‘Self-isolating and bored? The musical way I’m passing the time’

We’re all navigating this new world together. It isn’t fun but we are doing whatever it takes to be kind to ourselves and be kind to others. That’s the positive.

The negative?

For the life of me I’m finding it really difficult to focus on books. As a prolific reader all my life this is quite bizarre.

I lack focus and am finding it difficult to concentrate so I’ve simply stopped reading. My current study program on ‘understanding dementia’ has been put on hold temporarily until my attention span improves.

Television hasn’t provided any joy for more than 20 years so I rely on movies for evening entertainment. Strangely, though, I’m not even finding these entertaining anymore.

It is a sad day when a girl who has been collecting Errol Flynn memorabilia for 40 years has no stomach for Robin Hood in his Lincoln green tights. Braveheart, the most romantic movie of all time (in my humble opinion), bored me senseless recently and I nodded off in the chair in front of Casablanca. Yes, bad days indeed.

Recently I’ve turned a corner. I’m watching movie musicals instead of melodramas and murder mysteries and managing to stay awake until the credits roll. I go to bed with a spring in my step, and tend to head to the breakfast table the next morning whistling a happy tune.

These movies have been both recent releases and efforts dating back to the 1940s. It all started with a Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra flick released in 1949 called Take Me Out To The Ball Game, followed by a 1950s movie, Calamity Jane, starring Doris Day and Howard Keel. I watched Mamma Mia featuring non stop ABBA songs, and honestly, I’m still shaking those tail feathers although I was never a big fan at the time.

What do these movies all have in common? They are all light-hearted, colourful and good fun.

You can park your brain at the door and simply be entertained. This in turn made me think about the popularity of movie musicals over the years.

The movie musical genre exploded in the early-1930s as the United States struggled through the Great Depression. In 1930, Hollywood put out 100 musical movies as Americans desperately needed an escape.

An American expert on cinema said, “Musicals presented an ideal genre for the escape because it made people leave the gloom and doom of poverty behind and see films that depicted people in joyous movement but had very lavish surroundings.”

The Golden Age of the American Musical is generally considered the 1940s through To the 1950s. The songs were the key attractions and to this day many of us remember at least snippets from most of those tunes. Hands up who remembers this one and bonus points for the name of the movie:

“Clang, clang, clang went the trolley
Ding, ding, ding went the bell
Zing, zing, zing went my heart strings
From the moment I saw him I fell.”

Songs from the films frequently topped the pop charts, Bing Crosby’s ‘White Christmas’ being a prime example. You see, most of the popular songwriters of the era all wrote for Hollywood, including Kern, Berlin, Porter, Fields, Warren, Rodgers and Hammerstein.

There’s a correlation I guess. In these strange times we need an escape too.

I’m off to see the wizard now, and tomorrow I’ll be going ‘My Way’ with old Bing and Barry Fitzgerald.

Try a movie musical and tell me if it cheers you up. Worked for me.

Do you have a story to share with Starts at 60? We want to publish it. Sign up as a contributor and submit your stories to Starts at 60. Stories written by over-60s go into the draw for some great weekly prizes. You can also join the Starts at 60 Bloggers Club on Facebook to talk to other writers in the Starts at 60 community and learn more about how to write for Starts at 60.