Do new songs from movie musicals get added to the shows?

[Sinfonia2001]

When a musical gets made into a movie, they usually write one or more new songs specifically for the movie. Do they automatically get added to the shows themselves for stage productions and the rights to the shows? If so can you name instances?

[Jordan Catalano]

They don't "automatically" get added into future stage productions. The recent tour of DREAMGIRLS made the awful mistake of taking out some of the best music from the end of the show so they could put "Listen" in it's place.

EVITA added "You Must Love Me" to the current production, but it works beautifully, as it did in the film.

[Sinfonia2001]

Wow, what was going on on stage during Listen?

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Effie berates Deena and Deena grovels and they both howl at each other for while.

[GavestonPS]

Without taking an actual survey, my sense is that the answer to the OP's question used to be almost always "no", but the practice has become more common now that Broadway acknowledges film as our dominate art form.

[frontrowcentre2]

The "movie" songs do not automatically get added to the shows, but many community theatre productions add them (without permission) reasoning that fans of the film of GREASE will expect to hear "You're the One That I Want", "Sandy" and the title song. That fact that these songs are not properly cued in the script for the show means they must rewrite the piece (again without permission), usually lifting chunks of dialogue from the film script(Which is owned by the studio that produced the film.) Often the companies that license the shows for performance, become aware of this and even sometimes will offer the alternate songs for a fee, figuring that if these producers are going to use the songs they might as well collect some extra $ in license fees. (Yes, I am aware that many commercial productions of GREASE an SOUND OF MUSIC have now included the movie songs. This is in response to the same audience expectations. Sometimes the interpolations work..I find "You Must Love Me" a touching and worthwhile addition to EVITA. But generally they don't fit in with the stage show and seem like appendages.

[darquegk]

It's about fifty-fifty one way or the other. The Sound of Music is arguably somewhat improved by the movie songs inclusion, as "Something Good," though still a tender ballad, is much less funereal than "An Ordinary Couple." Ditto Cabaret, which adds "Mein Herr" and "Maybe This Time" frequently.

Grease's new songs are six of one, half dozen of the other- "Grease is the Word" sticks out like a sore thumb, but "Hopelessly Devoted" and "You're THe ONe That I Want" work better.

Sometimes, however, a show is drastically rewritten post movie version. Most notably, Grease and Reefer Madness, which was restructured HUGELY after the film.

[AEA AGMA SM]

I would say that "I Have Confidence" fits into the flow of the stage version of The Sound of Music quite well and can serve as a fantastic "in one" to cover that scene shift from the Abbey to the Von Trapp house. Out of curiosity, does anybody know how that transition was handled in the original production before "I Have Confidence" existed? Did it just go from the Mother Abbess and Maria right to the Von Trapp house or was there something there to cover it?

[winston89]

AEA AGMA SM,

I know from experience ( worked on the crew of a production of the show that didn't add anything from the movie) that it goes right from Mother Abbess and Maria into the Von Trapp house. I think at most there MAY have been underscored music for the scene change but there wasn't any song or anything between the two scenes.

[theatreguy]

In the original production of Sound of Music, there was a short scene "in one" with Maria walking through a corridor of the Abbey singing My Favorite Things. Sister Margaretta watches her leave then sings "How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?" and exits as the Von Trapp house is revealed.

[CapnHook]

In my middle school production of PETER PAN, they added a song for Tinker Bell and named it "Tink's Torch Song." She sang "Nobody Does It Like Me." They also stole the choreography of "Ugh-A-Wugg" (Jerome Robbins) for the entire ensemble of 30 (!!) indians to perform. And lastly, they needed to add a vamp for the entire ensemble (30!!) of pirates to get onstage before singing "We're bloody buccaneers, and each a murderous brute..." so they vamped with "Yo Ho! A Pirate's Life For Me!" from the Pirates of the Carribbean theme park ride.

[PetitPapillon]

I think it depends. For productions of Grease, for example, you can get permission very easily (my former high school is going through this now) to add those songs.

[g.d.e.l.g.i.]

Hair has the unique distinction of being a show which added a "movie song" to its score without the song actually having appeared in the film. The way Jim Rado tells it, "Hippie Life" (which is the non-sequitur finale to the currently licensed script, and is often shifted to elsewhere in Act One or Two, or cut as in the Paulus revival) was originally written for the film with a different melody, and in the late Nineties, when he and the late Gerry Ragni began endless tweaking of the stage script, Galt MacDermot wrote a new melody for it in its stage incarnation.

