Sometimes a musical leaves you with a tune you’re humming for weeks afterwards. But sometimes, you’ll remember a costume look for the rest of your life. Here are our favorite truly iconic costumes that, in some cases, became even bigger than the shows they were in.
Photo by Joan Marcus
The Glinda bubble dress
Wicked costume designer Susan Hilferty had the unique challenge of creating costumes that reminded audiences of The Wizard of Oz, but that also placed characters in the musical’s much darker story. This enormous flouncy gown for Glinda’s entrance at the top of the show is all overstated femininity, while putting Glinda in blue instead of the pink she wears in The Wizard of Oz signals that we’re in for a very different story – and avoids any copyright violations. You can even buy the Glinda dress for American Girl dolls.
Honorary mention: The Fiyero Pants. Father/son duo Norbert Leo Butz and Aaron Tveit are among the many Fiyeros who have donned the vaguely Edwardian white jodhpurs that Fiyero wears to the Ozdust Ballroom.
Photo by Joan Marcus
Mark’s Sweater in Rent
The blue sweater with the red horizontal stripe – we immediately associate it with Rent’s Mark Cohen, and Anthony Rapp’s original 1996 performance in the role. (Add the black-and-white striped scarf and a mic taped to your cheek and you’ve got a great Halloween costume.) Costume designer Angela Wendt described the sweater as “not too flamboyant but still interesting enough,” for Mark to wear for the entire show. It might be the most comfortable costume in the show, compared to Roger’s rockstar leather, or Angel’s Mrs. Claus drag look, but also the most memorable.
Photo by Martha Swope
Morales’ long sleeve color block leotard in A Chorus Line, tied with Cassie’s bright red leotard and skirt
A Chorus Line happens in real time over the course of a cattle call audition, and the performers are in one costume over the course of the show. The differences in each auditionee’s choice of dance garb telegraphs so much information about each character. Cassie’s red leotard, with its long sleeves and skirt, is far less utilitarian and more elegant than everything else onstage, immediately commanding attention, and creating unique stage pictures for Donna McKechnie’s virtuosic number “The Music and the Mirror.” Diana Morales, originally played by Priscilla Lopez, wears a jewel-toned sweater over her leotard and tights – equal parts practical and vibrant.
Photo by Martha Swope
Dolly Levi’s Red Dress
The Hello Dolly revival did not directly draw from the original Broadway production, but there was one visual that the show would simply be incomplete without – the red ensemble Dolly wears to descend the staircase into the Harmonia Gardens restaurant, which she also wears for the titular song. The v-neck bustled ballgown would be memorable enough, but Carol Channing, Pearl Bailey, Bette Midler, Donna Murphy, and Bernadette Peters all also donned a 2-foot-tall red feathered headdress.
Photo by Matthew Murphy
The Phantom Mask
A plain white mask that covers the right half of the Phantom’s face for most of the show became synonymous with Phantom itself, eventually serving as its key art and Playbill cover. It’s maybe the simplest costume on this list, and arguably the most powerful.
New shows come to town all the time. But there are those long-standing favorites that feel like they just belong in New York City. In our list, we’ll be including the longest-running Broadway shows of a single production – past and present. And you know what they say: only the best Broadway shows have runs like these.
Photo by Matthew Murphy.
The Phantom of the Opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Charles Hart
With an unbelievable 13,981 performances, The Phantom of the Opera easily tops the list. For 36 years it took residence in the Majestic Theater where it ran from January 26 1988 to April 16 2023.
When it first opened, it won seven Tony Awards and seven Drama Desk Awards. It was the first Broadway musical in history to surpass 10,000 performances and has had over 3,500 more performances than the second longest-running Broadway show in history – that’s over eight years of performances! With a record like that, it really is one of the best Broadway shows.
Photo courtesy of Boneau/Bryan-Brown.
Chicago (1996 revival) by John Kander and Fred Ebb
Chicago’s original 1975 production ran for a respectable 936 performances. But it was its second coming, the 1996 revival, that made it a show everyone knows and loves.
