1h 27min | Musical, Western | October 1955 | Color, WS
Director: George Marshall
Stars: Jeanne Crain, George Nader, Kitty Kallen, Bert Lahr, Mamie Van Doren, Keith Andes, Paul Gilbert, Tommy Rall.
Lee Scott ... choreographer
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048594/
Watched online, mediocre/poor print, blurry, cropped from WS to fs.
Paul Gilbert, the 3rd sailor in So This Is Paris ('54) with G.Nelson and T.Curtis, gets some solo dance time here, but not enough. Tommy Rall executes some good choreography about 30 min in, with able support from the ensemble. It's a shame this is not officially released.
The opening song, WHAT GOOD IS A WOMAN WITHOUT A MAN (all caps from Soundtracks page), is too long and deeply offensive. The lyrics are pure 50's female oppression; not even in an 1850 Western town would anyone think like that. And it's a weird intro to the film, where the women then decide to go on strike to end the male fixation on making their town the county seat.
8 songs in the Soundtracks, this is indeed a musical. It's also a traditional western (as opposed to the abstracted western Red Garters ('54)).
3rd film in Aristophanes' filmography related to Lysistrata; 22 titles for that play total. The oldest is a 1910 short; most recent is Chi-raq (2015).
Spoiler: the title song reveals at the end that each sex is the second place entry.
Universal, dir. Marshall; 6-
