THE PAJAMA GAME: Blu-ray (Warner Bros. 1957) Warner Archive
Interesting, to pause a moment and reconsider what directors,
George Abbott and Stanley Donen’s The Pajama Game (1957) would have been
without Doris Day. Despite her megawatt stardom at the time, the first choice
to play the part of the sexy ‘good girl’, Katherine ‘Babe’ Williams was Janis
Paige – but only if Frank Sinatra accepted the part of her lover, Sid Sorokin.
Sinatra’s disinterest in the role sealed Paige’s fate, Jack Warner – despite sharing
an affinity to bring as many of the Broadway show’s original cast to the screen
– absolutely needed a ‘star’ to helm the movie. So, a moment’s pause here in
honor of Janis Paige who, at 98-years-young, is still very much with us, and,
as glamorous as ever – one of our last official links with that galaxy of stars
who once populated Tinsel Town en masse and lent it its immeasurable uber-sheen.
A bit of a sentimentalist, it has always been a regret of mine that Paige never
became an A-lister in pictures; born Donna Mae Tjaden picked up at the
Hollywood Canteen by a Warner Bros. agent whose first real break was appearing
alongside none other than ‘then’ newcomer, Doris Day in Romance on the High
Seas (1948). It was a short run for the sexy starlet who, after 1951’s Two
Gals and a Guy (1951), traded in Hollywood for Broadway, where she made her
mark, before embarking on a successful career as a cabaret singer. And then,
there was Broadway’s The Pajama Game, in which Paige was Babe for the
duration of its legendary run. Paige would return to pictures, in her best role
in fact, in Silk Stockings (1957) – playing a slinky, though not
terribly bright aquacade star. So, my heart breaks just a little that Paige was
not allowed to reprise her star turn for the movie version of The Pajama
Game. As lovely and melodic as Doris Day is, her ‘sex appeal’ somehow offers
a mere flicker to that full-on flame Paige could exude with a mere flash of her
sparkling eyes and wit.
The Pajama Game is based on the 1953 novel, 7½
Cents by Richard Bissell, transformed into a big and boisterous musical
mélange by Bissell, and vigorous producer, George Abbott, who would remain
active and hearty, working on projects well past his 100th birthday,
dying 7 years later of a stroke at his home in Florida. Abbott was, in fact,
dictating ‘revisions’ on a Broadway revival of The Pajama Game to his 3rd
wife at the time of his death! For the film, Jack Warner personally selected
Stanley Donen to direct – a decision that would ensure the picture’s ever-lasting
success. Donen, originally encouraged by his mother to pursue a career as Broadway
dancer, had appeared as a male chorine in another Abbott show – Pal Joey
(1940), to costar his future screen collaborator, Gene Kelly. Impressed by ‘the
boy’ – Abbott then hired Donen for his next stage spectacular, Best Foot
Forward (1942). When MGM’s Arthur Freed bought Best Foot Forward for
the movies, Donen came to Hollywood and, for the next 25 years, would steadily
work his way from dancer, to choreographer, to co-director, and finally, the
fully-fledged man behind the camera, responsible for such classic movie
musicals as 1949’s On the Town, Royal Wedding (1951), in which Donen
directed his childhood idol, the incomparable Fred Astaire, Singin' in the
Rain (1952) during which his collaborations with Gene Kelly reached their
creative zenith, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) – the musical knock-out
not even MGM had any faith in initially, and, the ironically titled, It's
Always Fair Weather (1955), to forever severe Donen’s co-working alliance
with Kelly. 1957 was Donen’s banner year as a ‘breakout’ artiste of the movie
musical; first, in his aspirations to direct Astaire again, alongside the
luminous Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face (1957), but also, reuniting with
Abbott for the movie version of The Pajama Game.
It was, in fact, Abbott who suggested Donen for the
work, part of a deal made in trade to acquire the Warner-owned Gershwin library
for Funny Face. And Donen would share his director’s credit again, this
time with Abbott, the picture also featuring choreography by Bob Fosse, with
whom Donen had rigorously clashed on the set of 1953’s Give A Girl A Break;
a sadly underrated MGM musical that deserves future consideration. Entrusting Donen
to the heavy lifting, Abbott basically spent his days playing tennis, intermittently
to visit the set for only an hour or two at a time, run the dailies and go home.
