the list of 9 for january 8, 2008:
NINE MOVIES THAT BECAME STAGE MUSICALS THAT BECAME MOVIES AGAIN
Lately we've seen something of a resurgence in the movie musical, thanks to adaptations of hitBroadway shows like Chicago and Hairspray. But wait... Weren't those once movies,too? They were. And here are nine examples of the incestuous inter-feeding between Hollywood andBroadway.

  1. HAIRSPRAY. An original non-musical by John Waters, of allpeople, in less than 20 years it grew from cult movie to stage success to studio picture. WhenJohn Travolta is dressing up like Divine, you know you've seen everything.

  2. THE PRODUCERS. Mel Brooks took his wacky, if somewhatforgotten, 1960s comedy - which itself was about Broadway producers - and turned it into a hitBroadway play. Unfortunately the re-adaptation of the musical back to the screen wasn't assuccessful. Maybe Max Bialystock should have made it.

  3. THE WIZARD OF OZ/THE WIZ. In the beginning, of course,there was a book by L. Frank Baum, and that was adapted into the 1939 film classic. There havebeen many stage adaptations - mostly for high schools and local theater groups - of The Wizardof Oz, but the 70s Broadway show and later movie starring Diana Ross and Michael Jackson (whichbombed) were clearly based on the original movie and not Baum's books.

  4. (THE) LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS. Mining even more obscurecult film territory than Hairspray was this underdog success of 1980s broadway,well-adapted back to the big screen by Frank Oz (minus the original Roger Corman film's "The").

  5. NIGHTS OF CABIRIA/SWEET CHARITY. Federico Fellini'semotional, beautiful comedy-drama about a scrappy Italian prostitute was whitewashed in the datedSweet Charity - although the latter did give us the timeless hits "If My Friends Could SeeMe Now" and "Hey Big Spender." The film version of Sweet Charity preserves some of BobFosse's nice choreography, but really, Nights of Cabiria is a thousand times the betterwork.

  6. CHICAGO. Try to keep up with this show's complicatedlineage. Maurine Dallas Watkins covered the murder trials of Beulah Annan and Belva Gartner forthe Chicago Tribune. Her stories were such a success that she adapted the true tale into astage play (without music) called Chicago. Now, technically, Bob Fosse and his wife GwenVerdon bought the rights to Watkins's play and adapted that. But it must be noted that the playwas first turned into a movie in 1927, just one year after its Broadway success, and then wasrevamped into a Ginger Rogers movie called Roxie Hart. Anyway, Chicago, the musical,was a triumph for Fosse in the 1970s and for its filmmakers some three decades later.

  7. THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. Whereas one could argue thatmusicals such as Chicago or Sweeney Todd or even Pygmalion/My Fair Lady werereally based on plays, and not on the films of those plays, Andrew Lloyd Webber's inescapablesmash hit musical was solely inspired by the classic 1925 silent film based on Gaston Leroux's1910 novel, even if Ken Hill beat Webber to the punch (by eleven years) when he debuted his ownstage musical based on the novel back in 1976. It was, of course, Webber's musical that was turnedinto a poorly-received feature film in 2004.

  8. I AM A CAMERA/CABARET. Again, arguments abound as to whichwas the real source of inspiration. Christopher Isherwood's memoirs about his time in 1930s Berlinwere published as Goodbye to Berlin. These in turn became the play - and then the film -I Am a Camera. Technically the stage musical - which became a hit film and then re-adaptedback to the stage after the film's success - was, again, based on the play (or the book),not the film. But this is a list of 9, not 7 or 8, and I can't afford to split hairs.

  9. 8/1/2/NINE. That doesn't read very well, but here goes:Back to Fellini went the Broadway producers for their source material, and his beloved 1963 film8 1/2 became a 1982 Broadway musical called, inexplicably to this writer, Nine.(Apparently, an Italian playwright had first adapted 8 1/2 for the stage and - you guessedit - people insist that the musical is based primarily on the play. But who is anyone kidding?Even the play is about Fellini's autobiographical film director!) As of this writing, Ninethe film is still on track to be shot within the next year, though production is on hold due tothe current WGA strike.

Copyright © Mark Tapio Kines 2011