Following a showcase in the City Center Encores! series, Barry and Fran Weissler brought an expanded, revised, and jazzed-up production of the Encores! concert to the Richard Rodgers Theater (the same theater the original production was staged). After rave reviews and six Tony Awards, it was an undeniable hit and had to be moved to the larger Shubert Theater in 1997. It stayed there for seven years until it was moved for a second time to the Ambassadors Theater in 2014 where it still runs today.
So far, it’s had over 10,400 performances and is the longest-running revival in Broadway history.
Photo by Joan Marcus.
The Lion King by Elton John and Tim Rice
The groundbreaking stage adaptation of Disney’s animated film of the same name left both children and adults filled with wonder. Featuring giant puppets and unforgettable songs by Elton John and Tim Rice, The Lion King had audiences stampeding to the theater to watch the incredible show.
It originally opened at the New Amsterdam Theater in 1997 before moving to the Minskoff Theater in 2006. Its current performance count stands at over 10,000 which has resulted in over $1 billion in gross sales making it the highest-grossing Broadway production of all time.
Photo by Mark Senior.
Wicked by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman
Leaving other shows green with envy is Wicked – the original musical based on Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel of the same name. Focusing on the origin story of the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz, the colorful, whimsical, and crowd-pleasing show reframed our preconceptions of the previously hateful character and gave us another perspective.
The original production opened in 2003 at the Gershwin Theater and starred Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel – making both household names. So far, it’s had over 7,500 performances and with a film adaptation starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo coming up, we don’t see it going anywhere for a long time.
Cats by Andrew Lloyd Webber
Based on the 1939 poetry collection by T.S. Eliot, Cats is a sung-through musical about a tribe of cats who are trying to decide which among them will be ascended to the Heaviside Layer before coming back to a new life. The surreal show opened in 1982 and was unlike anything seen on Broadway before. It won seven Tony Awards and a Grammy making it a must-see show.
It opened at the Winter Garden Theater on October 7 1982 where it ran until its close on September 10 2000. It was the first Broadway show to reach over 7,000 performances reaching 7,485 performances when it closed.
It looks as though Cats will happily perch at number five on the list for a while as the next show on the list that’s currently open is The Book of Mormon which sits with 4,400 performances which, again, would take approximately eight years to overtake Cats.
Some Broadway shows can’t be contained in just a proscenium stage. The Main Stem has one permanent theater-in-the-round, the Circle in the Square, but there’s also a long history of visionary set designers and directors completely renovating one of the other 40 Broadway theaters to serve the needs of a show. The Broadway Theatre, on 53rd Street, has had its orchestra seats ripped out to make room for an immersive staging not once but thrice. A transformed theater, while costly, can fully immerse an audience into the world of the piece, creating unforgettable experiences. Below are some of the most fascinating immersive set designs in Broadway history.
Here Lies Love (2023)
The first theatrical transformation on our list is Broadway’s latest, with this season’s Here Lies Love, which begins performances June 17. It’s the first of the three shows on our list to call the Broadway Theatre home. Something about its massive scale and vaulted ceilings, originally designed in the 1920s for showing movies, makes it a prime choice for mega-musicals like Miss Saigon and experimental immersive productions alike.
Here Lies Loves is directed by Alex Timbers, and the set design by David Korins surrounds audiences in a 1980s American disco like the ones frequented by the show’s subject, former First Lady of the Philippines Imelda Marcos. Premiering at the Public Theater back in 2013, the idea of the show is to envelop viewers in a seductively cheerful world, to demonstrate how Marcos denied her and her husband’s regime’s cruelty, and how fascism packages itself to be attractive, as well as the lingering effects of American colonialism. The disco-electro-pop score by David Byrne and Fatboy Slim, originally written as a concept album, is so danceable that audiences can buy tickets for the standing section closest to the runway stage, where they will be part of the show and guided to join in choreographer Annie-B Parsons’ dance moves. (This is the first time in Broadway history that standing room tickets are the most expensive instead of the least!)