In one of those Hollywood ironies that never fails to raise a curious eyebrow, the
film version of The Pajama Game, while remaining relatively faithful to
the original Broadway derivative, and, exuding oodles of charm, was only modestly
successful at the box office, despite resounding praise from the critics. No
less an authority than Jean-Luc Godard extolled The Pajama Game as Donen’s
towering achievement. Much of Richard Adler and Jerry Ross’ score survived the
transition from stage to screen, the Abbott/Bissell screenplay remaining
ever-faithful to its roots, with the story concerning labor disputes at the
Sleep-tite pajama factory where workers' demands for a seven-and-a-half cent
raise go unheeded. Love blossoms between the grievance committee head, ‘Babe’
Williams and Sid Sorokin (John Raitt), the newly appointed factory
superintendent. John Raitt proved an interesting casting choice for the movie.
For although he originated the role on Broadway, and, for the briefest wrinkle
in time, set a new standard for muscled-up leading men in Broadway’s Carousel,
Oklahoma!, The Pajama Game, Carnival in Flanders, Three Wishes for Jamie,
and A Joyful Noise, he nevertheless lacked that intangible ‘star
quality’ ideally suited for the camera. If the movie version of The Pajama
Game has an Achilles’ Heel, it remains the utter lack of romantic chemistry
between Raitt’s sinewy stud and Day’s antiseptic goodie-two-shoes.
The legacy of Broadway’s ‘Pajama Game’
is that it kick-started the career of Shirley MacLaine – Carol Haney’s understudy
who had her big break after Haney injured her ankle. Indie movie
director/producer, Hal B. Wallis was in the audience that night, and
immediately signed MacLaine to a contract at Paramount Pictures. In retrospect,
the Broadway incarnation of The Pajama Game was a much ‘bigger deal’
than the movie. Abbott’s boisterous stagecraft debuted on May 13, 1954 at the
St. James Theater and ran for a whopping 1,063 performances. Donen’s movie had
neither such a lengthy tenure nor, arguably, the success it deserved. Fair
enough, Donen inevitably ‘opens’ things up for the screen, especially during
the annual ‘staff picnic’ sequence, shot in the actual ‘great outdoors’ where
Haney appears to perfection, dancing ‘Once A Year Day’ as Babe and Sid serenade
the ensemble. And, while the Adler/Ross score includes such memorable pop tunes
of their day as I'm Not At All In Love, There Once Was a Man, Steam Heat,
and Hernando’s Hideaway, the most enduring song in the movie remained
its love ballad, ‘Hey There’ – sung with considerable lust by Raitt. The
staging of virtually all the numbers in The Pajama Game is enviably
first-rate, thanks to the exuberance and eclecticism of its choreographer, Bob
Fosse.
The Chicagoan-born, Fosse with ambitions of becoming
the next Astaire, initially made only a modest mark in pictures, considered as ‘second-string’
in such high-profile movies as Give a Girl a Break, The Affairs of Dobie
Gillis and Kiss Me Kate (all of them made and released in 1953). It
was, in fact, his appearance with Carol Haney in this latter effort, dancing ‘From
This Moment On’ that brought Fosse to Abbott’s attention. He was immediately
hired to choreograph Broadway’s The Pajama Game, and later, to do the
same for Abbott in Damn Yankees (1955). Fosse's distinctive style, to
feature turned-in knees and ‘jazz’ hands is best exemplified in The Pajama
Game’s ‘Steam Heat’ number, also showing off Haney’s terpsichorean
prowess, flanked by dancers, Kenneth LeRoy and Buzz Miller. Tragically, Haney would
not live long enough to establish herself as a bona fide star of the first
magnitude. She died of pneumonia, complicated by diabetes and alcoholism in
1964, age 39, barely six weeks after choreographing Broadway’s Funny Girl,
the legendary show to mark the official debut of Barbra Streisand. For the
movie version, Donen endeavored to bring as much of the stage’s flavorful cast to
the screen, including the aforementioned Raitt and Haney, alongside Eddie Foy
Jr. (as Vernon Hines), Reta Shaw (Mabel), Thelma Pelish (Mae), Ralph Dunn (Myron
Hasler), Ralph W. Chambers (Charlie), Mary Stanton (Brenda) and dancer, Buzz
Miller. Perhaps, in hindsight and ironically so, this is one of the reasons the
film version of The Pajama Game was not an overwhelming box office
success – its myriad of talents, unrecognizable to the film-going public.
