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...This musical badinage, from the film "High Society," refers to the Bing Crosby character, a Newport aristocrat on the outs with his fellow swells. But it might also refer to the status, then and now, of the original Groaner. In the early '30s Crosby had created, or certainly synthesized, the craft and tone of modern pop vocalizing. The summer of 1956, however, when "High Society" premiered, was the sweltering season of "Hound Dog." Genteel warbling of the Crosby stripe was two generations passé. First it was supplanted by Sinatra's aggressive poignance; then it expired in the steam Elvis...
...cream-colored golf pants is flanked by two big-boned Nordic women. In halting English, he regales them with tales of how much his hotel accommodations cost on a recent trip. "Very much expensive," he repeats, as they dutifully nod. Across the room a powerfully built man in his 30s - displaying the latest Tokyo gangster style with his buzz cut and loud, metallic-colored tracksuit - sprawls on a couch, sleeping. A young blond sits by his side staring into space...
What went wrong? Time was when American movies couldn't stop singing. In the '30s, perhaps a third of all films were, in some way, musicals. Top Broadway composers went West and wrote tunes that were the most popular of their day and still play in the nation's memory-jukebox; Harold Arlen's score for The Wizard of Oz is entrancing TV audiences 60 years after it was written. Pop music shared center stage with operetta (in Jeanette MacDonald's films) and boogie-woogie (in shorts showcasing such jazz greats as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington...
...time he was in his 30s, Vermeer had developed a unique way of rendering light and texture. Instead of building up forms with continuous movements of the brush, he used tiny luminous highlights, pasty dots and spots bringing more dissolved areas of light into focus. These gave a startling effect of studied, textural distinctness. It's as though you see every crumb in a cut loaf, every thread in a tapestry...
...lovely voice and comedic gifts; Michael Cumpsty, though a bit too tailored as the harried director, is a charismatic anchor for the show; and Kate Levering, as the chorus girl who becomes a star, dances like a demon. The book is creakier than ever, with all that campy ?30s lingo ("Am-scray, toots!"). But this show is pure candy. It'll probably rot your teeth, but who can resist...