While just about everyone has heard of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical partnership, Richard Rodgers’ earlier teaming with Lorenz Hart is not as widely remembered – although it produced some great Broadway musicals. This is partly due to the many memorable Rodgers and Hammerstein productions: The King and I, The Sound of Music, South Pacific, Oklahoma! and many more. It’s also partly due to the early death of Hart. It’s less clear as to whether the lesser fame might also relate to Hart’s status as something of a social outcast. He was an alcoholic Jewish homosexual semi-dwarf at a time when some of those characteristics were even less openly accepted than they are today – let alone all of them in a single person. Whatever his personal struggles, Hart produced memorable lyrics, and he and Rodgers are largely responsible for the success of Pal Joey, a film with little going for it other than the music and three big-name stars: Frank Sinatra, Kim Novak and Rita Hayworth.
The story is paper-thin: Joey Evans (Sinatra) is a lounge singer who’s long on bravado and short on gentlemanly behaviour. He’s been bouncing from town to town and finds himself out of work in San Francisco, where he brashly gets himself a job at a nightclub and soon finds himself interested in two women – Vera Simpson, a wealthy widow and former showgirl (Rita Hayworth) and Linda English, a sweet young dancer (Kim Novak). Joey’s inclination is to go where the money is, but Linda is sufficiently appealing to make that a tough decision.
It’s interesting to see how the filmmakers handled this risqué story during the conservative 1950s, as it is filled with sexual innuendo. It took 15 years after the purchase of the screen rights for an acceptable balance to be struck between the suggestiveness that’s essential to the story and the restraint that was demanded by the production code of the day.
The script is sometimes witty and some of the music is great. Since it’s set in a nightclub, many of the songs are presented as stage performances, which makes the songs seem less hokey that they otherwise be, and also allows for small-scale production numbers. We get classics like ‘Lady is a Tramp’ and ‘My Funny Valentine’, along with ‘Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered’ and ‘I Didn’t Know What Time It Was’. Neither Hayworth nor Novak did their own singing (which is likely a good thing), but Sinatra is all Sinatra. Like him or hate him, you can’t deny that this guy was a great singer.
Pal Joey’s characters aren’t terribly appealing. Joey is a jerk, Vera is pitiful in her attempts to buy his love, and Linda is irritatingly passive. But few people will be watching this movie for its characters. So don’t worry about its weaknesses; just sit back and get ready for some great Sinatra crooning and music that justifies Rodgers and Hart to be remembered almost as well as Rodgers and Hammerstein.
