Guys and Dolls.

When I was a young boy (more years ago than anyone should care to remember) my father would take me to the movies but then we knew them as the pictures or the flicks!. My father loved films – westerns, war, comedy or musicals, you name it he loved it.

One of the first films I remember was ‘Guys and Dolls’; this was released in 1955 when I was a mere lad of 6 but it probably did not arrive in cinemas here until a year or two later (the film industry was much more relaxed in those days). For a young boy, such as myself, this film was full of enchantment from: the larger than life actors – Marlon Brando as Sky Masterson, Stubby Kaye as Nicely Nicely Johnson, Frank Sinatra as Nathan Detroit (even the names are fantastical) and Jean Simmons as Sgt. Sarah Brown to: the sets, which were filmed in Eastmancolor and of such intense colours that you couldn’t help but be dazzled by them. Like a painter’s palette there were colours that should never have been placed side by side, but that added to the magic. New York and Manhattan were like something from a fairytale, though it would have taken more than a fairy godmother and a magic wand to take us there - here it was about 50 feet in front of us and we could almost taste it. For many people New York was to be forever as it was portrayed on the film screen.

The songs were memorable – they had lyrics that could be sung until the next blockbuster took its place, though for me there was never another to equal Guys and Dolls – not even ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ (although filmed in 1952 I was not to see this until many years later and similarly 1953’s ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’). In ‘Guys and Dolls’ the men were men, the women were -- Jean Simmons and the music was JAZZ. Later films such as ‘All That Jazz’ and ‘Chicago’ would come nowhere near the excellence of ‘Guys and Dolls’ and it wouldn’t be until 1979 when ‘Hair’, a film set in 60’s New York, was released that I found a film that had the same impact and as much energy as ‘Guys and Dolls’ – with dance routines that could lift you out of your seats and songs that would never become boring. Sadly, though, there was to be no Jean Simmons.

Even for a lad of tender years – there was something special about Jean Simmons; I was not to be introduced to the charms of Marilyn Monroe until much later and they were of a different class to those of Jean Simmons. Wide-eyed innocence, virginal and wholesome are a few words that come to mind concerning Jean Simmons (Other actresses, such as, Marilyn Monroe could never be considered really wholesome, Julie Andrews was too wholesome, Grace Kelly was high class, Judy Garland was from a much earlier age and a bit too old for my taste.

Though Audrey Hepburn had all the wholesomeness of a dozen Jean Simmons she was never, in my opinion, to appear in a musical of the equal of ‘Guys and Dolls’ – My Fair Lady is far too English!). Sometimes, I think that Audrey and Jean could almost be taken for sisters. (That alone could have been the basis of a youthful fantasy).

Recently I purchased ‘Guys and Dolls’ on DVD and 50 years on I can, and do, watch it often without finding it the least bit tedious. Like a good story, it has lost nothing in the telling and, even after all these years, Jean Simmons still has the power to send shivers down my spine.



Listen to a clip from the movie here: http://www.reelclassics.com/Gallery/music9.htm (scroll down and click on the musical note beside the mp3 listing)

Among Damon Runyon's best-known works GUYS AND DOLLS (1932) is based on 'The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown' and written in regional slang. Runyon's style relied on Broadway slang, outrageous metaphors, and constant use of the present tense.