The Making of Musicals: Vincente Minnelli

The movie musical has long been a popular genre of film. From The Sound of Music to La La Land it is clear that audiences love seeing stories told through song and dance. What is a movie musical? It is a film that incorporates song and dance in the narrative to aid storytelling, developing the plot and characters. The Jazz Singer (1927) was the first movie musical, and while it does not stand the test of time with its racist plots, it proved to be the start of a successful genre of film. The genre has only grown from there and many movie musicals are still made every year. One master of the movie musical who dominated during the height of MGM Studios was Vincente Minelli. 

Minnelli was a master of the movie musical, melodramas, and creating films for the masses that resonated and became American family classics. His career spanned over half a century, and his films survive him as evidence of his unique talent to combine flamboyance and fantasy with the familiar, resonating with people across the country. 

Vincente Minnelli’s Life

Born in 1903 in Chicago, Minnelli was introduced to the theater early on in his life. He grew up traveling the Midwest with his family’s traveling theater, the Minnelli Brothers’ Tent Theater. After graduating high school, he started working with Paul Stone, who specialized in photographing Chicago’s theater actors. He became more interested in theater and worked as a costume and set designer in Chicago. After a few years, he left Chicago for New York where he worked his way up to be an art director at Radio City Music Hall. He put on many ballets and produced new shows every month. His work at Radio City Music Hall was followed by stage directing for Broadway musicals like At Home Abroad (1935) and The Show Is On (1936). 

After a short stint at Paramount and returning to Broadway, MGM producer Arthur Freed called Minnelli to Hollywood where he stayed for the rest of his career. As a part of Freed’s team at MGM, Minnelli began directing primarily musicals, melodramas, and comedies for two decades. Here at the height of MGM's profitability and power, Minnelli made hit after hit, creating films that resonated with audiences and winning many awards. Through it all, he was married four times. With his first wife, the prolific actress Judy Garland, he made five films. He was even able to fulfill a wish of his to direct their daughter, Liza Minnelli, in his last film, A Matter of Time (1976).

Minnelli’s Work in Movie Musicals at MGM

During his time at MGM, Minnelli completed eleven movie musicals and three films with musical segments for MGM from 1943 to 1960 along with his other more dramatic and comedic-focused films. Minnelli was churning out hits for MGM from the very minute he got there. 

The first film he directed for MGM was an all-black musical, Cabin in the Sky (1943), which included the top Black talent of the time like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Butterfly McQueen. This film is considered by many one of the best race films of the time, a popular genre of film during the segregation of films made for Black audiences. This film was more than just a film for Black audiences. Minnelli was able to capture and showcase the talent and beauty of Black actors and people in a way that was not done before. The film celebrated the black experience and showed the push and pull of good and evil. In the film, gambler Little Joe gets shot and must linger in a space between life and death while the demons and angels determine his ultimate fate. Pop culture writer Nathan Rabin wrote that it was like nothing that had ever come before. This film showed Minnelli’s power to channel what brings stage musicals alive onto the screen. 

One of the films Minnelli is most known for that took him a few years to convince MGM to make was a simple quaint story called Meet Me in St. Louis (1944). This Christmas-time film with Judy Garland was based on an article in the New Yorker magazine. This film defined both Minnelli and Garland’s professional careers and became one of their biggest hits. With unforgettable songs, this film shows vibrant and touching moments from Garland’s acting and was a film about optimism and love during the war. Minnelli’s keen attention to detail and talent in putting together dynamic costumes and scenery really shines through in this film. 

Winning six Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Cinematography, An American in Paris (1951) is one of Minnelli’s most celebrated films. This film features an elaborate seventeen-minute ballet where the leads dance the entire story of their courtship. While this film does not hold up as well as in popularity with other similar films of the time, like Singing in the Rain (1952), it shows Minnelli’s unique style and his love to take the ordinary to fantasy. It features a timeless score and impressionistic-style storytelling. 

The only film that Minnelli was awarded the Best Director award for was Gigi (1958). The film won nine Academy Awards and while many have criticized its worthiness, the film has very many merits and is entertaining. It was based on the novella by Colette about a French teenager trained in the art of being a proper mistress with classic songs. This film was a triumphant win coming out of a decline in interest in movie musicals. It featured great music and acting. 

Minnelli’s Impact

Over his long and illustrious career, Minnelli was able to work with some of the biggest stars of the time, like Judy Garland, Spencer Tracy, Gene Kelly, and Frank Sinatra. He was able to bring these actors to life on screen with his experience in the theater and told stories that were different but still connected with mass audiences. 

His stories often featured imagination through show business or dreaming, blurring everyday life with fantasy. He would take small-town settings and create a burst of fantastical imagination in dream-like passages, like the Halloween sequence in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) or the mythic boar hunt in Home From the Hill (1960). One of the biggest examples of this is the 17-minute ballet sequence in An American in Paris that breaks the narrative into a breathtaking lyrical climax. 

Minnelli’s work was heavily influenced by painting and art. During his career, he kept files of different styles of painting for inspiration. He looked towards Van Gogh, impressionists, and post-impressionist work as references for the images and style that he wanted to create in his films. He intermingled this with his work, creating new versions of common places like the Midwest in Meet Me in St. Louis and Some Came Running (1959).

Minnelli is best known for the beautiful examples he left of how excessive detail and bold choices could amplify and bring to life the movie musical. Minnelli brought with him his experience in the theater when he worked in the film industry, which not only gave him experience in directing actors but also big theatrics. He loved big and flamboyant costumes, decor, and color. These patterns would often change and move in his pictures with swooping camera movements and swirly fabrics and light. With that, his stage design background brought to life vibrant sets for his films. Every detail that Minnelli put in front of the camera helped him bring his stories to life in fantastical and fun ways. 

Vincente Minnelli was tasked to make blockbuster films for the biggest and most profitable studio at the time, MGM– and he did just that. He knew how to grab an audience’s attention and manufacture exciting, dynamic visual experiences that had audiences swarming to watch them. He mastered the all-American family MGM musical with wide appeal. Today, his work survives him as film classics and a few have even been adapted for the stage. His style and themes have been recreated for contemporary audiences in the musicals Gigi and An American in Paris. 

Learn more about other film auteurs like Alice Guy-Blanché and Nora Ephron on Auteurnet and see how we can help you build your creative community.