The Golden Age musicals a man can watch without apologizing

Quick answer: If he hates random singing, start with a backstage musical like Yankee Doodle Dandy or Singin' in the Rain. If he needs a fight, start with Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.

Don't call it a musical. Call it a barn fight.

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers has six backwoods brothers, a pack of town boys, a dance competition, and a barn going up in the middle of it. The dance turns into a brawl. The brothers throw axes, planks and each other around the rafters, and every move is choreographed. Tell your fourteen-year-old that and he'll watch. Say "it's a musical" and he'll find something urgent in the garage.

That's the whole trick of this piece. Golden Age musicals aren't hard to sell. They're badly sold.

Two kinds of musical, and only one is the problem

A man who bristles at musicals usually means one thing. People are walking down the street, nobody's in a bad mood, and suddenly they're singing at a mailbox.

Film people call those integrated musicals, where the songs are just how the characters talk. They're fine once you're in, but they're the harder sell.

The easier sell is the backstage musical. The characters are performers, so singing and dancing make sense. Nobody's embarrassed because nobody's pretending. Start there with a skeptic and you've removed his only real objection.

Start here: the ones with a reason to sing

***Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942).* James Cagney won Best Actor playing George M. Cohan, the Broadway man behind "You're a Grand Old Flag," "Over There" and "Give My Regards to Broadway." Cagney was known for gangsters, which makes it funnier that he's the best dancer in the picture. Watch him tap down the White House staircase. It's just over two hours, in black and white, and it's unapologetically patriotic. The film leans into Cohan's July Fourth birthday story. He was actually born on the third, and the movie doesn't care. Content concerns: none worth naming, a few sad moments, and a stretch of stage business that younger kids will outlast.

***Singin' in the Rain (1952).* Hollywood's panic over the arrival of talking pictures, played as a comedy. Gene Kelly in the rain gets the poster, but the man to watch is Donald O'Connor. His "Make 'Em Laugh" number has him running up a wall and flipping off it. Most grown men would have trouble getting out of the chair. "Moses Supposes" is a tap routine built on a tongue twister, and it's a delight. Content concerns: a mean-spirited comic villain, some flirtation, and a long ballet near the end with flirtatious dancing. Nothing beyond mild, but it's the stretch kids will fidget through. It runs about an hour and forty minutes.

When he needs something to happen

***Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954).* Oregon, 1850s. The eldest brother marries a woman who finds out she's also signed on to cook and clean for six more. Most of the brothers were trained dancers and gymnasts, which is why the barn scene works. Here's the part to talk about afterward: the brothers carry off six women from the town, and the movie plays it as a comic misadventure. It isn't comic. It's the film's weak spot, and the best conversation starter you'll get all year. Watch it with kids old enough to say why that's wrong, and let them say it.

***Oklahoma! (1955).* Farmers and cowmen share a territory, and a hired hand named Jud Fry holds a grudge. Fred Zinnemann, who also directed High Noon, brought some real tension to this one, and Rod Steiger makes Jud properly menacing. If your family has worked through the Westerns every man should watch at least once, this is the sing-along cousin. Content concerns: Jud is frightening for little ones, he dies in a fight at the end, and there's a dream ballet in the middle that nearly everyone finds odd. Ado Annie's flirting is a running gag for older kids. Around two and a half hours.

***The Music Man (1962).* A traveling salesman named Harold Hill rolls into River City, Iowa, in 1912 selling band instruments to a town that has no band and no plans for one. He's a fraud, and the movie knows it. Robert Preston plays him as a man who has talked his way out of every room he's ever been in. "Ya Got Trouble" is a speech set to music, and every man who's ever sat through a sales pitch will recognize the technique. The film goes soft on him in the end, which is worth pointing out to your kids. Redemption is a good thing. Keeping the money isn't. About two and a half hours.

For the dads

Two films are quietly about fathers, and men tend to feel them before they admit it.

***Mary Poppins (1964).* Mr. Banks works long hours, runs his house on a schedule, and doesn't know his own children. The nanny is a distraction. The real story is a banker who learns that Saturday matters more than his Monday. By the time he's out on the hill with a kite, you'll know where he's headed. Content concerns: a bank run scene that rattles some little ones, and a chimney sweep sequence with some rooftop heights. Otherwise it's about as safe as family movies get.

***The Sound of Music (1965).* A Navy captain runs his household with a whistle and a schedule. His seven children are on the receiving end. A governess arrives, and the house changes. Yes, the first hour is children and singing. But by the end it's about a father who finds out what he's willing to give up to protect his family, and the Nazis aren't a metaphor. It's about three hours, so budget it like a ballgame. Content concerns: wartime menace, a teenage romance with a few kisses, and a tense escape scene.

For December, add White Christmas. Two Army buddies put on a show to save their old general's Vermont inn. It's in the same spirit as the films in the Christmas movies worth watching again every December.

How to run the night

Pick by the audience, not by the title. Skeptic over fourteen, start with Yankee Doodle Dandy or Singin' in the Rain. Boys under twelve, Seven Brides, with the abduction talk waiting for after the credits. Whole family, Mary Poppins.

Check anything unfamiliar before you commit. Eight minutes of vetting beats an hour of explaining.

Turn the volume up a notch for the dancing. These films were built for it.

And don't oversell. Put on the one with the brawl. Let the dancing sneak up on him.