Despite its fidelity, the film shears six numbers, mostly
for time constraints, including, A New Town is a Blue Town, Her Is, Think of
the Time I Save, Sleep-Tite, Jealousy Ballet and The World Around Us.
Arguably, the one unforgivable sin is the omission of ‘The Man Who Invented
Love’, expressly written for Doris Day by Richard Adler, but deleted in
favor of a reprise of Hey There. Mercifully, both Day’s recording of the
song, and the outtake exist and are available for our consideration these many
decades since the movie’s premiere. Incidentally, Day’s participation here made
the film soundtrack a big hit on the ‘hit parade’ – hitting #9 in 1957. Rather
ironically, Day’s performance in The Pajama Game was less than
enigmatic, perhaps, partly, owing to her inability to find ‘ground zero’ in her
performance as the interloper into a cast already well-seasoned and secure in
theirs. That explains Day’s rigidity. John Raitt’s is quite another variety of
awkwardness to reconsider. Indeed, George Abbott had recommended Marlon Brando
to co-star, following Brando’s unexpected success in the movie version of Guys
and Dolls (1955). As for Raitt, although he undeniably possessed an
excellent tenor voice, and the handsome, muscular looks to have vaulted him instantly
into the upper echelons as a leading man, he completely – and otherwise – lacks
anything in the way of screen presence to anchor his performance. It’s odd too,
because by all accounts, Raitt’s performance on stage was one of the original
show’s irrefutable assets. How precisely he fails so miserably to translate any
of this charisma to the screen remains a real head-scratcher; one, rather commonly
to befall many a Broadway star attempting their big screen debut.
Both the play and the movie’s plot, revolving around an
employees’ staged strike (lest they improve their prospects with a 7 ½ cent
raise from management) seems superficial by today’s standards. So, it is
important to reconsider that the average garment worker in 1954 made only $1.25/hr.
or $50 a week. Thus, 7 ½ cents would have raised their pay scale by
approximately 16% - a formidable increase. The movie’s plot begins with the
installation of Sid Sorokin, hired as superintendent of the Sleep-tite Pajama
Factory in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Sid is seen by his bosses as a tough and steady
buffer between management and the workers, the latter increasingly discontented
with lack of opportunities. Alas, Sid soon begins to develop a crush on
Katherine ‘Babe’ Williams, a member of the employee union’s leadership. At the
company picnic, Sid and Babe iron out the wrinkles in their romantic
intensions. But Babe is concerned their respective roles at work, as management
vs. labor, will eventually drive a wedge between them.
Her worries bear themselves out when the union pushes
for a 7 ½ cent raise the factory's manager, Vernon Hines (Eddie Foy Jr.)
absolutely refuses to entertain. In retaliation, the workers deliberately
decrease their daily output and furthermore, sabotage the quality of the
pajamas they do produce. Babe takes things one step further when she destroys a
valuable piece of company machinery, forcing Sid to fire her. Suspecting
management is up to no good, Sid is determined to investigate its bookkeeping,
kept under lock and key in the rear office. To that end, Sid sidles up to Hind’s
gal Friday, Gladys (Carol Haney), taking her on a cozy date to the somewhat
seedy, Hernando's Hideaway, despite Hines’ insane jealousy. Plying Gladys with enough booze to stifle a
whale, Sid gains access to her key and, returning to the factory late that same
night, discovers the company’s president, Myron Hasler (Ralph Dunn) has ‘unofficially’
instituted the 7 ½ cent pay increase months ago, quietly pocketing the overage
for himself. Revealing he knows the truth to Hasler, Sid threatens to forward
the ledgers to Sleep-tite’s Board of Directors lest the increase is not
immediately passed along to the employees.
Thus, at the union meeting, Hasler begrudgingly agrees to the raise.
When Babe realizes Sid engineered this reconciliation, having only the employees’
best interests at heart, she dutifully begs his forgiveness.
