The Pajama Game

Who'd have thought that a labor dispute could be such fun? Just add Doris Day's smile, Bob Fosse's choreography, amazing music and dancers and a bag of popcorn! This is a highly energetic film, super-charged with charisma. I can't count the number of times I hit "pause" and "rewind" just to get another look at a surprise dance move. Boy, do I dare say that this may have been what "Grease" was hoping it could aspire to? I want to see this one again real soon!

Do you dislike musicals because you feel they are about nonsense and fantasy? Well, here is a musical about, okay, a man and a woman falling in love, but also capital and labour, exploitation of the workers, crooked financiers, and a heroine who is a strong woman whose work is important to her and who gets angry when her boyfriend doesn't take her seriously. Call that a fantasy? I don't dislike musicals, but I have always disliked Doris Day, who always seemed to me to be a phoney, a woman who was always pretending to be arch and super-feminine. Here, for once, she is the tough girl she really was, a blue-collar heroine who is robust and forthright, and she is terrific.

More important, of course, than the subject is the way it's handled, and the team of Adler and Ross (who also wrote Damn Yankees!) provide lots of charming, unpretentious, but also clever and peppy songs and two very slinky dance numbers, which last are a fine memorial to Carol Haney, the beautiful, talented, but sadly disturbed and short-lived dancer who originated the role on Broadway. Even the throwaway lines in the songs are enormously funny--for instance, when one song wants to make a point about a posh restaurant, the lyric is not "In a posh restaurant" but, referring to a generic fictitious posh restaurant, "At The Golden Finger Bowl..."

Those who love musicals, of course, will appreciate one that is so well crafted and directed. But nostalgia freaks in general are richly served here. Typewriters? Time clocks? And UNIONS? Organisations that protect the rights of the workers? Gee, daddy, what are those?

When it was released in 1957, The Pajama Game joined a long procession of song and dance Movies that grabbed us all who watched them with their energy, vitality and infectious romance. Doris Day bounces and radiates her way across the screen as only she can and has done many times previously in musicals, singing, dancing and looking great, teaming up this time with some of the cast from the Broadway Production, Eddie Foy Jnr., Carol Haney, Rita Shaw and John Raitt. As you would expect from this array of talent something special would arrive, and it didn't take long for us to taste it. In the opening minutes we are treated to one of Choreographer Bob Fosse's routines with Eddie Foy Jnr. and Rita Shaw singing and stepping to 'I'll never get jealous again ' and as the show moves on more memorable sequences appear like Carol Haney dancing to ' Steam Heat,' Doris Day singing ' Seven and a Half cents ' and everyone it seems giving a rousing rendition of ' Hernando's Hideaway.' The Pajama Game is alive with Fiftie's colour, vigour and good old fashioned song and dance, put together by ideas and talent that perhaps in those days we had the chance to take it all for granted. Sadly.....these days, with the absence of musicals we don't have that opportunity.

This was the reactionary 50's, so showing a conflict between management and labor, however comically presented, was quite daring. While not exactly a Marxist textbook case, it does show exploitation of workers and their attempts at fighting back. One can also view it as trivializing the harsh and terrible struggles of workers and unions against capitalist exploitation, but that seems a bit mean-spirited. While no "Cradle Will Rock" it does make the point that even a small issue (a pay raise of seven and a half cents) can be important in the context of a worker's life.

I liked most of the songs and dances. There may be two or three too many as they do tend to slow down the plot a bit.

I loved Doris Day, but I didn't feel that John Raitt was a good leading man for her. I didn't feel any chemistry between them. Someone suggested that Dean Martin was up for the lead. I would have preferred him. Carol Haney was good, but I was kind of sorry that the part didn't go to her Broadway understudy Shirley Maclaine. It now seems to me that Maclaine imitated Haney for the first eight years of her movie career. Still, Haney was 32 when she did the part and not in good health. She appears to be an older version of early Shirley. A 22 year old Maclaine would have been terrific.

The song "There Once Was a Man" reminded me of the great duet between Betty Hutton and Howard Keel in "Annie Get Your Gun" - "Anything You Can Do." I would put this in the second tier of great movie musicals. It isn't "Cabaret" or "Singing in the Rain," or "Dames," as it does drag in a few spots, but for 75 out of its 95 minutes, its delightful.

The 1957 film version of the Broadway musical THE PAJAMA GAME is one of the best translations of a stage musical to the screen ever. The screen version is extremely loyal to its origins, utilizing almost all of the original Broadway cast (except for Janis Paige, who lost the role of Babe to 50's box office powerhouse Doris Day)and keeping most of the original score intact (only one song "Hers Is" was not used in the film and a song written especially for Doris for the film, ended up being cut). This delightfully original musical centers around the Sleep-Tite Pajama Factory where the head of the grievance committee (Doris) is trying to negotiate a 7 and a 1/2 cent raise for the factory workers by butting heads with the new factory supervisor (John Raitt, reprising his Broadway role)but eventually falling for him. Musicals were past their prime by the time this one made it to the screen, but it is still beautifully mounted and has some of the greatest songs in musical comedy ("Hey, There", "I'm not at all in love", "There Once was a Man"). Day and Raitt make an engaging screen couple (Day has rarely been so adult or sexy on screen) and the imaginative choreography by the legendary Bob Fosse is a big plus. Carol Haney's "Steam Heat" is classic Fosse and one of the highlights of this wonderful stage musical that inexplicably died at the box office upon release. A great musical that is a must for Day and Fosse fans.