Let's keep this party polite: ‘Guys and Dolls' turns 70

Boston Globe

02-05-2025

After a successful night of battling the MGM lion at one of the hundreds of craps tables his company owns, I must tell you about another important craps game. It's the one that anchors the miscast movie musical adaptation that is 1955's 'Guys and Dolls.' My choice is appropriate, as I'm surrounded by hordes of sinners slinging dice while demanding that 'luck be a lady tonight.'
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That catchy quote is a lyric from 'Luck Be a Lady,' the most famous song in composer Frank Loesser's memorable 1950 Broadway musical score. It's a showstopper that occurs during the climactic craps game where Sky Masterson, a guy who'll gamble on anything, is shooting for his biggest win yet: If he's victorious, his fellow gamblers must repent at a religious meeting run by the anti-gambling Save a Soul Mission.
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Sky took on this impossible task in order to win a $1,000 bet that he could convince the mission's most pious sergeant, Sarah Brown, to go on a romantic date to Havana. He made that bet with Nathan Detroit, another gambler whose sole skill is putting on illegal craps games for bigshot out-of-towners who roll into New York City with loaded dice and overloaded wallets.
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Nathan's desired gaming
venue, the Biltmore Garage, comes with a $1,000 price tag he can't afford, which leads him to wagering with Sky. It's a bet Nathan doesn't believe he can lose; Sarah hates gamblers and would never go out with one. Unfortunately for Nathan, Sky's quite the charmer.
Unfortunately for Sky, he made a side bet with Sarah that he'll fill her mission meeting with a dozen repentant gamblers if she'll go on that date with him. Sarah's job depends on whether she can convince sinners to go with God, so this score is too enticing to resist. Sky is also irresistible; she agrees to visit Havana because she's secretly falling for the old rascal. As a result, Sky must hold up his end of the bargain. Cue 'Luck Be a Lady' and that fateful roll of the dice.
Before Joe Mankiewicz got his hands on this adaptation (which he wrote and directed), 'Guys and Dolls' ran for three years and 1,200 performances. It won the Tony for best musical, and several cast members, including Stubby Kaye and Vivian Blaine, reprised their roles in the film version.
My introduction to 'Guys and Dolls' came not from the movie but from two related sources. The first is Damon Runyon, whose stories I loved reading back in my younger days. Two of Runyon's tales, 'The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown' and 'Blood Pressure' provided the basis for the Tony-winning book by Abe Burrows and Jo Swerling.
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Frank Sinatra at a recording studio in the 1950s.
Photo byThe second source was my fellow Hudson County native, Frank Sinatra. He has a street named after him here in Vegas, and for my money, he sang
I tell you this because I was once in a production of 'Guys and Dolls.' And like me, Ol' Blue Eyes didn't get to sing 'Luck Be a Lady.' As a result, his recording of the song plays like an upstaging act of deserved revenge. My little show cast a better Sky than I could ever have been. Mankiewicz's version cast some wannabe crooner named Marlon Brando.
Promotional portrait of Marlon Brando, circa 1951.
Photo byLooking back, it seems odd that Brando would be cast over Sinatra, who wanted the role and was instead cast as Nathan Detroit. For starters, Sinatra was a singer whose persona fit perfectly with Runyon's gamblers. And it wasn't as if he had no acting chops — he won the supporting actor Oscar the same year Brando was up for best actor in another Mankiewicz movie, 1953's 'Julius Caesar.' (Brando would lose that Oscar but win for 'On the Waterfront' the next year.)
The reason Brando was chosen was that he was the biggest star in Hollywood, a man whose star had risen to the upper echelon of greatness. But dammit, Brando couldn't sing! He's not godawful, mind you, he's simply
bad
. Do your best Brando imitation singing 'they call you lady luck, but there is room for doubt' and you'll have an idea what he sounds like.
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Everything else in Brando's performance kind of works. Sky oozes chemistry with Sarah, played by the always underrated Jean Simmons who, to the shock of producer Sam Goldwyn, had a wonderful singing voice. Brando even nails the comedic moments between him and Sinatra's Detroit.
Frank Sinatra takes a break during a recording session in March 1967.
Photo byBut the genuine article is standing right there on the screen with Brando, and I can't help but be distracted. Even worse, Broadway holdovers Blaine and Kaye, as Miss Adelaide and Nicely-Nicely Johnson (the role I played) slay the musical numbers they immortalized onstage. The impressive cast of singers leaves Brando looking like an amateur, but believe it or not, he's not the biggest problem with 'Guys and Dolls.' That distinction falls to Mankiewicz's direction.
Mankiewicz is a helmer who works great with character-driven stories like 'A Letter to Three Wives,' 'Sleuth,' and 'The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.' But, as 'Cleopatra' would later prove, gigantic spectacle was not his forte. The pacing of 'Guys and Dolls' drags it down, and somehow you feel like this should be more fun than it is. You start to wonder how it would have gone down had Stanley Donen ('Singin' in the Rain') directed it.
With that said, 'Guys and Dolls' looks absolutely glorious in eye-popping Technicolor and CinemaScope. Harry Stradling's cinematography received an Oscar nod, as did the production design and Irene Sharaff's costumes. I watched it for the first time on the big screen last year and realized the old pan-and-scan television version did the movie no justice. Hearing Brando warble through those powerful theater speakers took a few years off my life, but I probably deserved it.
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In addition to those Oscar nods, 'Guys and Dolls' was a hit with critics
Odie Henderson is the Boston Globe's film critic.