The Band Wagon · reception & legacy

1953 · Vincente Minnelli

How The Band Wagon has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

A critical hit in 1953 that reportedly still struggled to turn a profit thanks to its lavish budget, it has since climbed to the very top tier of the MGM musical canon — now routinely mentioned in the same breath as Singin' in the Rain.

What's debated

The perennial cinephile debate: is this or Singin' in the Rain the greatest backstage musical — with Band Wagon partisans insisting it's the wittier, more melancholy, more grown-up of the two.

Its footprint

It gave the world 'That's Entertainment!' — the song that became MGM's unofficial anthem and titled the studio's whole nostalgia franchise — and the noir-parody Girl Hunt Ballet echoes down to Michael Jackson's 'Smooth Criminal' look.

Where it stands

A consensus classic of the Freed Unit era and a fixture of greatest-musicals lists — the Minnelli musical cinephiles cite when they want to look slightly more discerning than the Singin' in the Rain crowd.

★ Did you know? Screenwriters Betty Comden and Adolph Green wrote themselves into the movie — the bickering married writing team played by Oscar Levant and Nanette Fabray is a barely disguised self-portrait — while Fred Astaire's 'washed-up song-and-dance man from the movies' cut uncomfortably close to Astaire's own career anxieties at the time.