Word: gigi
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...Gigi (M-G-M), 14 years and three versions ago, was a dainty Colette novelette. Once a French movie, once a Broadway play, the spicy little tidbit is now a full-course feast for eyes and ears, an extravagant $3,000,000 cinemusical with four bright stars (Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier, Louis Jourdan, Eva Gabor), a strong supporting cast, a topnotch director (Vincente Minnelli). words and music by My Fair Lady's Lerner and Loewe,* and some flooringly flamboyant sets and costumes by Cecil Beaton...
...customers get their money's worth? It depends on what they are paying for. Gigi is dressed to kill, but if all the French finery impresses the customers, it also smothers the story. Worse still, the physical exuberance of the production flusters the pensive sensuality of Colette's mood like a poodle in a cage of lovebirds. But in the details, the script sticks surprisingly close to the book. Gigi (Caron) is a dear little French girl whose grand aunt and grandmother have given her a strict upbringing in the finest traditions of their family-which happens...
...tape machine makes for some difficulties; e.g., singers sometimes have a hard time synchronizing their voices with the tape, and occasionally there are rests not written in the score before the tape picks up again after a piano passage. But gifted Composer Landowski. who has also written movie music (Gigi) and a prize-winning symphony, is sure that his gimmick can do for audiences what Paris' relatively expensive opera ($5.70 top) and France's second-rate provincial stages cannot do. Enthusiastic audiences all along his tour seem to agree...
...Slap in the Face. From then on, Gigi worked his revenge. Nannarella's trucks met mysterious accidents, and the potatoes in her warehouse started going bad. A shrewd marketman knows well how to ruin his rivals' stock. Her resources dwindled, and one by one her subjects abandoned her. By spring she was facing bankruptcy. Nannarella sought out Gigi. "Give me back my subjects," she said, "and I'll let you have all my remaining potatoes." Gigi only laughed, so Nannarella slapped him hard across the face. One of Gigi's brawny henchmen seized...
...last week, Queen Nannarella, three months pregnant with Gigi's child, reigned more powerfully than ever in Rome's market. And just in time, too. Rome's mayor was preparing to investigate profiteering in the market, threatened her and all her kind with price control. Nannarella merely snorted. "Let him. We live by our wits here, and no mayor can fix them. My child isn't going to have the hard time that I had." As for the consumers who complained about her prices, "What do they expect?" said Nannarella. "Where are they...