The gut renovation for Here Lies Love, taking all the orchestra seats out of the Broadway:
Dude (1972)
The ill-fated Dude: The Highway Life may have only played 16 performances on Broadway in 1972, but this counterculture ‘happening’ from Gerome Ragni and Galt McDermot of Hair fame upended the rules for how a Broadway theater could be used. Bringing downtown uptown, the Broadway Theatre was rearranged by designer Eugene Lee into a theater-in-the-round, with the actors where the orchestra section had been, and some audience members sitting on the stage.
It even featured trapezes and trap doors, with actors, in character as “Mother Earth,” “Suzy Moon,” or the titular “Dude,” frequently interacting with the audience. Its “morality play” plot baffled critics, and Dude closed at a loss of $1 million, very high for 1972.
Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 (2017)
Photo by Thomas Loof
Great Comet, perhaps the most exhaustive and striking theater transformation on this list besides Here Lies Love, originated at Ars Nova, a flexible off-off-Broadway venue. As the show transferred to a tent in Hell’s Kitchen (dubbed “Kazino”), and then to the American Repertory Theater in Boston for its pre-Broadway tryout, director Rachel Chavkin and set designer Mimi Lien worked to retain the intimacy, playfulness, and Napoleonic and Russian flair of the show. Composer-lyricist Dave Malloy based the show on a sliver of War & Peace, and created a score pulling equally from klezmer, EDM, and Sondheim. The entire Imperial Theatre auditorium was wrapped in red velvet, and a series of cascading staircases connected the original stage, the orchestra, and even the balcony section into one cohesive playing space. The titular comet was represented by a gargantuan chandelier, inspired by the one at the Metropolitan Opera and made of thousands of Swarovski crystals. Lien and her team even redesigned the lobby, adding elements of a Cold War-era bunker. Comet was nominated for 12 Tonys, and won two, for Set and Lighting Design.
Mimi Lien’s initial sketches for Comet:
Cabaret (1998/2014 Revival)
For director Sam Mendes’ vision of the Kander and Ebb classic Cabaret, a former Broadway theater that had since been used as an adult movie theater and disco was reshaped into a grungy and sensual Kit Kat Club. Designer Robert Brill transformed the space on 43rd St, then known as Henry Miller’s Theater, for the show’s opening night. (10 years after Cabaret, Henry Miller’s was rebuilt as the Stephen Sondheim theater.) When it became clear Cabaret was a runaway hit, Brill and the producers searched for a more permanent home for an extended run, and decided to overhaul another former Broadway playhouse-turned-disco, the legendary Studio 54 nightclub space, which was in desperate need of renovation after decades of Andy Warhol’s parties. In both spaces, the stage was tightened into a small thrust, like the setup at many nightclubs both in New York and Berlin, and the premium orchestra seats were replaced with small tables and chairs. Brill, the Cabaret team, and the Roundabout Theater Company led by the late Todd Haimes did so much work on Studio 54 that they had reverted it back to its original purpose as a state-of-the-art Broadway theater, and when Cabaret closed in 2004 after a six year run, Studio 54 became home to everything from Waiting for Godot starring Nathan Lane in 2009 to Lifespan of a Fact starring Daniel Radcliffe in 2018, and the return of the very same Sam Mendes production of Cabaret, in 2014.
Candide (1974)
A production image from Candide; notice the barstools in the background, which were audience seating
Harold Prince revived Candide, the 1950s Bernstein operetta based on the work of Voltaire, off-Broadway in 1973. It featured a revised and clarified book by Hugh Wheeler, and a stripped-down design ethos that emphasized Candide’s hapless, everyman journey. Audiences surrounded a series of platforms and gangways, with some audience members even inside the rectangle of playing space. Hal Prince, never a risk-averse producer and director, was willing to reduce the number of tickets available in order to fit this conceptual set into the space. To transfer the production from the Brooklyn Academy of Music, set designers Eugene and Franne Lee ripped out most of the Broadway Theatre’s orchestra seating, just as they had done for Dude.Candide fared far better than Dude, running for 740 performances and winning 5 Tonys, including for the Lees’ design, and for Hal Prince’s direction. Eugene Lee passed away earlier in 2023 after designing 27 Broadway shows, and his work can still be seen in Wicked.
