Kiss Me Kate (George Sidney, 1953)

Kathryn Grayson and Howard Keel in Kiss Me Kate

Cast: Howard Keel, Kathryn Grayson, Ann Miller, Tommy Rall, Bobby Van, Bob Fosse, Keenan Wynn, James Whitmore, Kurt Kasznar, Ann Codee, Willard Parker, Ron Randell, Carol Haney, Jeanne Coyne. Screenplay: Dorothy Kingsley, based on a musical play by Sam Spewack and Bella Spewack, and on a play by William Shakespeare. Cinematography: Charles Rosher. Art direction: Urie McCleary, Cedric Gibbons. Film editing: Ralph E. Winters. Music: musical direction by Saul Chaplin, André Previn, songs by Cole Porter.

Censorship has erased some of the bawdiness from Cole Porter's lyrics but his music still remains. Howard Keel is swaggeringly handsome as Fred Graham/Petruchio and Ann Miller is thoroughly vivacious as Lois Lane/Bianca. She is accompanied by a trio of terrific dancers, Tommy Rall, Bobby Van, and Bob Fosse, in numbers choreographed by Hermes Pan (with some uncredited assistance from Fosse in the "From This Moment On" number, where he gets an extended duo with an almost unbilled Carol Haney). The adaptation of the Broadway hit stumbles a little in Dorothy Kingsley's screenplay, but rights itself in most of the musical numbers. George Sidney was never as skillful a director as his MGM contemporaries Vincente Minnelli and Stanley Donen, but the stretches between the story parts and the song and dance parts aren't overlong. The only major drawback to this version of Kiss Me Kate is Kathryn Grayson, who pouts a lot as Lilli Vanessi/Katherine, but doesn't have much chemistry with Keel and fails to make the character someone we care about. Her voice, too, has that vinegary edge to it that even careful miking can't hide. Nor do Keenan Wynn and James Whitmore succeed in their attempts at clowning as the goofy gangsters with their supposedly show-stopping number, "Brush Up Your Shakespeare." (How, by the way, did the line "Kick her right in the Coriolanus" get past the censors?) Still, this is a solid B-plus MGM musical, and an honorable attempt at remaking a stage version. It was made in 3-D, during the brief period in the 1950s when the studios were trying to win audiences back away from their televisions, which explains some of the exaggerated perspective of the stage sets and the occasional instances of things being tossed at the camera.

On the Town (Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen, 1949)

Frank Sinatra, Jules Munshin, and Gene Kelly in On the Town

Cast: Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Betty Garrett, Ann Miller, Jules Munshin, Vera-Ellen, Florence Bates, Alice Pearce, George Meader. Screenplay: Adolph Green, Betty Comden, based on their book for a musical play. Cinematography: Harold Rosson. Art direction: Jack Martin Smith, Cedric Gibbons. Film editing: Ralph E. Winters. Music: orchestrations by Conrad Salinger, songs by Leonard Bernstein, Roger Edens, Adolph Green, Betty Comden.

A funny thing happened after I watched On the Town: I found myself humming "Lucky to Be Me" and "Some Other Time," songs by Leonard Bernstein with lyrics by Adolph Green and Betty Comden that aren't in the movie. They were in the original Broadway production, but were cut by producer Roger Edens, along with several others, and replaced by his own songs, almost all of which are forgettable. Bernstein was pissed off, as he should have been: "Lucky to Be Me" was perfect for one of Gene Kelly's numbers, and "Some Other Time" almost begged to be sung by Frank Sinatra and the rest of the company. Those excisions, and the Breen Office's insistence that the song "New York, New York" had to describe the city as "a wonderful town," instead of the original "helluva town," weigh down this much-loved but overrated MGM musical, which at least managed to do some location filming in the city after Kelly and co-director Stanley Donen rebelled against shooting the entire musical in the New York sets of the studio's back lot. The location shots give some life to the movie, but it still looks cheap and stagy in comparison with later, more lavish productions like An American in Paris (1951). Kelly and Donen, along with Comden, Green, and cinematographer Harold Rosson, would redeem themselves with Singin' in the Rain (1952), which has the wit and buoyancy On the Town sadly lacks.

Executive Suite (Robert Wise, 1954)

William Holden and June Allyson in Executive Suite

Cast: William Holden, June Allyson, Barbara Stanwyck, Fredric March, Walter Pidgeon, Louis Calhern, Paul Douglas, Shelley Winters, Nina Foch, Dean Jagger, Tim Considine. Screenplay: Ernest Lehman, based on a novel by Cameron Hawley. Cinematography: George J. Folsey. Art direction: Edward C. Carfagno, Cedric Gibbons. Film editing: Ralph E. Winters.

It has been called "Grand Hotel in the boardroom" more than a few times, because what it has in common with Edmund Goulding's 1932 best picture winner is that it was made by MGM and features an all-star cast. Executive Suite doesn't have much else in common with the earlier film, which was an entertaining stew of intrigue among the glamorous guests of a Berlin hotel. This is a story about power plays in a Pennsylvania furniture manufacturing company, which is about as glamorous as it sounds. The company's president has died without leaving a designated successor. We even see him die -- or rather, we die with him, as the film opens with a subjective camera as Avery Bullard leaves his Manhattan office to take a plane to Pennsylvania for a meeting with his vice-presidents. Through his eyes we see employees greet him as he leaves his office, the elevator doors closing on him, and finally the sidewalk as he collapses from a stroke. A passerby filches the wallet he drops, empties it of cash, and tosses it in a trashcan, thereby postponing the identification of his body. So much for any real action in the movie: The rest is talk, as the company's vice-presidents gather for the meeting and then gradually learn of his death. But one person knew of Bullard's death before them: George Caswell (Louis Calhern), a member of the company's board of directors who from his office window saw Bullard's body taken away by an ambulance and now uses this knowledge to try to pull a fast one with the company's stock. Eventually, there will be a struggle among the vice-presidents to take over Bullard's job as president. It will pit Loren Shaw (Fredric March), the bean-counting company controller, against Don Walling (William Holden), the v.p. for development who is excited about a new manufacturing technique he and his staff have been working on. And that's about as dramatic as it sounds. We all know that Walling will triumph over Shaw, probably because Walling has a nice, faithful wife played by June Allyson and a son who plays Little League baseball, and Shaw doesn't. It looks for a long time like Shaw will win, partly because he is in cahoots with Caswell, promising to make his stock deal work in exchange for his vote. Walling has to win over the other members of the board, who include old-timer Fred Alderson (Walter Pidgeon), who is on his side from the start; Walter Dudley (Paul Douglas), the v.p. for sales who is carrying on an affair with his secretary (Shelley Winters), making him susceptible to blackmail by Shaw; and most crucially of all, the daughter of the company's founder, Julia Tredway (Barbara Stanwyck), who had been involved in a frustrating love affair with Bullard and now threatens to dump her stock in the company. In the end, Walling triumphs with a big speech about the company's ideals and how they're being undermined by Shaw's insistence that the only thing that matters is the stockholders' return on investment, which has led to the construction of cheap and shoddy products. It's a sentimental fable about the "good capitalist" that mercifully doesn't indulge in the red-baiting that might have been expected in a film of the 1950s but ultimately rings false. Ernest Lehman's screenplay does what it can with Cameron Hawley's novel, Robert Wise directs as if it were a better film than it is, and Nina Foch won an Oscar for her role as the company's capable executive secretary, the only woman in the film who isn't completely under the thumb of the men. A trivia note: The narrator and the off-screen voice of Tredway is future NBC newman Chet Huntley.