Word: ninotchkas
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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There are, to be sure, some genuine good things. The book, freely adapted from Ninotchka (also used as a Garbo movie), has bright moments of storytelling and spoofing. In its tale of a fanatical Soviet woman commissar-who on a mission to Paris responds to French life and American love-there are brighter lines than in most musicals. There are two or three good Cole Porter tunes, and now and then a good Cole Porter lyric. As Ninotchka, Cinemactress Hildegarde Neff is exotic and pleasing enough to get by without a voice; as Ninotchka's Hollywood agent...
...Cole Porter consequently has had to write six new songs to substitute into his score--a score which, despite a jukebox hit called "All of You," is still indisputably inferior to his previous successes. And the book, a parody on Soviet ways adapted from the famous Greta Garbo movie Ninotchka, has undergone so much scene-shuffling and rewriting at the hands of co-author Abe Burrows that at one point he eliminated the title song itself. Thus, whereas most musicals play four weeks in just one try-out city, Silk Stockings has played three months in three different locations. Names...
Porter is not the only disappointment of the evening. George S. Kaufman and wife have failed to do for Ninotchka what Sam Spewack and wife did for Taming of the Shrew. In the Kaufmans' version, propaganda and comedy are blended in the worst proportions. Near final curtain, when they decide that perhaps the audience is convinced that Paris is preferable to Siberia, the authors throw in a few old anti-anti-Communist jokes and call it a night...
Silk Stockings (musical adaptation of Ninotchka by George S. Kaufman, Leueen MacGrath, Cole Porter), with Don Ameche and Hildegarde Neff...
Though a far cry from Ninotchka, the 1939 anti-Communist comedy starring Garbo, Mr. Potts does have some fun with the stuffy officialdom of both East and West...