This year’s 76th Annual Tony Awards will be broadcast live from the United Palace in Washington Heights on Sunday, June 11th. As this year’s nominated shows head into the final stretch of their awards campaigns, Broadway’s Best Shows is here to remind you that no one is guaranteed a Tony, not even Aaron Tveit. Here is a list of our top 10 surprise upset wins, across 76 years of Tony history.
10. Christopher Ashley wins for directing Come From Away – 2017
Conventional wisdom had the category as a showdown between Michael Greif for Dear Evan Hansen and Rachel Chavkin for Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812, parallel to the competition happening over in the Best Musical category. Perhaps because Greif and Chavkin split the vote, Christopher Ashley was genuinely flabbergasted when he won his first Tony. Ashley was previously nominated in the same category for Memphis and The Rocky Horror Show.
The cast of Come From Away performs in the 2017 Tonys:
9. 1978 Best Play
The Pulitzer Prize-winning The Gin Game was the anticipated winner for best play – that, or Chapter Two, a comedy about grief from Broadway heavyweight Neil Simon. However, the Tony voters chose the lesser-known Irish playwright Hugh Leonard, for Da, a memory play about a man traveling back to the suburbs of Dublin to cope with the death of his adopted father.
Cicely Tyson and James Earl Jones in the 2015 revival of The Gin Game:
8. Follies and the 2012 Revivals category
For whatever reason, Follies has particularly bad Tonys luck, as we also discuss below. Its revival in 2011, starring Bernadette Peters, Jan Maxwell, and Elaine Paige, was not a major commercial success, but it was expected to win the Best Revival category against Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Porgy & Bess. Instead, the Diane Paulus-directed Porgy won the statue.
Norm Lewis, Audra McDonald, and the company of Porgy & Bess perform at the 2012 Tonys:
The always delightful Danny Burstein performs a song from Follies at the 2012 Tonys broadcast:
7. Children of a Lesser God wins Best Play – 1980
Best known for its 1986 film adaptation starring Marlee Matlin, Children of a Lesser God was a watershed moment for portrayals of Deaf people in theater, exploring the complex issue of Deaf schools insisting students learn to speak, instead of using ASL. Its original star Phyllis Frelich was the first Deaf person ever to win a Tony Award. It beat out Talley’s Folly, a romance by Lanford Wilson that won the Pulitzer and was expected to win, and Bent, a gut wrenching drama about queer people in Nazi concentration camps by Martin Sherman.
Children of a Lesser God was also revived on Broadway in 2018, with direction by Kenny Leon:
6. Marissa Jaret Winokur wins Best Actress
While Hairspray was expected to win Best Musical in 2003, Bernadette Peters was the favorite to win the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her performance as Mama Rose in Gypsy. Peters had previously won for Song and Dance and Annie Get Your Gun. But it was Marissa Janet Winokur, in her Broadway principal debut as Tracy Turnblad in Hairspray, who ended up winning.
Marissa’s acceptance speech:
5. Kinky Boots wins Best Musical
Prevailing wisdom said that Matilda, like the many British mega-musicals before it, was going to sweep the 2013 Tony awards. In a battle between the lovably sassy British drag queens and the lovably sassy British schoolchildren (only in New York!), it was the American-produced Kinky Boots that won out. Why? Perhaps its surprise win at the Drama League Awards earlier that month moved the needle, or perhaps the almost entirely American Tony voter pool wanted to support one of its own. While both shows were uplifting, Kinky Boots’ pro-LGBTQ+ rights message may have resonated extra hard. (Matilda ended up just fine though – it ran for four years on Broadway, and is still open in the West End.)
