The 25 best movie musicals of all time

The American Film Institute picks the best song-and-dance stories ever put on film.

3. 'Guys and Dolls'

The 1955 film, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, centers on two gamblers, Nathan Detroit (Frank Sinatra) and Sky Masterson (Marlon Brando). Nathan bets his friend Sky that Sky can't win over the local prim missionary and take her on a date to Cuba. Sky wins the bet when he and Sarah Brown (Jean Simmons) set off for a romantic island dinner, but he finds himself in over his head when he falls in love with her. Meanwhile, Nathan tries to stay on the good side of his longtime fiancée, Adelaide (Vivian Blaine).

Modern viewers may be startled by the fact that Nathan, Sky, and their other gambler friends very rarely speak with contractions ("I have been" and "you will admit" rather than "I've" and "you'll"). The style came from the writing of author Damon Runyan, whose stories "The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown" and "Blood Pressure" were the basis for the musical.

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