As a movie musical, The Pajama Game is a deceptively
feather-weight. It’s ‘blue-collar’ appeal, while exhilarating on the stage,
somehow evaporates almost completely in the film. Despite Stanley Donen’s very
best efforts to will a faithful adaptation, the results, while yielding some
very good things along the way, are cohesively less than impressive. In one of those
Hollywood ironies that never fails to impress, it ought to be noted that the
studios, as a rule, always fared better when creating original material for the
screen than directly porting over hit stage shows. The Pajama Game is no
exception to this rule. There is zero romantic chemistry between Raitt’s Sid
and Day’s Babe – the actors, hailing from different and seemingly
irreconcilable mediums, thrust together, but merely going through the motions
of the plot, and, only intermittently to involve us in their formidable talents
as singers. While the score remains superb, and Bob Fosse’s choreography is electric,
it’s what happens between these songs and dances that really submarines The
Pajama Game’s very best efforts to succeed as it should, and, in the final
analysis, denies it the marker as a true masterpiece of the movie musical
genre, instead, to be relegated as a modestly enjoyable, but hardly iconic
installment into that massive and memorable pantheon of movie-land nostalgia.
The Pajama Game was photographed in WarnerColor -
a process, basically, rechristened by the studio, but hailing from the Eastman
Kodak ‘Eastmancolor’ line-up, affectionately known elsewhere as Color by
DeLuxe, Metrocolor, Pathécolor, Columbiacolor…and on and on. You get the
picture – every studio had its own derivative. This streamlined ‘monopack’,
meant to revolutionize the industry standard – Technicolor – and basically put
an end to its cumbersome 3-strip process (though never to duplicate Technicolor’s
rich and vibrant hues baked into that thoroughly impressive metal-based dye
lot) came with its own litany of shortcomings, some painfully on display
throughout the 1950’s. The Eastman process was far more economical, hence its
widespread appeal and adoption. But the proverbial fly in its ointment was
Cinemascope. Even though Technicolor became astutely acquainted as the
processor of Eastmancolor negatives, there was a significant ‘loss of register’
in these anamorphic ‘scope’ prints, a fatal flaw to remain intact until 1955 as
many Technicolor prints were later scrapped and reprinted by DeLuxe Labs. Hence,
even Eastmancolor-originated films billed as ‘Color by Technicolor’,
were not using Technicolor’s dye-transfer process, but instead processed by
DeLuxe, owned by 2oth Century-Fox. Of course, the real problem with Eastmancolor
(and its many branded derivatives) was its dye base, improperly stored, to
exhibit an alarming rate of deterioration and color fading in a relatively
short period of time, while Technicolor’s prints have remained largely intact
and show, comparatively, little signs of significant fading.
Viewing a movie like The Pajama Game today, one
might expect to find it looking haggard and careworn for precisely these reasons.
Certainly, other WarnerColor efforts like House of Wax (1953), Dial M
For Murder (1954) and Giant (1956)…especially Giant!!! –
among others – have suffered this tragic, and devastatingly in-correctible
fate. But The Pajama Game on Blu-ray?…wow! Owing to some digital-age
wizardry reapplied to these analogue sources, keeping printer functions at bay,
and dupes barely to last their transitions, Warner Archive’s new-to-Blu of The
Pajama Game is nothing short of miraculous, showing off Harry Stradling’s
cinematography to its very best advantage. Colors have been reproduced with
remarkable clarity and richness. Contrast can scarcely be better, and the
entire image exhibits a revitalized look, arguably, even better than its original
opening night splendor. To clarify – nothing untoward has been done to produce
an image NOT in keeping with the original intended look of the movie. What has
been achieved, however, is spectacular, yielding a much more refined image. The
Pajama Game has NEVER looked this good on home video. The DTS 2.0 mono
sports an impressive ‘brassy’ appeal, free of age-related shortcomings, and
sounds absolutely wonderful. Extras include the aforementioned deleted song, ‘The
Man Who Invented Love’ and an original theatrical; trailer. Bottom line: The
Pajama Game may not be a top-tier musical to remember, but it definitely
sports enough assets to make it an enjoyable movie-going experience, if not to
be retained in the mind’s eye for very long after the house lights have come
up. WAC’s Blu-ray is perfection. Very highly recommended!
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)
3
VIDEO/AUDIO
5+
EXTRAS
1
Comments