Independent Exhibitors Film Bulletin (1957)

"Pal Joey" Glittering, Smart Musical Made for BoxolficR StuUtM 1£<zti*$ O O O pius Cut to fit the taste of sophisticated metropolitan adults. Original has been laundered sufficiently to avoid offense to grown-ups in the hinterland. Grosses will be very strong in class situations everywhere. Good elsewhere. In transferring celebrated Broadway musicals to the screen, Hollywood of late has been scrupulously exact: nothing short of downright duplication would do. An "Oklahoma*' or a "Pajama Game" have been reverently, perhaps too faithfully, remade. But now with Columbia's "Pal Joey ", the old flamboyant gong once more sounds; we are back in the world of the treatment with the built-in "popular" touch. For producer Fred Kohlmar and director George Sidney have done the kind of show Louis B. Mayer would love: from beginning to end it's a monument to box office simplicities. The Richard RodgersLorenz Hart-John O'Hara stage success — brittle, crisp, wicked — has been given a thorough rinsing, and now runs the bigscreen Technicolored gamut of stars, songs, sex, snap and schmaltz. While all this does not add up to "art" in the avantgarde manner of musicals, in the way its pre-conditioned mass audience magnetism should have big city exhibitors and the boys in the back room at Columbia counting receipts for many a moon. It seems sure to be one of the spontaneous hits of the season. In the box-office sense, we are saying, this is a Film of Distinction. Most of the magnetism derives from its stars, all three of whom are attended by palpable and personal cults: Frank Sinatra, Kim Novak and Rita Hayworth. And all three are allowed to parade their trade marks in the ultra-grand manner. Sinatra goes through his personality paces as a Runyonesque lady killer with night club pallor, roving blue eyes, a shifty smile and a wise-cracking patter. He is a somewhat sleazy singer in a San Francisco dive full of charm; he is also an interlocutor whose happy-go-lucky tentacles catch hold of both Nob Hill society dame Hayworth and kewpie doll chorine Novak. The girls are dazzlers: Miss Hayworth's sensuous elegance always on the point of sizzling and Miss Novak's wide-eyed, fulsome beauty coupled with the classic curves that have become her route to fame. Fortunately, Miss Hayworth's screenplay past allows her a moment to forget her highfalutin' ways and do a dance number that expertly explodes upon the screen. In it she explores the days when she was little ol' Vanessa the Undresser with a nostalgia that should have the audience holding their breath. And Miss Novak, no slouch in the pulchritude department either, does a lowdown minuet to an eighteenth century strip, not to mention her highstepping grinds and bounces with the chorus. Then there is Dorothy Kingsley's screenplay which has blissfully disavowed the ribald realism and hard and fast humans of John O'Hara, in favor of the traditional "meet cute" props and "sympathetic" stylizings dear to the hearts of the masses. No longer do we have the deadly charm of a heel or the rich widow willing to pay for her kicks; we have, instead nice people with only hints of depravity, show people no different from the inhabitants of little theatre groups. In short, the dia The heel (Sinatra) and the lovely (Kim Novak) logue is clever and cunning, the situations charmingly contrived. The unpleasant world of Mr. O'Hara has disappeared within a wonderland of the sweet, the pleasantly sour and the sensational. And so has most of the original score; only two of Rodgers and Hart's racy songs remain, both appropriately redone with detergents. To fill in, producer Kohlmar and director Sidney have taken some of our tunesmiths' other works, more standard and more sentimental and surrounded them with sumptuous production numbers that glitter across the screen in Technicolor loveliness. Jean Louis gowns bedeck not only stars Hayworth and Novak, but a bevy of other buxomites and Harold Lipstein's cameras captures 'Frisco's atmosphere. The only remaining detail is the nature of the plot, a simple little yarn to be sure, which follows the skeletal outline of the original. (The flesh it puts on being all Miss Kingsley's own.) Fast-talking, doll-crazy Broadway hipster Sinatra arrives broke in 'Frisco, but parlays his way into a song and dance act at a night club where chorus girl Novak works. His charm catapults every lassie but Miss Novak into his lap, she representing the innocent lovely for whom sex is sacred. A no-hay arrangement with the girl, makes for a barnstorm with Nob Hill's Miss Hayworth, who finds herself bewitched, bothered and bewildered. In no time at all, the smitten society woman is financing Sinatra's sleek supper club while he attends to her boudoir. All goes well until the lad gets plucked by cupid and he realizes Miss Novak means more to him than success. In the end. Miss Hayworth steps out gracefully, taking the club with her and leaving lovebirds Sinatra and Novak. [More REVIEWS on Page a. Ill Minutes. Rita Hayworth, Frank Sinatra. Kim Novak. Barbara Bobby Sherwood. Directed by George Sidney. Produced by i-red Kohii Essex-George Sidney Production. Film BULLETIN September 16, 1957 Page 13