Best movies like Dancing in the Dark

"My Dream was to Become a Star...So Somewhere, Some Day, You'd Know I Did It, In Spite of You - My Father!"

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Dancing in the Dark Starring William Powell, Mark Stevens, Betsy Drake, Adolphe Menjou, and more. If you liked Dancing in the Dark then you may also like: The Unwritten Law, Victor/Victoria, A Wave, a WAC and a Marine, Nelly's Folly, Rose of Washington Square and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.

Emery Slade was one of the brightest stars in Hollywood in 1932, but by 1949 his career has hit the skids. Fortunately, he is able to convince studio head Melville Crossman to cast him in the adaptation of a hit Broadway show. Crossman has one condition: Slade must travel to New York and convince the female star of the stage production to join the film. Slade goes, but, when he eyes the winsome Julie Clarke, he hatches a different scheme.

selected filters: Sort: Default

You may filter the list of movies on this page for a more refined, personalized selection of movies.

Still not sure what to watch click the recommend buttun below to get a movie recommendation selected from all the movies on this list

Know any good movies to watch like Dancing in the Dark 1949. With a similar plot or stoyline. Suggest it.

The Unwritten Law

A film producer is found murdered on a ship, and among the suspects are a young woman whose mother was mistreated by him and his recently fired electrician.

Victor/Victoria

Out-of-work singer Victoria Grant meets a just-fired, flamboyant gay man in a club in 1920s Paris. He convinces her to pretend to be a man who is a female impersonator in order to get a job. The act is a hit in a local nightclub, but things get complicated when a gangster and nightclub owner from Chicago, King Marchan, falls in love with "him." Filmed live on Broadway, 1995.

A Wave, a WAC and a Marine

Henny Brown, talent scout for the Margaret Ames Film Agency in Hollywood, mistakes Broadway show understudies Judy and Marian, for stars Betty and Eileen, and signs them up for movies. Margaret, furious with Henny for the blunder, fires him---but only temporarily. Another agent, Marty Allen, once married to and still in love with Margaret, signs Betty and Eileen. Henny arrives with Judy and Marian, and the nightclub manager asks Henny to emcee the show. Though he is not sure himself what they can do, Henny introduces the girls and they make a hit in a dramatic sketch. Big-time movie producer R. J. signs them to a film contract. Judy joins the WAVES, Marian the WACS and Marty the Marines and all have two weeks before induction, and that is more than long enough to shoot a Monogram musical-within-a-Monogram musical and have a few days to spare.

Nelly's Folly

Nelly the Giraffe is discovered in Africa and leaves to begin a singing career, but finds that chasing fame brings her nothing but unhappiness.

Rose of Washington Square

Rose Sargent, a Roaring '20s singer, becomes a Ziegfeld Follies star as her criminal husband gets deeper in trouble.

Jolson Sings Again

In this sequel to The Jolson Story, we pick up the singer's career just as he has returned to the stage after a premature retirement. But his wife has left him and the appeal of the spotlight isn't what it used to be. This time Jolson trades in the stage for life in the fast lane: women, horses, travel. It takes the death of Moma Yoelson and World War II to bring Jolson back to earth - and to the stage. Once again teamed with manager Steve Martin, Jolson travels the world entertaining troops everywhere from Alaska to Africa. When he finally collapses from exhaustion it takes young, pretty nurse Ellen Clark to show him there's more to life than "just rushing around".

Passing Strange

A young black artist leaves his Los Angeles digs and travels to Europe to find himself. A theatrical stage production of the original Broadway musical.

The Singing Fool

After years of hopeful struggle, Al Stone (Jolson) is on his way. "I'm Sittin' on Top of the World", he sings to an appreciative speakeasy crowd. But, as Al discovers, getting there is one thing. Staying there is another. Singing waiter Stone gets his huge break on a magical night when his song wows a big-time producer and a gold-digging showgirl he fancies. Broadway success and marriage follow, but sure enough, hard times are on the way. Al's fickle wife abandons him, taking the beloved son he calls Sonny Boy with her. Heartbroken, Al becomes a devastated loner until friends from the speakeasy that launched his career rescue him from a life on the streets. Soon, Al is back in lights. But another crisis awaits: Sonny Boy is in the hospital and dying....