4. 2007 Best Actor in a Musical
Theater fans are still arguing over whether Raúl Esparza should have won for Company over David Hyde Pierce for Curtains. Esparza gave a heart wrenching performance as Bobby in John Doyle’s stripped down reimagining of the Sondheim classic. While the rest of the cast played their own instruments throughout the show, Esparza-as-Bobby only sits down in front of a piano to accompany himself in the finale, “Being Alive.” Sondheim is notoriously tricky for pianists, and to also act and sing it at the same time is a rare feat:
But it was beloved Frasier star David Hyde Pierce who won out, for his portrayal of a sensitive and theater-obsessed police detective in Curtains. Pierce, who had put himself into musical theater bootcamp to prepare for his debut in Spamalot a few years prior, may have been helped by his reputation as the nicest person in showbusiness, and the goodwill he had amassed by choosing to come back to Broadway after winning four Emmys for Frasier. Below, DHP and the company of Curtains perform at the Tonys:
3. 1972 – Follies loses best musical
A piece of Tonys trivia that always surprises theater lovers: Stephen Sondheim’s masterpiece Follies did not win the 1972 Tony Award for Best Musical. That award went to Two Gentlemen of Verona, a groovy Shakspeare adaptation by Galt McDermot, the composer behind Hair, in collaboration with playwright John Guare. It also beat out heavyweights like Grease and Ain’t Supposed to Die A Natural Death, and Jesus Christ Superstar wasn’t even nominated in the category.There are a few theories for why this happened: first, 2 Gents is a much frothier, more optimistic show than Follies. It was a diverting entertainment that left audiences joyful, while Follies matched the dark reality of the national mood amidst the Vietnam war, Watergate, and Greatest Generation discontent. 2 Gents takes a firm antiwar stance, but it didn’t confront middle-aged Tony voters with their unhappy marriages they way Follies did. At the same time, voters may have picked 2 Gents to save face after Hair was a massive cultural moment back in 1968 but didn’t win any Tonys, making the awards seem out of touch.
2 Gents was revived off-Broadway in 2005 at the Delacorte with Norm Lewis, Oscar Isaac, Rosario Dawson, John Cariani, and Renee Elise Goldsberry. Here’s Goldsberry and Lewis performing “Night Letter” from that production:
2. Nine beats Dreamgirls
Dreamgirls was an instant, massive smash when it opened to rave reviews in December of 1981. Loosely based on the story of Diana Ross and The Supremes, and with an energetic Motown-inspired score, the production starred Jennifer Holliday and Sheryl Lee Ralph. Nine, a baroque exploration of an Italian film director’s psychosexual whirlwind based on Federico Fellini’s film 8½, had its first *workshop* performance in February of 1982, and opened on Broadway the day of the Tonys cutoff in May. Dreamgirls, directed by Michael Bennett of A Chorus Line fame,was at the Shubert-owned Imperial, and Nine played at the Nederlander-owned Rodgers right next door, and was directed by Tommy Tune. Even juicier, Bennett and Tune had once been dear friends, with Bennett having taken Tune under his wing (if you can take someone who’s 6’6” under your wing.) When Nine was quickly announced to open in the 1981-1982 season, on the final day of Tonys eligibility no less, Bennett called Tune and begged/threatened him to take the show out of town and bring it to New York next year instead. Tune refused. So the story goes, during the Tonys campaigning period in May 1982, the Dreamgirls team refused to step into restaurants the Nine people went to, and vice-versa. The American Theatre Wing, the producer of the Tony Awards, amped up the drama by seating the teams on opposite sides of the Imperial Theatre for the ceremony in June. The producers of Nine pushed their narrative as the scrappy show that could, and that Dreamgirls, backed by the mighty Shubert Organization, didn’t need – or deserve – a vote. Many in the industry were grateful for how fierce the competition got, since Broadway hadn’t had a huge hit since 1975’s A Chorus Line, and the brewing feud got lots of press. While Dreamgirls won many awards at the ceremony, including Best Actress for Jennifer Holliday, Nine shocked the world and won Best Musical. It ran for two years on Broadway, and was also revived in 2003 – when it won again, for Best Revival. Dreamgirls ran for four years, and was only briefly revived in 1987, although its historical impact as a Broadway show with three-dimensional roles for Black women and the way it tackles fatphobia, racism, and colorism in the music industry makes Nine’s womanizer-genius focus look a bit hollow in retrospect.
