Broadway musical version.

Of course, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim’s “West Side Story” is loosely adapted from the Bard’s “Romeo and Juliet” and Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s “My Fair Lady” was inspired by George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion.” And 1937’s A Star is Born” spawned three musical adaptations in 1954, 1976 and 2018.

But what about “Carousel” or “Cabaret”? Do you know their origin histories?

Rodgers and Hammerstein’s haunting 1945 musical “Carousel” ran for 890 performances; eleven years later, Shirley Jones and Gordon MacCrae starred in the film version. “Carousel” is actually based on Hungarian Ferenc Molnar’s romantic fantasy “Liliom” which premiered on Broadway in 1921 and was revived in 1932 and 1940 (the latter with Ingrid Bergman and Burgess Meredith). “Liliom” was also filmed in 1930 with Charles Farrell and Rose Hobart and in France in 1934 by Fritz Lang and Madeleine Ozeray.

The 1972 “Cabaret,” which won eight Oscars including best director for Bob Fosse, actress for Liza Minnelli and supporting actor for Joel Grey, was adapted from the landmark John Kander–Fred Ebb 1966 Broadway musical which ran 1,165 performances and won eight Tonys including best musical and featured actor for Grey. Sally Bowles was introduced in Christopher Isherwood’s 1945 omnibus “The Berlin Stories.” In 1951, John Van Druten adapted and directed the Broadway production “I Am a Camera” with Julie Harris as Sally. Harris won the Tony and reprised her role in the poorly 1955 British film version.

Not every musical based on a straight play or movie have hit the right notes. In fact, a lot were tone deaf.

Did you know there were two movie musical versions of Frank Capra’s multi-Oscar-winning 1934 romantic comedy “It Happened One Night,” starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert? The first was 1945’s “Eve Knew Her Apples” with famed dancer Ann Miller and William Wright. Ironically, Miller sings four tunes but doesn’t dance! In 1956, June Allyson and Jack Lemmon headlined “You Can’t Run Away from It” which featured songs by Johnny Mercer and Gene de Paul. Allyson’s hubby Dick Powell directed; despite a good cast this is a well-stuffed turkey.

Capra also directed the magical 1937 adaptation of James Hilton’s romantic fantasy “Lost Horizon,” which earned seven Oscar nominations including best picture winning two. The Ross Hunter-produced 1973 musical remakes earned a mention in “The Fifty Worst Films of All Times.” The cast is great including Liv Ullmann, Peter Finch, Olivia Hussey, Michael York and Charles Boyer but they seem lost in this “Horizon.” The unmemorable tunes were provided by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. The New York Times quipped that the film is a “big, stale marshmallow, notable, perhaps, is that most of it was filmed in and around Hollywood at what is reported to have been a rather large budget. Money apparently doesn’t go very far in Hollywood these days, for the film in addition to packing all the dramatic punch of a Moral Re-Armament pamphlet, is surprisingly tacky in appearance.”

Leo McCarey’s 1937 “The Awful Truth,” based on a 1922 Broadway play by Arthur Richman and starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne, is considered one of the most delectable screwball comedies made in the Depression-Era. In fact, McCarey won the best director Oscar for the classic. But there’s nothing very delectable or funny about the 1953 Technicolor musical remake “Let’s Do It Again” with Jane Wyman, Ray Milland, Aldo Ray and Tom Helmore. Wyman and Milland were extraordinary in Billy Wilder’s 1945 Oscar-winner ‘The Lost Weekend,” but they are akin to chalk and cheese in this. The worst moment finds Oscar-winning Wyman singing and dancing to what she calls the “Zambesi puberty ritual.” I had no idea one could say “puberty” in a movie in 1953. Wyman did meet her fourth husband on the film, music supervisor Fred Karger. The married and divorced twice over an 11-year-period.

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