The Pajama Game

THE PAJAMA GAME, screenplay by George Abbott and Richard Bissell based on their play and the book "7 1/2 cents" by Mr. Bissell; produced and directed by Mr. Abbott and Stanley Donen for Warner Brothers. At the Music Hall.

Babe ......................... Doris Day
Sid ......................... John Raitt
Gladys ......................... Carol Haney
Hines ......................... Eddie Foy Jr.
Mabel ......................... Reta Shaw
Poopsie ......................... Barbara Nichols
Mae ......................... Thelma Pelish
Prez ......................... Jack Straw
Hasler ......................... Ralph Dunn
...

BY BOSLEY CROWTHER

If ever a musical comedy has been plucked off the Broadway stage and re-created as a movie with scarcely a passage or a principal performer changed, it is George Abbott's and Stanley Donen's production of "The Pajama Game", which swept like a pack of noisy pickets into the Music Hall yesterday.

Virtually everything in it, with the major exception of Doris Day, who plays the role of the heroine instead of Janis Paige, is substantially as it was in Mr. Abbott's and Richard Bissell's oridinal Broadway show, even down to Carol Haney getting pickled in Hernando's Hideaway.

There is John Raitt playing and singing the remarkably virile role of the hard-hitting superintendent of the pajama factory in Dubuque, Iowa. There is Eddie Foy Jr. reproducing the time-control manager, Hines, and Reta Shaw as big as life (and that's big!) as the office secretary. Ralph Dunn is still here as the president ("Production must increase, costs must go down"), Thelma Pelish is Mae, the porky seamstress, and Miss Haney is- well, she's still just grand.

As for the boy-meets-union story- or rather, boy-meets-union girl- it is not changed a jot or a tittle from Mr. Bissell's original draft from his own book about love and labor in a pajama factory, "7 1/2 cents". The new superintendent still has his troubles getting a unionised plant to work and gettin Babe, of the grievance committee, to abandon her grievances. The music to melodise these didios is likewise fresh off the stage.

Now, is that good?

The answer is simple: It's as good as it was on the stage, which was quite good enough for many thousand happy customers over a period of a couple of years. It is fresh, funny, lively and tuneful. Indeed, in certain respects- such as when they all go on the factory picnic- it is even more lively than it was on the stage.

In this situation, for instance, Miss Haney and a swarm of boys and girls do some jim-dandy leaping and whirling to the rollicking "Once a Year Day". Out of doors, in a colorful setting, they can cover more ground than on a stage. And a cute bit of cinema trickery has been used to introduce "Hernando's Hideaway".

But it must be said, too, that imitation has also imposed some restraints that make for a tangible rigidity within the frame of a musical film. There is an unmistakable routine to the alterantion of dialogue and songs, of comedy scenes and production numbers, all of them coming on obvious cues. And some of the songs- for instance "Hey There", as sung by Mr. Raitt- are staged as if the actors in "talking pictures" hadn't been freed from an immovable microphone.

However, the whole thing is splendid, the color is gay and strong and even As for Mr. Raitt, he is refreshing because he looks natural and he has a voice. It would be nice now to see him in a more fluid musical film.

For the rest, there is "Steam Heat" with Miss Haney shuffling neatly with a couple of the boys, and there is the elaborate low-clowning and general "mugging" of Mr. Foy. True, they've dropped the Jealousy Ballet, which was so entertaining on the stage (maybe they thought it was too dirty), but they haven't repressed Mr. Foy. When he takes off his pants to model the pajamas- well, that virtually stops the show.

This will give you an idea of the vitality of this film.