Jennifer Holliday brings down the house with “I Am Telling You I’m Not Going”:
The cast of Nine performs at the Tonys:
Avenue Q bests Wicked
Stephen Schwartz’s Wicked was the enormous smash of the 2003-2004 Broadway season, its creative team and producers all established industry veterans. Avenue Q, a weirder but better-reviewed show by then-unknowns Robert Lopez, Jeff Marx, and Jeff Whitty, wasn’t expected to do well at the Tonys, or last longer than a few months on Broadway. In spring 2004, the country was also gearing up for the 2004 presidential election, and the Avenue Q producers crafted a campaign that both parodied politics and spoke to voters directly: “Vote Your Heart,” pleaded the red, white, and blue posters and buttons, and the puppets even participated in a mock debate. The producers were using a strategy first used by Nine in 1982, the last time a Best Musical race was this excruciating (see below). They appealed to the Tony voters, all 700 or so of them, to support the underdog, the subtext being that Wicked would do well regardless of whether it won, while a Best Musical win could make or break Avenue Q’s future. The campaign worked, and the little puppet show written by newcomers won not just Best Musical, but Best Book and Score of a Musical as well. Avenue Q ran on Broadway for 6 years, and Off-Broadway for another 10. Wicked seems to be doing okay too.
Note the shock on the producer’s faces when they announce that Avenue Q won:
Meet David Stone, the Tony-nominated producer of KIMBERLY AKIMBO.
Photo by Joan Marcus
With this season’s new musical KIMBERLY AKIMBO, which transferred to Broadway’s Booth Theatre after endearing audiences at Atlantic Theater Company last year, David Stone earns his eighth Tony nomination as a Broadway producer.
Photo by Joan Marcus
Stone’s contribution to Broadway theater is immeasurable. He is responsible for bringing to Broadway so many of the musicals that we now consider modern classics, including WICKED, THE 25th ANNUAL PUTNAM COUNTY SPELLING BEE, and NEXT TO NORMAL. He has also produced a number of plays, including THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK, THE BOYS IN THE BAND (for which he won his Tony Award in 2019), and this season’s revival of TOPDOG/UNDERDOG.
Topdog/Underdog. Photo by Marc J. Franklin
Get to know this Broadway producing giant in our TONY TALK Q&A:
Who was the first person to text/call you when you got the nomination news?
My husband and I were watching on CBS and then New York 1. My phone immediately buzzed with a text from my nephew.
Show some love to a fellow nominee this year. Whose work blew you away?
Ben Platt’s deeply soulful performance in Parade makes me very proud to be Jewish. And, it’s impossible not to acknowledge Jessica Stone’s miraculous work on Kimberly Akimbo. She navigated the trickiest tone imaginable, with grace and confidence.
Top restaurant in the theater district?
Joe Allen for food, Glass House for drinks
The first Broadway show you ever saw?
Man of La Mancha at the Martin Beck Theater for my 5th birthday. I eventually produced Man of La Mancha starring Brian Stokes Mitchell at the Martin Beck Theater. It was my mother’s favorite show.
When did you decide to become a theater artist?
Ha! I wish I could remember the moment. I don’t know if there was a decision. It’s all I’ve ever done.
What is your earliest Tonys memory?
My parents had taken us to see A Chorus Line right when it had opened, so we got to watch the Tony Awards that year. I think I was 10.
Who’s your favorite Tonys host in history, and why?
My dear friend Kristin Chenoweth (I call her Bubbles) was dressed in an E.T. costume when she hosted. I mean…
All-time favorite Tonys performance on the telecast, and why?
Patti LuPone singing A New Argentina from Evita (1980). And Jennifer Holliday singing And I Am Tellin’ You I’m Not Going (1982). It’s a tie.
Most memorable Tonys acceptance speech, and why?
Idina Menzel’s speech. My heart almost burst.
What is one play or musical you would like to adapt or revive on Broadway, and why?
