Guys and Dolls

The next movie coming up on TCM that I DVRed the last time TCM ran it is Guys and Dolls, at 8:00 PM tonight, Nov. 8. IT's airing as part of a night of movies based on Damon Runyan stories.

Guys and Dolls was based on a Broadway musical, and the opening gives that away immediately. There's a long, extremely choreographed scene showing a fictionalized view of Times Square someplace both a bit exciting, but also possibly a bit dangerous because of the crime. Whether the choreography is a good thing or a bad thing is a matter of personal preference, I suppose. The choregraphy is of an extremely high technical standard, but that also makes the whole scene totally artificial, which has always been one of the issues I've had with musicals.

Eventually, the scene stops on two guys: Nicely Nicely (Stubby Kaye) and Benny (Johnny Silver) who are underlings of Nathan Detroit (Frank Sinatra). Nathan has a reputation as a facilitator of gambling, and has been running one of the biggest floating craps games in the city. However, he's recently lost his preferred location, in part thanks to a crackdown by Lt. Brannigan (Robert Keith). That, and he's got a very long-suffering girlfriend in Adelaide (Vivian Blaine), who is the headliner at the Hot Box. She's been pushing Nathan to marry her for years, to the point that she's written totally fake letters to her mom saying that they're already married and have several children. (Wouldn't Mom have come down from Providence at least once in 14 years?)

Also in the original Times Square choreography sequence was a group of Salvation Army-like missionaries, running a mission for the downtrodden which seems like it would be impossible to do in midtown Manhattan if only because of how high the rents would be. The face of the missionaries, because they need a pretty face to try to bring the bums in, is Sarah Brown, with the technical head of the branch being her uncle Arvide (Regis Toomey). However, they're not having much success, and the head of the organization is threatening to shut the branch down.

These two strands come together thanks to the return to New York City of another professional gambler, Sky Masterson (Marlon Brando). Nathan needs $1000 to be able to rent the location where he wants to host the craps game, and thinks he can come up with a sucker bet to get the money from Sky. However, his first idea fails because Sky is no dummy. So Nathan comes up with a better idea. He wagers that Sky can't get a woman to go to Havana with him, where Sky is planning to inspect his operations down there. Nathan gets to pick the target, and picks... Sarah Brown.

Sky is a smooth operator, and even claims to know the Bible thanks to having read all those Gideon bibles in hotel rooms being a well-traveled person. But certainly getting a missionary to abandon her mission to go on a date in Havana? Then again, Sky is no dummy either, and quickly finds leverage, offering to bring a bunch of sinners to the mission's next revival meeting in exchange for Sarah's accompanying him to Havana. Of course, Sky begins to find himself falling in love with Sarah....

I think how much you like Guys and Dolls is going to depend upon how much you like musicals, and how much you like Damon Runyan. I already implied above that I had a bit of a problem with the choreography of the opening scene, and the big craps game at the climax has the same sort of choreography. I also had a problem with the dialog, in that most of the gamblers talked in a very artificial way. It also goes without saying that Marlon Brando was not a professional singer by any means. All of this is a bit of a shame, since at the heart of the movie is a story that's not a bad one. Guys and Dolls really ought to be better than I found it.