Playlist:  Musicals! by Kathleen Saylor, Alexander Street Press

Patricia Morison, Alfred Drake, Julie Wilson. Five years after the big screen affair with Kathryn Grayson and Howard Keel comes this wonderful TV production of the original stage play complete with Cole Porter's outstanding score. Loosely based on Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew .

Stephen Sondheim’s macabre musical masterpiece, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street, receives one bloody delicious production in this 2001 concert presentation of Broadway’s black-humored thriller of revenge, razors, murder, and meat pies. Returning to Victorian London after a long exile, the unhinged barber Sweeney Todd seeks violent vengeance on the unscrupulous judge who separated him from his family, freedom… and sanity. Teaming with the Sweeney-smitten, pie-making Mrs. Lovett, Todd reopens his tonsorial parlor to lure the judge in… and then practice his murderous desires on the throats of Fleet Street’s citizenry! Broadway legend Patti LuPone (TV’s Penny Dreadful), Tony Award winner George Hearn, and Neil Patrick Harris headline this special concert presentation of one of the theatre’s tastiest triumphs.

This TV movie, based on the novel of the same name by Mary Mapes Dodge, stars Robin Askwith (U-571) as the noble but poor Hans Brinker, who must struggle to keep his poor family afloat in the wake of an accident that left his father unable to work. The tale provides a realistic look at Dutch family life in the 19th century, and has since become a classic story in children's literature. Directed by Robert Sheerer (The Love Boat, Star Trek: The Next Generation), the movie provides a classic example of the made-for-TV feature length musicals which were popular in the 1960's and 1970's.

Film of the legendary 1985 concert performance presented by the New York Philharmonic of Stephen Sondheim's classic musical at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center. The plot of the musical centers around a reunion of showgirls who appeared in an annual Follies extravaganza when it was staged between the wars. Sally and Phyllis are two of these former showgirls, now middle-aged. Sally is married to Buddy, and Phyllis is married to Ben. Sally is unhappy with Buddy, and still is madly in love with Ben after a brief affair they had when they were younger. Phyllis is going to divorce Ben, so all seems right. But the reason Phyllis is divorcing Ben is because he is incapable of showing real, genuine love. Will Sally truly be happy if she leaves Buddy and marries Ben? Okay, the plot isn't much, but the songs are wonderful. The show features frequent "pastiche numbers" in which other former showgirls perform numbers in the style of the period in which this Follies was staged. These numbers, juxtaposed against the moving "book songs," make for a truly brilliant score.

This 1956 performance of the play The Stingiest Man in Town was directed by Daniel Petrie and stars Basil Rathbone, Martyn Green, Vic Damone, and Patrice Munsel. The play by Janice Torre is a musical adaptation of the novel A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.