Pal Joey

Columbia's Harry Cohn snapped up the rights to the Rodgers and Hart musical on its first appearance, no doubt feeling a strong kinship with its heel of a hero, and then had a pig of a job casting the leads. By the mid-'50s he'd got it nailed - showing off his new sex symbol Kim Novak as the young innocent eyed by Sinatra's nightclub entertainer, and providing a final chance for his old sex symbol Rita Hayworth to sing (dubbed) and shake those legs as her experienced rival. In other films, George Sidney cultivated his dubious taste to the point of a fine art, but here his glossy vulgarity ultimately serves to smother the bite of the original material. The result is a musical externally lavish but somehow hollow inside; a musical with electric moments but dull scenes.