Star!

Gertrude Lawrence rises to stage stardom at the cost of happiness.

Main Street to Broadway

In New York, a surly, down-on-his-heels playwright meets a country girl who's giving up trying to act and returning home. He goes with her for inspiration when his agent convinces a stage star to take his next effort. When he returns to Broadway, his girl stays behind and starts seeing a local businessman.

Chasing Rainbows

The road-show troupe of a top Broadway show go cross-country while taking the audience along on the on-stage scenes as well as what happens and is happening back stage of the production. The spectacular dancing ensembles and colorful costumes and pulchritude on-stage offers a contrasting background to the drabness of the backstage, where joy, sorrow, tragedies, deception, and romance are intertwined.

Broadway Rhythm

Broadway producer Johnny Demming is only interested in big-name talent and scoffs that his sister, father and other small-time talent could be used in a successful show.

Once in a Lifetime

Story of a Hollywood studio during the transition from silents to talkies.

Another Face

The surgeon who did the job was dead. Only the nurse knew what this gangster looked like in his new face. He learned about women from her!

The Youngest Profession

Joan Lyons and her friend Patricia Drew are autograph hounds spending most of their day bumping into, and having tea, with the likes of Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon. Based on misinformation from a meddling old-maid governess, Miss Featherstone, Joan also devotes some time to working on the no-problem marriage of her parents to the extent of hiring Dr. Hercules, the strong man from a side show to pay attention to her mother in order to make her father jealous, despite the good advice received from Walter Pidgeon.

Hollywood Cavalcade

Starting in 1913 movie director Connors discovers singer Molly Adair. As she becomes a star she marries an actor, so Connors fires them. She asks for him as director of her next film. Many silent stars shown making the transition to sound.

Stop the World: I Want to Get Off

The Anthony Newley/Leslie Bricusse London and Broadway musical hit Stop the World, I Want to Get Off is given literal treatment in this filmization. Newley stars as Littlechap, whose allegorical rise to success is countered by the instability of his private life. Like the play, the film is staged impressionistically, with Newley decked out in mime makeup and periodically stopping the action to address the audience, and with all the women in his life -- German, American and "Typically English" -- played by a single actress (Millicent Martin, taking over from the stage version's Anna Quayle). In Wizard of Oz fashion, the play itself is lensed in color, while the brief prologue, showing the actors preparing for their performance, is in black-and-white. The production includes such standards (and perennial audition pieces) as What Kind of Fool Am I? and Gonna Build a Mountain.

No Time for Comedy

Director William Keighley's 1940 film adaptation of S. N. Behrman's stage hit, about an aspiring playwright who finds himself an overnight Broadway success, stars James Stewart, Rosalind Russell, Genevieve Tobin, Louise Beavers, Charles Ruggles and Allyn Joslyn.

Sweethearts

Bickering husband-and-wife stage stars are manipulated into a break-up for publicity purposes.

Stardust: The Bette Davis Story

Combining unprecedented access to Davis' vast personal archives with original interviews, this documentary reveals a startling portrait of one of Hollywood's most gifted and enigmatic stars.

Scarlet River

Unable to find open range near Hollywood, western actor Tom Baxter and his troop head to Judy Blake's ranch to shoot their film.

Red Hot and Blue

A Broadway director rescues a starlet from mobsters who blame her for a shooting.

Little Miss Roughneck

Sad-eyed, uniquely talented child actress Edith Fellows was Columbia's "answer" to Shirley Temple, Jane Withers and Deanna Durbin. In Little Miss Roughneck, Fellows is cast as Foxine LaRue, a tomboyish sort who is being prodded into a show-biz career by her stage mother Gert (Margaret Irving). Young Mr. Partridge (Scott Colton) becomes Foxine's agent, principally because he's sweet on the girl's older sister Mary (Jacqueline Wells). Blackballed from Hollywood because of her mother's pushiness, Foxine tries to help out Partridge and her own family by cooking up a bizarre publicity stunt, enlisting the aid of easy-going Mexican "papacita" Pascual (Leo Carrillo).

