Guys And Dolls

A great play but just a good movie, GUYS AND DOLLS fails to convey the charm that the magnificent stylized stage version brought to the unique world inhabited by Damon Runyon's characters, despite the collaboration of some very talented people. Both Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra are miscast, but after paying a fortune for the rights to the play, Samuel Goldwyn was not about to give the unknowns who starred on the stage a chance at the movie, and only Vivian Blaine, Johnny Silver, Stubby Kaye, and B.S. Pully made the stage-to-screen transition. (Goldwyn was to be disappointed by the film's box office nevertheless.) Sinatra is Nathan Detroit, proprietor of "the old...