Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain (1952, dir. Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly)

“[With Singin’ in the Rain], I wanted to bring audiences back to their childhoods, when they would cavort in the rain even though their mothers would give them hell. [I also wanted] to make them feel like they were in love. A fellow in love does silly things.”

-Gene Kelly

(Dance sequence pictured above can be seen on youtube here)

Wini Shaw in Gold Diggers of 1935 (1935, dir. Busby Berkeley)

Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl (1968, William Wyler)

“It’s been commonly said that the musical Funny Girl was a comfort to people because it carried the message that you do not need to be pretty to succeed. That is nonsense; the ‘message’ of Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl is that talent is beauty.”

-Pauline Kael

Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933, dir. Mervyn LeRoy, choreography by Busby Berkeley) (“neon violin” sequence can be seen here)

Carmen Miranda in the final shot of the Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat number from The Gang’s All Here (1943, dir. Busby Berkeley)

If you’d like to legally experience the effects of a technicolor acid trip, do check out the sequence here. 

Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor, & Debbie Reynolds in Singin’ in the Rain (1952, dir. Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly)

Christopher Plummer succumbs to Julie Andrews’s aggressively perky charms in The Sound of Music (1965, dir. Robert Wise)

A Hard Day’s Night (1964, dir. Richard Lester)

Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, & Donald O’Connor in Singin’ in the Rain (1952, dir. Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly)

Natalie Wood in West Side Story (1961, dir. Robert Wise & Jerome Robbins)