Approved | 1h 29min | Comedy | 22 July 1955 | Color, WS
Director: Nunnally Johnson
Stars: Betty Grable, Sheree North, Robert Cummings, Charles Coburn, Tommy Noonan, Orson Bean.
Paul Godkin ... choreographer
Sonia Shaw ... choreographer (Shake, Rattle and Roll, per AFI)
Bootleg, cropped to FS, blurry.
BG, SN & 2 other chorus girls perform the title song on a Barbary Coast bar/burlesque house. The headliner gets shot, and they go on the lam, landing at a college fraternity. The premise reminds me of Some Like It Hot ('59), but this has 2 antecedents and no descendant; I've seen neither: She Loves Me Not (1934), True to the Army (1942), both from Paramount. The '34 version also happens at a college; '42 at an army camp.
Shake, Rattle & Roll is a rock 'n roll song, danced to by SN in stripper fashion. I'll be curious to see what RnR dancing looks like by teens. Rock Around the Clock (3'56) should show me, if not something else sooner.
Rated 5.3 by 146 voters (actually, the arithmetic mean is 5.4), I don't find this to be quite that bad. However, it is decidedly not a musical, and it's not a terrific comedy either. And it was very sad to see BG in the final fade-out, and think that was her last moment on film.
Fox, dir. Johnson; 6