Our Town, but I think it may already be in the works 🙂
Broadway-to-movie-musical adaptations first emerged after the arrival of ‘talkie’ motion pictures at the end of the 1920s. Studios competed with each other to produce the highest-budget, glitziest spectaculars, and MGM was particularly known for huge musical productions. The genre thinned out when the studio system lost its prominence in the ‘70s and ‘80s, but has been in something of a resurgence in the 2000s, and with the two-part Wickedadaptation coming next year, the big-screen musical adaptation is here to stay. There are far too many to count, but here are some of the best Broadway to movie musical adaptations of all time.
1. Cabaret (1972)
Set in Berlin during the rise of Nazi Germany, Cabaret is a classic Broadway musical by John Kander and Fred Ebb that opened at the Shubert Theatre in 1966 and was adapted into a movie in 1972. The film starred Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey and won eight Academy Awards, including Best Director for Bob Fosse and Best Actress for Minnelli. The film is known for its dark and gritty portrayal of pre-war Berlin and for its iconic musical numbers, and its Academy Award-winning rhythmic editing. In that same year, 1972, Bob Fosse also directed Pippin on Broadway and the Liza With a Z television special, and won the Tony and the Emmy–making him the only person in history to win three such awards in the span of one year.
Cabaret is on all rental VOD platforms.
2. Oliver! (1968)
Based on the classic Charles Dickens novel, Oliver Twist, Oliver! is a beloved West End and Broadway musical. It ran in the West End from 1960 to 1966, and in New York at the Imperial Theatre in 1963-64. It was adapted into a movie in 1968 by Carol Reed, an English director who had himself helmed a Broadway play in 1930, On the Spot. The film won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and a special award for choreographer Onna White. It starred Mark Lester and Ron Moody as Oliver and Fagin, respectively. With memorable songs like “Consider Yourself” and “Food, Glorious Food,” Oliver! is a timeless classic that is still enjoyed by audiences today. You can stream Oliver! On MAX.
3. The King & I (1956)
Based on the true story of Anna Leonowens, a British schoolteacher who became the governess to the children of the King of Siam, The King & I was adapted into a movie in 1956. The film starred Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner and won five Academy Awards, including Best Actor for Brynner. It happens to be the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical that was turned into a movie the fastest – only five years between its Broadway premiere and film release (Oklahoma!, one of the duo’s prior Broadway hits,took 12 years to reach the screen.) It is also one of three films on this list in which the female lead’s singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon. The King & I is available for rent on VUDU.
4. Grease (1978)
Set in the 1950s, Grease is a Broadway musical that was adapted into a movie in 1978. It was a massive hit when it opened in New York in 1972, and ran at the Broadhurst Theatre and later the Jacobs, for 8 years. The film starred John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John and became a cultural phenomenon, inspiring countless imitations and becoming one of the highest-grossing movie musicals of all time. A parody of the naive and optimistic 1950s, it continues to be a huge crowd-pleaser decades later. The movie can be rented on all VOD platforms and the cult-classic sequel Grease 2 starring Michelle Pfeiffer and zero material from the original musical is on Paramount+.
5. Chicago (2002)
Set in the Jazz Age of the 1920s, Chicago, another Kander & Ebb classic,was adapted into a movie in 2002, after the original 1975 Broadway production, and the 1996 revival that is still running as of this writing. The film starred Renee Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Richard Gere and won six Academy Awards, for editing, sound, costume design, art direction, Best Supporting Actress (for Zeta-Jones’ turn as Velma Kelly), and Best Picture after being nominated in nearly every category. The editing in particular follows Fosse’s strategy for Cabaret, with quick cuts in rhythm with the music.Its cynical portrayal of the justice system, originally written in response to the Watergate scandal, resonated with audiences in the wake of the tabloid trials of the 1990s. It is available to stream on HBOMax and Hulu.
