... what have they done to your wonderful Broadway show? Answer; about what you'd expect from a Hollywood that had a congenital aversion to transposing Broadway musicals to the screen untampered with so that, for example, a family from Oshkosh, Wisconsin, who went to NY on vacation and saw, for example, The Pajama Game, on Broadway could return home secure in the knowledge that the movie version they saw at their local movie theatre a couple of years later would NOT be the show they saw on Broadway.
Frank Sinatra appeared in Five movie versions of Broadway musicals during his career and NONE of them was wholly satisfactory, mostly because of meaningless tampering. Higher and Higher, for example, retained only ONE number from the Rodgers and Hart Broadway show and that one, Disgustingly Rich, was a minor number; on the other hand the film did give Sinatra two 'hits' in A Lovely Way To Spend An Evening and I Couldn't Sleep A Wink Last Night. On The Town also jettisoned a sizable portion of the Broadway score, including Lonely Town, and added stuff that was one step above total garbage. Guys and Dolls was by far the most faithful to the Broadway original but even then they jettisoned the 'big' ballad, I've Never Been In Love Before (as well as A Bushel And A Peck) but they DID prevail on the original composer, Frank Loesser, to supply new material (Adelaide, A Woman In Love); Pal Joey suffered a bad case of both jettisoning and interpolating disparate songs by the same writers (Rodgers and Hart) so that Happy Hunting Horn, Do It The Hard Way, In Our Little Den Of Iniquity, What Is A Man, Plant You Now, Dig You Later, all went out the window and were replaced - if that's the word - by There's A Small Hotel, I Didn't Know What Time It Was, My Funny Valentine and The Lady Is A Tramp. Which brings us to Can-Can. Cole Porter went to great pains to replicate the Sound of Parisian Music Hall circa 1890 - a fact I mentioned in my review of the execrable Moulin Rouge, which made absolutely NO concession to its time frame - so it is ironic that Fox elected to discard such Porter gems as Allez-vous en, I Am In Love, Never Give Anything Away, Ev'ry Man Is A Stupid Man, Never, Never Be An Artist, all of which had the FEEL of the period, in favour of You Do Something To Me, Just One Of Those Things, Let's Do It, which are totally out of place in the context of the story and time. They also 'created' a part for Sinatra that didn't exist in the show and he was allowed to PLAY the Sinatra for which he is best known, hip, cool, ring-a-ding ding (at one point Louis Jourdan even SAYS ring-a-ding ding - in 1896, yet - when describing the Sinatra character to Shirley MacLaine). I write as a lifetime admirer of both Sinatra AND Cole Porter so I was doubly disappointed with this travesty. Ironically the BEST Screen musical in which Sinatra ever appeared was High Society, also the work of Cole Porter and DOUBLY ironically it was so successful that it became s Stage musical with - you've guessed it - several EXTRA Porter numbers interpolated. Can-Can had the potential to be an outstanding film musical instead it is little more than mediocre.
Frank Sinatra appeared in Five movie versions of Broadway musicals during his career and NONE of them was wholly satisfactory, mostly because of meaningless tampering. Higher and Higher, for example, retained only ONE number from the Rodgers and Hart Broadway show and that one, Disgustingly Rich, was a minor number; on the other hand the film did give Sinatra two 'hits' in A Lovely Way To Spend An Evening and I Couldn't Sleep A Wink Last Night. On The Town also jettisoned a sizable portion of the Broadway score, including Lonely Town, and added stuff that was one step above total garbage. Guys and Dolls was by far the most faithful to the Broadway original but even then they jettisoned the 'big' ballad, I've Never Been In Love Before (as well as A Bushel And A Peck) but they DID prevail on the original composer, Frank Loesser, to supply new material (Adelaide, A Woman In Love); Pal Joey suffered a bad case of both jettisoning and interpolating disparate songs by the same writers (Rodgers and Hart) so that Happy Hunting Horn, Do It The Hard Way, In Our Little Den Of Iniquity, What Is A Man, Plant You Now, Dig You Later, all went out the window and were replaced - if that's the word - by There's A Small Hotel, I Didn't Know What Time It Was, My Funny Valentine and The Lady Is A Tramp. Which brings us to Can-Can. Cole Porter went to great pains to replicate the Sound of Parisian Music Hall circa 1890 - a fact I mentioned in my review of the execrable Moulin Rouge, which made absolutely NO concession to its time frame - so it is ironic that Fox elected to discard such Porter gems as Allez-vous en, I Am In Love, Never Give Anything Away, Ev'ry Man Is A Stupid Man, Never, Never Be An Artist, all of which had the FEEL of the period, in favour of You Do Something To Me, Just One Of Those Things, Let's Do It, which are totally out of place in the context of the story and time. They also 'created' a part for Sinatra that didn't exist in the show and he was allowed to PLAY the Sinatra for which he is best known, hip, cool, ring-a-ding ding (at one point Louis Jourdan even SAYS ring-a-ding ding - in 1896, yet - when describing the Sinatra character to Shirley MacLaine). I write as a lifetime admirer of both Sinatra AND Cole Porter so I was doubly disappointed with this travesty. Ironically the BEST Screen musical in which Sinatra ever appeared was High Society, also the work of Cole Porter and DOUBLY ironically it was so successful that it became s Stage musical with - you've guessed it - several EXTRA Porter numbers interpolated. Can-Can had the potential to be an outstanding film musical instead it is little more than mediocre.