Give me There’s No Business like Show Business, give me Chicago, Cabaret, give me An American in Paris. What’s my cup of tea? Weak, with sugar: the sort of madcap caper with sequins and choreographed ensemble numbers and preferably a cartoon thrown in for a dance number or two. My love of broadway lyrics and lounge piano jazz has always been my big secret. I was aware that such a predilection was tres uncool. That these films lacked depth and cache. Still, growing up I was often left alone and spent the time belting out the lyrics to A Star is Born, the Judy version, and Yentl. Hello Dolly was a holy day. The syncopated tune of the eponymous song the dictates my ear’s association with show tunes to this day. Well hello. Dolly. Well hello. Louie. It’s so nice to. Be back. Where. I belong. Poetry, no?

There was a look to all the post-war era musicals and studio “classics” from the 1930s, 40s, 50s—beyond the exaggeration of  CinemaScope, beyond the third-strip technicolor technology that imbued a magenta glow and thick black outlines to the objects on the screen (these images are beamed toward the viewer, quite literally, through rose-colored glasses). There was a shared studio sheen, costume changes, moneyed productions, cookie cutter formulas and rapid fire banter, a beginning, a middle, and an end (but little plot). In short, a common light appeal. Every character’s entrance was an affair: entrees to the scene were accompanied by muted trumpets and a string orchestra. Merely walking on would never do. A star arrived via two-steps and ball changes and pas de bourees.

These films existed outside of time—there were rarely obvious points of historical or political context. You could exchange one movie star’s 1950s polka dot wiggle dress for an electric blue Victorian crepe de chine gown, fiddle with the dialogue a hair, and voila, you had a period piece. I appreciate how orchestrated these movies were. They gave me a lie that I needed to keep on existing: that life could be just as structured, too.

The structure went:

Act I: Introduce Characters. Raise a Problem. Sing all the Songs.

Act II: Re-sing some of the songs. Resolve problem.

Easy. Escapist. Kansas.

These movies are not perfect by a long shot. Often they are deeply racist and sexist. They presented a firm and dangerous ideal: white, asymmetrically pretty, upward mobility. Still, as a kid, I watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s and my takeaway was invaluable: I could be a poor, sexual, gender ambiguous person and live radically different...