Broken Hearts of Hollywood

Virginia Perry, a former movie star, leaves her family and returns to Hollywood to make a comeback, but age has taken its toll and she is cast in small character roles. Meanwhile, her daughter, Betty Ann, has won a beauty contest, and heads for Hollywood. They end up in the same, film, with Mom playing her Mom. Marshall tries to take advantage of the naive Betty. Somebody gets shot. Somebody is put on trial.

Lovestruck: The Musical

Harper was one of the best dancers to hit Broadway, but an injury caused her to leave the spotlight, become a choreographer, and raise her daughter Mirabella. When Mirabella decides to quit the show to get married, her mother is determined to put a stop to the wedding and show Mirabella that she cannot give up her career for love.

Star Dust

When Hollywood film studios reject her because she's too young, an Arkansas woman sets out to build a career as an actress on her own.

Sailing Along

Sailing Along is a 1938 British musical comedy film directed by Sonnie Hale and starring Jessie Matthews, Barry MacKay, Jack Whiting, Frank Pettingell, Noel Madison and Alastair Sim. A barge-owner's adopted daughter falls in love with his son, and gives up her chances of stardom to be with him

Something to Sing About

James Cagney has a rare chance to show his song-and-dance-man roots in this low-budget tale of a New York bandleader struggling with a Hollywood studio boss.

Because of Him

A young woman who wants to break into the theater schemes to become the protege of a famous Broadway star.

She's Back on Broadway

When Catherine Terris's career in Hollywood hits the skids, she heads back to the site of her first great triumphs...Broadway! She takes the lead in a play which is being directed by Gordon Evans, the man who was both her Svengali and her lover. Evans is still bitter that she walked out on him to become the toast of Hollywood years earlier. Can Terris and Evans put aside their mutual animosity long enough to make a go of this production. The way things start off, it doesn't seem likely.

Career

Playwright James Lee adapted his off-Broadway play for the screen in this high-strung adaptation, directed by Joseph Anthony. In this simplistic, backroom show-business-success saga, Anthony Franciosa plays Sam, a struggling young actor who will forsake his family and take any type of menial job in order to become a Broadway star. Dean Martin is on hand as Maury, an aspiring director also trying to claw his way up the ladder of success. When Maury gets his big break, Sam wants a part in his show, but when Maury, who is unwilling to cast Sam in the production, turns down Sam's request, Sam seduces and marries Maury's girlfriend (Shirley MacLaine). In spite of everything, Maury wants his girl back, and Sam agrees to a divorce on the stipulation that Maury cast him as the star in his next show. Once again, Maury reneges and, before Sam can exact his revenge, Uncle Sam comes to the rescue and he is drafted into the army.

Christmas Encore

A struggling actress is cast in her last off (off) Broadway show - a modern take on “A Christmas Carol” - before giving up her dream and moving home. Instead, she finds romance with her director and a renewed passion for her craft and the city. But when the historic theater loses its lease and the show is set to fold, she and her cast mates are need of a Christmas miracle.

Manhattan Cocktail

Nancy Carroll stars in Manhattan Cocktail as Babs, a college coed who dreams of becoming a famous actress. Joining up with her campus chums Fred (Richard Arlen) and Bob (Danny O'Shea), likewise aspiring thespians, Babes heads to Broadway with stars in her eyes. The winsome threesome are quickly disillusioned by the heartless machinations of nasty producer Renov (Paul Lukas) and his harridan wife (Lilyan Tashman). Before the plot proper gets under way, the audience is regaled with a cute "mythological" prologue, featuring the same three leading actors. Manhattan Cocktail was a silent picture, except for two brief musical numbers showcasing Nancy Carroll.

Mary Pickford: The Muse of the Movies

This documentary traces the life and work of the legendary "America's Sweetheart" Mary Pickford, silent film star, movie pioneer and keen businesswoman. Pickford's life also parallels an even larger story, telling of the birth of the cinema itself.

More related lists

Sort results by:

X close
Default
Clear filters
...