[DEClarke]

"Some Fun Now" and "Mean Green Mother" have never worked their way into a production of LITTLE SHOP that I have seen.

My guess is that "Some Fun Now" replaced "Ya Never Know," so you can't really have them both (even though they come at different points in the story). Lyrically they are too similar.

"Mean Green Mother" would just slow down the finale. Yet, in the director's cut of the film it still exisits and works. So, I don't know about that one. Although, I don't think "Mean Green Mother" was truly written for the film. I believe a version exisited before they opened Off-Broadway, it just never got put into the show.

[jnb9872]

As regards CABARET, am I mistaken in believing "Money" is a third song from the movie often added to stage versions?

[newintown]

"Better Than A Dream" was, I believe, written for the film of Bells Are Ringing and is now a part of the rental score.

I like it, but usually (it seems to me) adding songs from movie versions to stage shows is just awkward pandering to audiences who lack the imagination to accept something different from what they're familiar with.

Case in point: there's nothing intrinsically better about "Something Good" over "An Ordinary Couple," but many people prefer the former because they've seen the movie 100 times and are just used to it.

They think that they prefer it because it's a "better" song, but it's nothing more than familiarity.

[James885]

"Some Fun Now" and "Mean Green Mother" have never worked their way into a production of LITTLE SHOP that I have seen.


I actually saw a production of Little Shop of Horrors that not only illegally inserted Mean Green Mother From Outer Space, but also included the 'happy' ending from the film. Don't Feed The Plants was cut from the show entirely.

Needless to say, the production didn't turn out well!

[darquegk]

I disagree that "An Ordinary Couple" is as good of a song as "Something Good." As someone who doesn't particularly care for the show itself as film or stage piece, I've heard both songs about equally, and I think "Something Good" works better, at least for me.

The reason "Mean Green Mother" has never been added to the show is not about slowing the finale- it's about the fact that the song's tempo and tongue-twisting lyrics are impossible to puppet live. The film was only able to do it by filming in slow motion.

[g.d.e.l.g.i.]

As regards CABARET, am I mistaken in believing "Money" is a third song from the movie often added to stage versions?

Depends on how you look at it. Originally written for the film, then in the 1987 revival it was combined with "Sitting Pretty" in a number called "The Money Song," and in the 1998 revival it completely replaced "The Money Song" as its own animal once more.

[JoeKv99]

Oooh, sorry Dar, you are incorrect! New in Town has ruled and "Something Good" has been found wanting. You only THINK you like it better, but you are wrong.

[newintown]

Oh, Joe, you silly little bitchlet. You need to slow down a bit, lay off that third cup of coffee, and read for meaning rather than twattery.

Then you would notice that I never said "Something Good" is "wanting" or worse than "An Ordinary Couple," and you would avoid making such an ass of yourself.

The point is that neither one is inherently a "better" song; people just have subjective preferences for one over the other.

Do you understand now, little one?

[henrikegerman]

As long as "Cinema Italiano" is never added to any stage production of "Nine" the world will be a much better place.

[JoeKv99]

Oh Henrik- I'm afraid you aren't qualified to pass judgement on that song! You may only THINK you dislike it. We must wait for the Maestro to tell us.

[newintown]

Ahh, like pearls before swine...

[darquegk]

Cinema Italiano stuck out like a sore thumb in Nine. The other two new songs, Take It All and Guarda La Luna didn't strike me as so out of place stylistically.

One of the things I found the most unusual about the Nine film was that it did what the play never did- root Contini/Fellini in the Italian New Wave era, visually, stylistically and musically. Between the fairly consistently operatic style of the stage show, and the few bits of Contini's film style we see on stage, it seems a fair assumption to believe Contini to be a contemporary of DeMille in the epic post-silent era, or even a silent filmmaker.

The jazzy feel of Take It All suited the Italian New Wave style of music heard diegetically in the film, and changing the obscure background cue "Waltz from Nine" (which I have always theorized was intended in the play as 'movie background music' in homage to Nino Rota) to a main song at the expense of the somewhat more operatic "Nine" similarly planted the film much more squarely in its era.

[newintown]

I like the fact that Nine is not a "musical version" of 81/2, but is a musical based upon the film.

I don't see that the work improves by being more specifically connected to Fellini and his style and work. Nine is its own work of art, with its own integrity.

Faulting the score for Nine because it doesn't remind one of Italian New Wave films is like criticizing "People Will Say We're In Love" because it doesn't sound like something 19th century Oklahoma settlers would sing.