Word: merman
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Something for the Boys (book by Herbert and Dorothy Fields; music & lyrics by Cole Porter; produced by Michael Todd) gives Broadway the musicomedy it has been thirsting for since September. It reveals Songblitzer Ethel Merman at her absolute peak and Songwriter Cole Porter well above the timberline. Its book has more laughs, if no more logic, than most. It has the bright Broadway look that, despite the show's light wartime motifs, suggests the gaudier years of peace...
Something for the Boys tells of three uninhibited cousins (Ethel Merman, Paula Laurence, Allen Jenkins) who inherit a Texas ranch next door to Kelly Field and set up a boardinghouse for soldiers' wives. In their spare time they also make defense gadgets out of carborundum. The hostelry turns into a scandal, and Actress Merman, by getting some carborundum in her teeth, turns into a radio receiving set. After that nothing even tries to make sense...
Having long since proved that she can pull the plug on any three other musicomedy voices, Ethel Merman today puts herself across as brilliantly as she does a song. In Something for the Boys she is everywhere, doing everything. She torches and trollops, blares and beguiles, and late in the evening she and Actress Laurence, as a pair of wacky Indian women, bring down the house larruping through By the Mississinewa...
Poor MGM hasn't made a decent musical in years, and "Hattie" is no exception. Thanks to the Hays Office little remains of the original Broadway hit. Ann Sothern's modest attempts to imitate Ethel Merman's exuberance are completely frustrated by thoroughly bad direction; an incredibly obnoxious little girl named Jackie Horner should have been left in a corner; and Cole Porter's score, one of his poorest, is hampered by the addition of even worse numbers. The only relief from the tedium is Virginia O'Brien, with more material and less dead-pan, and Lena Horne, whose rendition...
...round dozen musicals-mentioning such headliners as Ethel Merman and Jimmy Durance, and ranging from Cole Porter tunes to an all-Negro Carmen-are already set, scheduled, or signed for. There will be more vaudeville. There will be comedies by Lindsay & Grouse (the adapters of Life With Father), John Van Druten, Philip Barry (starring Katharine Hepburn), S. N. Behrman (starring Lunt & Fontanne). But Comedy-Writers Kaufman & Hart, Clare Boothe, Rachel Crothers, Noel Coward have nothing announced; nor have Eugene O'Neill, John Steinbeck, Lillian Hellman, Clifford Odets. Katharine Cornell plans to revive Chekhov's The Three Sisters...