Word: abbott
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...Abbott and Costello have exhausted the usual stage sets for burlesque intermission comedy. Now, after stealing uniforms from the Army and Navy, they are poaching on the domain of Dorothy Lamour. A foursome composed of this comedy team and a colorless love team are shipwrecked on a Lamour island, where the whole squad wastes an hour of celluloid trapping the usual hard-boiled spy ring. Costello canters around in a ridiculous costume, dodging palm trees, spears, and a herd of dusky sarongsterettes who think it's Sadie Hawkin's day. He ends up out of breath, prying adoring arms...
Beat the Band (music by Johnny Green; book by George Marion Jr. & George Abbott; produced by Abbott) is a sort of bouncing and stentorian corpse. Always long on pep, Producer Abbott (Too Many Girls, Best Foot Forward) has this time loosed a regular stage blitz, with everyone in the cast seeming to chase a fire, and most of the dances doing everything but start one. With a nod from the plot Abbott has worked a blaring swing band, all traps and trumpets, into the proceedings. Even the costumes are loud as a St. Patrick...
...once the Abbott zip has outsmarted itself. When it makes with the feet, Beat the Band is enjoyable, but the general effect of the show is one of high-pressuring rather than high spirits. It suffers from too many vitamins and not enough food. The book, which tells of an explosive bandleader (Jack Whiting) who impersonates the godfather of a young thing (Susan Miller) with whom he falls in love, is silly, dull, and slower than a tightwad reaching for the check. The gags are frightful. The lyrics are forced. Composer Green (Body & Soul, I'm Yours) has turned...
...other Crimson entries are less sure bets, but the one-fifties boast several veterans in Bill Malcolm and Johnny Abbott. The Freshmen are as yet untested but green oarsmen are conspicuous by their absence...
Back to Broadway, five years after it ended a run of 835 performances there, went Three Men on a Horse last week. John Cecil Holm's and George Abbott's machine-made farce about a mousy little greeting-card writer whose knack for doping out the races gets him shanghaied by professionals, still has some laughs. And Actor William Lynn still makes the little guy appealing...