The Pajama Game ***** (1957, Doris Day, John Raitt, Carol Haney, Reta Shaw) – Classic Movie Review 1151

Joint directors Stanley Donen and George Abbott deliver a stupendous 1957 movie of the exhilarating all-time-great musical The Pajama Game. It features the original stage cast except for Janis Paige, who is replaced by Doris Day. You feel sorry for Paige, but Day is inspired in one of her top five best career performances as a union organiser called Katie ‘Babe’ Williams.

The unusual basis for the show is a pay dispute in the Sleeptite pajama factory, in a story adapted from Richard Bissell’s book Seven and a Half Cents. Abbott co-writes the screenplay with Bissell himself. The story deals with labour troubles in a pajama factory, where worker demands for a whopping seven-and-a-half cent raise are going unheeded. But love blossoms between Babe, the grievance committee head, and the handsome new factory superintendent, Sid Sorokin (played by John Raitt), despite their being on opposite sides of the labour dispute.

The Richard Adler-Jerry Ross score is full of gems, and the highlights are Day’s ‘Once-a-Year’ picnic sequence, the ‘Steam Heat’ scene with Carol Haney’s terrific terpsichory, ‘I’ll Never Get Jealous Again’ with Reta Shaw, the ‘Hernando’s Hideaway’ tango and the haunting hit ‘Hey There’. Adler and Ross went on to write Damn Yankees!, filmed in 1958.

Vintage musical film-makers Abbott and Donen teach a course in how to make a film musical with their constantly swirling cameras under the control of ace cinematographer Harry Stradling Sr. Bob Fosse provides the sparkling choreography, and he was simply the best, better than anyone at it.

The original Broadway production of The Pajama Game opened on May 13 1954 and ran for 1,063 performances. It won a Tony for Best Musical, and the 2006 Broadway revival won a Tony for Best Revival of a Musical. It starred Harry Connick, Jr, making his Broadway acting debut, as Sid. The still-current evergreen show was revived on the London stage in April 2014.

Also in the cast are Eddie Foy Jnr, Reta Shaw, Carol Haney, Barbara Nichols, Thelma Pelish, Jack Straw, Ralph Dunn, Owen Martin, Jackie Kelk, Ralph W Chambers, Mary Stanton, Buzz Miller, Kenneth LeRoy and Jack Waldron.

Day’s other great performances are in Calamity Jane, Love Me or Leave Me, Pillow Talk and The Man Who Knew Too Much. Aka Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff, she celebrated her 90th birthday on April 3 2014, though it later turned out she was actually 92 at the time. Hollywood legend Doris Day passed away on 13 May 2019 at the age of 97.

Damn Yankees ran for 1,019 performances on its original 1955 Broadway production and won the Tony for Best Musical. Abbott wrote the book with Douglass Wallop, and the music and lyrics are again by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, who had scored a huge success with The Pajama Game. Tragically Ross suddenly died of chronic bronchiectasis, aged only 29, a few months after Damn Yankees opened.

Richard Adler, who organised President John F Kennedy’s birthday with Marilyn Monroe, died on June 21 2012, aged 90.

RIP Stanley Donen (1924–2019).

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© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1151

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