Good gracious, I forgot how much I like this movie. The songs! The dancing! The random projectiles thrown at the audience! Kiss Me Kate is great, silly, three-dimensional fun from beginning to end.

Musicals of this period are tricky to revisit -- even when they aren't based on the least appealing of Shakespeare's plays for a human female, The Taming of the Shrew. You never know when some rapey* or racist** theme you completely overlooked in your youth will catch you right between the eyes. For instance, I took my son to see Oklahoma!  on the big screen recently, and he wanted to know why no one went looking for Laurie when she didn't show up at the barn-raising after getting in the buggy with creepy old Jed.*** "It's a musical, honey. Nothing makes sense in musicals." 

But to be honest, it was the specter of Kathryn Grayson, a woman whose talent I recognize, but do not appreciate, and not the fear of tarnishing a happy memory that kept me from seeing this picture for so long. I was wrong to be thus deterred. For one thing, Grayson is truly good in the part of Lilli Vanessi, pampered soprano. For another, the story works: narcissist leading man, Fred Graham (Howard Keel), is producing and directing a musical version of The Taming of the Shrew and wants his ex-wife AND his girlfriend, Lois Lane (Ann Miller) to star in it. Lois is really in love with Bill (Tommy Rall), a great dancer but the kind of boyfriend who borrows money and runs up gambling debts. 

Fred and Lilli are still harboring romantic feelings for one another, even though Fred is with Lois (not knowing Lois is with Bill) and Lilli is about to marry a guy named Tex. Bill, p.s., has signed Fred's name to a hefty IOU, payable to a gangster whose henchmen, Lippy (Keenan Wynn) and Slug (James Whitmore), have come round to collect on.

Right before curtain goes up, Lilli mistakenly receives flowers from Fred that were meant for Lois and she believes there may be some spark left between them. She does not read the card, however, until just before the end of the first act. Realizing they were for Lois, Lilli lashes out at Fred -- on stage, in character -- and threatens to quit during intermission -- backstage, as herself. Fred must get Lilli back in line...but how?

For those of you who don't know the knee-slapper that is Shakespeare's original play, the shrew that must be tamed is Katherine, elder daughter of a Paduan merchant called Baptista. By all accounts, Kate is a mean-tempered scold, while her younger sister, Bianca, is sweet as pie and has a number of suitors lined up to marry her as soon as Baptista gets Katherine off his hands. Enter Petruchio, whatever the male equivalent of a gold digger is, who agrees to marry Kate for a small fortune then proceeds to gaslight his new wife into submission through playful starvation and Skinnerian mind games. By the end of the play, Kate winds up walking around Padua babbling about how women should be obedient to their husbands no matter what and Bianca marries a guy named Lucentio.

Meanwhile, back in 1953, Lilli is Kate, who is hostile to Fred/Petruchio until won over by her true feelings; Lois is Bianca, who has many suitors and a roving eye, until she finally picks Bill/Lucentio. All's well that ends well, you might say, with words and lyrics by Cole Porter.

Now add spectacular music, fantastic choreography, and this, the best dance number of the decade, featuring Bob Fosse and Carol Haney, the greatest dancer you hardly ever saw on camera.

I've never seen Kiss Me Kate on stage, despite its perennial revivals and local productions. Honest to god, I could have seen it any number of times during the past two months at the Shakespeare Theatre Company until last weekend in a venue that literally shares a wall with the building I work in. But no, and you know why? Ann Miller wasn't going to be in it, that's why.

Ann Miller is an enthusiastic, underrated bucket of joy to behold. She can act better than posterity has given her credit for, can tap dance like there's no tomorrow, and she can Sell It, because she Owns It, and "Selling It" usually annoys the pants off me (I'm talking to you, Betty Hutton). Ann Miller had to do a kind of tap dance strip tease in 3-D for this picture and she knocked it out of the park.

Respect.

