You'll bury us all

WHAT A WAY TO GO!

1964

Directed by J. Lee Thompson

Written by Betty Comden, Adolph Green, and Gwen Davis

Spoilers: moderate

Look at me, I'm dancing

ANCHORS AWEIGH

1945

Directed by George Sidney

Written by Isobel Lennart (based on a story by Natalie Marcin)

Spoilers: moderate

If it was gay, bright, and beautiful, that's how Ziggy wanted it

ZIEGFELD FOLLIES

1946

Directed by Vincente Minnelli, Charles Walters, George Sidney, Lemuel Ayers, Roy Del Ruth, and Robert Lewis

Spoiler alert: inapplicable (and as I've said before, it's difficult to be brief with musicals or anthologies, and this one's both)

Brooklyn, James—Cinderella wants to take another look at the ashes

COVER GIRL

1944

Directed by Charles Vidor

Written by Marion Parsonnet, Paul Gangelin, Erwin Gelsey, John H. Kafka, and Virgina Van Upp

Spoiler alert: moderate

The young girls of Mount Helicon

XANADU

1980

Directed by Robert Greenwald

Written by Richard Christian Danus and Marc Reid Rubel

Spoiler alert: moderate

The Rasho-men

LES GIRLS

1957

Directed by George Cukor

Written by John Patrick and Vera Caspary

Spoiler alert: moderate

I'm fairly pretty, which is a nuisance

IT'S ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER

1955

Directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen

Written by Betty Comden and Adolph Green

Spoiler alert: moderate

I dinna like it

BRIGADOON

1954

Directed by Vincente Minnelli

Written by Alan Jay Lerner (based on the play by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe)

Spoiler alert: moderate verging on high, I guess

If I had the chance, I'd ask the world to dance

INVITATION TO THE DANCE

If every musical of the 1950s winds up turning into a pretentious art film for ten or twenty minutes, what would happen if a musical was simply conceived as a pretentious art film from the start?  That's the experiment Gene Kelly ran when he made Invitation to the Dance, and the results, while mixed, suggest that Kelly's opus deserves a higher profile amongst its brethren musicals than the near-obscurity which, sadly, it actually enjoys.

1952/1956

Directed by, choreographed by, and starring Gene Kelly

Spoiler alert: moderate