6. West Side Story (1961 and 2021)
Jerome Robbins originally had the idea to translate Romeo and Juliet to ethnic gang violence in Manhattan’s West Side, and collaborated with Leonard Bernstein (music) and a young newcomer, Stephen Sondheim (lyrics) to create West Side Story. Robbins ended up not just directing and choreographing the 1957 Broadway production, but co-directing and choreographing its 1961 film adaptation as well, raking in a Tony and two Oscars. The film starred Natalie Wood (with the singing voice of Marni Nixon) and Richard Beymer, and won ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture. In 2021, Steven Spielberg, who had been mentioning in interviews his desire to do a musical for decades, directed a new version with a rewritten script by Tony Kushner. A handful of dancers even did both the movie summer 2019 and the 2020 Ivo van Hove West Side Story Broadway revival, faring far better than their counterparts from 60 years ago, since no one from Broadway appeared onscreen in the 1961 movie. Spielberg’s take on the material was nominated for 7 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Supporting Actress. History rhymed when Ariana DeBose won Best Supporting Actress for the role of Anita, the same role for which Rita Moreno became the first Latina Oscar winner ever in 1961. The original film leaves Paramount+ at the end of May, and the 2021 Spielberg version is on Disney+.
7. The Sound of Music (1965)
Based on the true story of the von Trapp family, The Sound of Music was less successful than previous Rodgers and Hammerstein hits when it premiered on Broadway in 1959. It was the 1965 movie version that propelled it into a household name. The film starred Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer and won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Robert Wise, Jerome Robbins’ co-director on West Side Story, insisted it be shot on location in Austria, and the stunning Alpine scenery is almost another character in the film. (Fascinatingly, though, the film is not well-known in the Germanophone world.) It is currently available to watch on all VOD rental services.
8. The Music Man (1962)
Set in early 1900s Indiana, The Music Man is a classic Broadway musical that was adapted into a movie in 1962. The film starred Robert Preston and Shirley Jones and was a critical and commercial success, earning six Academy Award nominations and winning one, for Best Score. Preston was cast to lead the film as Harold Hill after originating the role on Broadway, much to the chagrin of Jack Warner of Warner Bros., who wanted to cast a bigger star. Preston got the part thanks to Cary Grant not only refusing it, but going out of his way to tell Jack Warner that Preston had been so good in the part on Broadway that he wouldn’t bother seeing it on screen without him.
The movie is on all rental VOD platforms.
9. My Fair Lady (1962)
Producer Jack Warner of Warner Bros. passed on Broadway’s original Eliza, Julie Andrews, and instead cast Audrey Hepburn, with the dubbed singing voice of Marni Nixon (the same singing voice of Maria in West Side Story a year prior). Hepburn found herself competing with Andrews and Mary Poppins at the Golden Globes. And when Andrews won, the first person she thanked in her speech? Jack Warner.
My Fair Lady was the longest-running and highest-grossing musical of its time, opening at the Mark Hellinger Theatre in 1956 and running until 1962. The My Fair Lady movie, with its Lerner and Loewe score and script based on Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw, was nominated for 6 Oscars, and winning for Best Score. Rex Harrison, also an established film actor who survived making Cleopatra with Elizabeth Taylor, got to keep the part of Henry Higgins between Broadway and the film.
The movie is on all rental VOD platforms.
10. Funny Girl (1968)
The melodramatic fable of Fanny Brice’s rise to fame and tragic personal life, Funny Girl features songs by Bob Merrill and Jule Styne like “Don’t Rain on My Parade” and “People.” It opened on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theatre in March 1964, and ran until 1967. Barbra Streisand starred, who had previously made a splash at age 19 as Miss Marmelstein in 1962’s I Can Get It For You Wholesale.Funny Girl was the highest grossing film of 1968, and was nominated for 8 Oscars. OnlyStreisand won for her performance as Fanny, crystallizing her film stardom – she has not appeared on Broadway since departing Funny Girl in December 1965. The film is a very rare instance of a Broadway star getting to reprise their stage performance on screen. The handful of other examples includes Robert Preston in The Music Man, Zero Mostel in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and Ethel Merman in Call Me Madam, but no film has announced the arrival of a major star quite like Funny Girl. The current revival, playing at the August Wilson starring Lea Michele, is running through Labor Day weekend 2023.
