The Library of Congress has added four music-related movies to the National Film Registry, a prestigious list created to recognize and help preserve films deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” Created in 1988, the list now contains 925 titles.
Musicals in many forms make up a vital component of the list. Heading into this year, there were already more than 60 movies – running from the beloved to the obscure – from A to Z. Acclaimed Hollywood classics like An American in Paris to the little-seen Zoot Suit.
Traditional musicals, music-themed documentaries, experimental Silly Symphony short cartoons, and Michael Jackson’s Thriller are included. And now, four new movies join them. Two are beloved classics from Hollywood’s golden age, and two others are documentaries focusing on often underappreciated aspects of the musical world.
Four musicals receive the highest national honor for movies
From the 1950s – a decade when the Hollywood fantasy factory was cranking out high-gloss musicals every year – White Christmas (1954) and High Society (1956) have been selected.
White Christmas, directed by Michael Curtiz, was a Paramount release starring Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye as a couple of war buddies who go on to create a popular musical act.
They come to the aid of their old commanding officer (Dean Jagger) when his Vermont inn is struggling to attract visitors. They stage a lavish show, which includes a couple of sisters (Vera-Ellen and Rosemary Clooney) whom the boys have been pursuing romantically.
Along the way, we get famous Irving Berlin songs like “Sisters,” “Count Your Blessings,” and the iconic title-track, which originally appeared more than a decade earlier in Holiday Inn.
From 1956, Charles Walters’ High Society (MGM) was the other classic musical to make the list. A musical remake of the 1940 comedy The Philadelphia Story, it also has Bing Crosby in a leading role, this time alongside Frank Sinatra.
They are assuming the roles originally played by Cary Grant and Oscar-winning James Stewart in the original non-musical version. Grace Kelly takes the role played by Katherine Hepburn in 1940, while Celeste Holm steps into Ruth Hussey’s shoes.
The story concerns a society wedding (moved from Philadelphia to Newport, RI in the remake), and the rekindling of a romance between the once-married couple played by Crosby and Kelly. Cole Porter wrote the songs, which include titles like the Oscar-nominated “True Love,” the glorious Crosby-Sinatra duet “Well, Did You Evah,” and Crosby’s “I Love You Samantha,” with some accompaniment from Louis Armstrong.
Armstrong plays the role of the Chorus, introducing and closing out the story, and his band performs in the middle of the film.
Two more recent documentaries add to the musical count. The 1982 movie Say Amen, Somebody, directed by George Nierenberg, traces the history of gospel music. Nierenberg profiles two legends – Willie Mae Ford Smith and Thomas A. Dorsey – to tell his story, but there are plenty of other performers filling the air with voice.
Critic Roger Ebert began his review of the movie by noting “Say Amen, Somebody is the most joyful movie I’ve seen in a very long time.”
Finally, The Wrecking Crew (2008) tells the story of the famous Los Angeles-based session musicians who provided the musical accompaniment to so many great American songs of the 1960s and ‘70s that it is almost impossible to list them all. Denny Tedesco, whose guitarist father, Tommy, was a part of the esteemed group, directs.
In addition to compiling a vast array of interviews with the surviving members of the loosely-knit crew, Tedesco had to resort to a Kickstarter campaign to raise enough money to acquire the rights to all the music included in the movie.
Legendary bassist Carol Kaye appears in the film. Kaye, now 90, was in the news recently for publicly rejecting induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame because she felt session musicians have not been properly recognized for their role in pop music’s modern history.
She has stated that she functioned as part of a team that deserves recognition as such. Though she has expressed frustration with the way the “Wrecking Crew” term has come to oversimplify what she and her colleagues did, Tedesco’s movie gives them their due.
A list of the 925 films that make up the Registry can be found here, and the public is welcome to make suggestions for future additions.