​Please do see this musical if it should come your way on any size screen. I'm sorry to say that Kiss Me Kate isn't available streaming for some reason, but you can get it on DVD. It's worth it.

This post is my contribution to the Backstage Blogathon, sponsored by Movies Silently and Sister Celluloid.

Lots to read! Please check out the excellent entries all about films that are all about the show business.

Before Fox Films finds out it's there.

A film like this makes you wonder how commercial air travel ever got off the ground, so to speak. I mean, it was nice that you could smoke (or second-hand smoke anyway) the entire trip to stave off nerves, but in those early days the bus may have been a surer thing. Greyhound certainly seems to have been the service model for the air carrier in this picture.

Phone Call from a Stranger begins with attorney David Trask (Gary Merrill) in the process of leaving the wife who cheated on him. She regrets the affair, but he can't move past it, so he decides to hop a plane and start fresh in Los Angeles -- kids, schmids. At the airport Trask meets up with three other people with big problems: alcoholic doctor, Robert Fortness (Michael Rennie), would-be musical actress, Binky Gay (Shelley Winters); and Eddie Hoke (Keenan Wynn), obnoxious traveling novelties salesmen.
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The plane, however, is a local (which I guess was a Thing in those early days) and keeps running into delays. Trask and his new acquaintances get to talking and we get some juicy backstory on each, which comes in handy later. Binky latches onto Trask because it's her first flight ever and she tells her story out of sheer nervousness: that she is going home to her husband after trying and failing to make it on Broadway, but is afraid her battle-ax of a mother-in-law, a former Vaudeville star (Evelyn Varden), is going to be horrible and make her life miserable. She is not wrong to be concerned.

Upon finding out Trask is a lawyer, Dr. Fortness seeks advice on how to turn himself in to the District Attorney on account of five years before, he drove drunk and caused an accident that killed his colleague (uncredited Hugh Beaumont) then pinned the blame on his dead friend. Fortness's wife (Beatrice Straight) lied to protect him, but their marriage has suffered ever since and he now wants to put things right.

Eddie is just a pain in the ass, what with the nose-glasses, joy-buzzer, and cheesecake picture of Bette Davis c. 1932 that he keeps showing around and claiming is his wife (as IF). But he is the one who insists that the four of them (whom he nicknames The Four Musketeers) exchange contact information so they can get together in years to come and recall this crazy, mixed-up trip.

This is why, when the plane crashes and kills three of the Four Musketeers, David Trask is able to contact each of his traveling companions' survivors to share something important with each of them. The exercise is cathartic for him, particularly after talking with Hoke's wife, who turns out to be actual Better Davis, c. 1952 though, and paralyzed from the waist down. It should be noted that Bette Davis was married to Gary Merrill at the time this picture was made and their scene together is breathtakingly uninteresting.

Nutshell: I don't consider this to be a particularly memorable movie, but three performances make it worth seeing:

• Shelley Winters, who is engaging, natural, and funny throughout. Yeah, she dies, but that was kind of Shelley Winters's thing: at least she didn't drown in this one.
• Keenan Wynn is great, but his character is so irritating you kind of wish you could like him better.
• Evelyn Varden (who was in another movie Shelley died in) rocks the awful mother-in-law.

Sadly, the remaining characters and portrayals are less sympathetic. Michael Rennie is wooden and forgettable, as per yoozh, and I'm sorry, but I've never cared for Gary Merrill at all. Who knows what Bette Davis was trying to do with that wise invalid schtick, and I found the eternally regretful sob in Mrs. Trask's voice enough to hop on a doomed plane myself. There is a surprise in Beatrice Straight, but only because I'd forgotten she was in the picture and otherwise think she's wonderful. She did what she could.
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That said, you may as well give Phone Call from a Stranger a whirl since it's available in its entirety on YouTube. Click while you can!

This post is my contribution to the CMBA Fall Blogathon: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, sponsored by the Classic Movie Blog Association. 

So many great entries on this fun theme, but don't take my word for it: Go read and enjoy!