Cole Porter, Buddy De Sylva, and Herbert Field's risque and charming stage musical was bowdlerized to satisfy the Hays Office in this film adaptation, a pallid imitation of the show that delighted Broadway. Broadway leads Ethel Merman and Bert Lahr were replaced by redheads Lucille Ball
and Red Skelton, whom the studio felt were bigger draws and whose hair would show up nicely in dazzling Technicolor. The second leads on Broadway were played by Ronald Graham and Betty Grable, who was under contract at Fox and was consequently not allowed to appear in this MGM musical, so she and
Graham were replaced by Virginia O'Brien and Gene Kelly. In its timidity, MGM changed the Lahr/Skelton character's job as men's room attendant at a New York club (a situation that offered some of the funniest and bluest lines in the play) to coat room clerk Louis Blore, who is mad for sassy
showgirl May Daly (Ball). She won't give him the time of day, until he wins $75,000 in the Irish Sweepstakes, whereupon she begins paying attention to Louis' advances at the expense of another admirer, Alec Howe (Kelly). Louis buys the nightclub they work in and is happy as a lark until his pal,
"Rami the Swami" (Zero Mostel), a comedy psychic, predicts that a planned marriage between Louis and May will never happen. Louis therefore orders a Mickey Finn for Alec, intending to slip it to him so he can't attend the engagement party, but mistakenly drinks the brew himself. The rest of the
picture is a dream sequence with Ball as Madame Du Barry, Skelton as the King Louis, and Kelly as piratical master of derring-do the Black Arrow. The dream reveals that Du Barry really loves the Black Arrow, and Louis wakes up to push May and Alec together and to acknowledge the fact that he
really loves Ginny (O'Brien), but was too infatuated with May to realize it.
Only five of Porter's original songs remain ("Katie Went to Haiti," "Do I Love You, Do I?" "Friendship," "Well, Did You Evah," and "Taliostro's Dance"). The new material written for the film couldn't compare with his work. Lana Turner does an unbilled 15-second bit via trick photography (she was
making SLIGHTLY DANGEROUS a couple of sound stages down the block), making her first Technicolor appearance during "I Love An Esquire Girl," in which Skelton sings, "and if Lana Turner doesn't set you in a whirl / Then you don't love a lovely girl." Other songs: "Du Barry Was a Lady" (Burton Lane,
Ralph Freed), "Madame, I Love Your Crepes Suzettes" (Lane, Lew Brown, Freed), "Thinking of You" (Frances Ash, Walter Donaldson), "A Cigarette, Sweet Music and You" (Ringwald), "Sleepy Lagoon" (Coates), "You Are My Sunshine" (Davis, Mitchell), "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You" (Ned Washington,
George Bassman), "Salome," "Ladies of the Bath" (Roger Edens), "King Louis," "Get Me a Taxi," "On to Combat" (Daniele Amfitheatrof), "No Matter How You Slice It, It's Still Salome" (Edens). leave a comment
