DVDs: Bless Your Beautiful Hide
Stephen Vincent Benet's "The Sobbin' Women" 1928, a short story about some lusty mid-nineteenth-century Oregon Territory brothers who forcibly abduct some local maidens, was optioned for the stage in 1949 by director-writer Joshua Logan. When his rights to the property expired, they were picked up by MGM, which developed the story into the original screen musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
The 1954 picture was to have had music by Harold Arlen accompanying the lyrics of Johnny Mercer, but cost cutting resulted in a shift of composer to Gene de Paul. As it turned out, de Paul and Mercer composed a charming, Broadway-style score of eight integrated numbers, most notably "Bless Your Beautiful Hide," "Wonderful, Wonderful Day," "Goin' Co'tin'," and "Spring, Spring, Spring."
Hired to direct the production was Stanley Donen, who had to his credit such movie musicals as On the Town, Singin' in the Rain, and Royal Wedding. The film's co-stars were coming near the end of their reign as romantic movie-musical leads. Rugged baritone Howard Keel had done Annie Get Your Gun, Show Boat, Calamity Jane, and Kiss Me, Kate, with his final musical film, Kismet, scheduled for 1955. Keel's leading lady was petite soprano Jane Powell, whose career has extended to playing the mother of the Mizner Brothers in the 2003 world premiere of Bounce. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers would prove to be Powell's best film, and it was probably Keel's best as well.
Unlike a fair amount of movie-musical fluff, Seven Brides had a solid story and a good script, the work of Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, and Dorothy Kingsley. But what distinguished the film above all was the contribution of choreographer Michael Kidd, whose Broadway triumphs at the time included Finian's Rainbow and Guys and Dolls, and whose previous films included Where's Charley? and The Band Wagon. It was Kidd's notion to hire top-notch dancers to play Keel's brothers, and while he was obliged to use handsome studio player and non-dancer Jeff Richards as one of the lads, the other five brothers were played by major dancers Jacques d'Amboise father of Charlotte, who currently plays Roxie in Broadway's Chicago, Tommy Rall, Matt Mattox, Marc Platt, and Russ Tamblyn father of "Joan of Arcadia"'s Amber.
Kidd's most significant contributions came in two sequences, one a barn-raising scene in which the brothers attempt to win the ladies of the town away from their boyfriends, the other the "Lonesome Polecat" lament for the brothers. The brides included Virginia Gibson, soon to be playing Ethel Merman's daughter in Broadway's Happy Hunting, and Julie Newmeyer, who would soon become Julie Newmar. The film was shot in the CinemaScope process, an attempt to fight the encroachments on the film industry made by television by doubling the width of the picture. Seven Brides would actually be made in two versions, one in CinemaScope, the other a regular widescreen version for theatres not equipped to exhibit films in the new process. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers received Oscar nominations for Best Picture, screenplay, and cinematography, winning for its scoring.
Largely because of the virility of its musical numbers, those lilting songs, and an intelligent script, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers has come to be regarded as one of the finest of all film musicals. So it was perhaps inevitable that the film would be transferred to the stage, even if no stage version was likely to equal the film. There was a short-lived 1982-'83 television series based on the film.
The first theatrical incarnation was a 1978-'79 tour with a decidedly mature Powell and Keel recreating their film roles. The book was by David Landay and Lawrence Kasha, the latter also the director. New songs were added, the work of Al Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn, Academy Award winners for the hit tunes from disaster pics The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno.
In 1982, a second touring version commenced, with Debby Boone and Laurence Guittard taking the leads. By the time this version unwisely unpacked on Broadway, Guittard had been replaced by David Carroll. Four of the film songs "When You're in Love," "Lonesome Pole Cat," "June Bride," "Spring, Spring, Spring" were absent, with six new numbers added, one of them "Love Never Goes Away" quite pretty.
New York reviews were mostly negative, and the production folded after five performances. The stage Seven Brides had more success in London, where a Theatre Royal, York production was brought to the Old Vic and later the Prince of Wales Theatre. Unlike the Broadway production, this one got a cast album, restoring "Lonesome Pole Cat" and "Spring, Spring, Spring" while retaining the new songs heard on Broadway.
Since then, the stage version of Seven Brides has become a regular in stock. The show was recently announced as the opening attraction April-July 2005 of the new season at Goodspeed Musicals, in a production scheduled to tour in 2005-2006 under the auspices of McCoy Rigby Entertainment and Dodger Touring.
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers has been on DVD for some time, but it now has a new, two-disc special edition. The first disc offers a new digital transfer of the CinemaScope version, while the second offers the rarely seen, alternate widescreen version.
The CinemaScope version comes with audio commentary by director Donen, who opens by recalling that Keel wanted a different director for the picture. He also informs us that the film's producer wanted to use a score of pre-existing country-western songs rather than a new score. Donen regrets the money wasted on the non-CinemaScope version, which he says was barely used. The director explains that he couldn't shoot on location because the story covers four seasons, and the film would have taken a year to make. And he notes the difficulty of staging scenes with seven to fourteen people in the shot.
Outstanding among the bonus features on Disc Two is a forty-minute short on the making of the film, hosted by Keel and featuring interviews with Donen, Powell, d'Amboise, Tamblyn, Newmar, Gibson, Rall, and Kidd, who recalls his firm initial belief that the story could not possibly allow for any significant dancing. Donen notes his disappointment with the look of some of the film, the result of the backlot shoot and the use of painted backdrops. Seven Brides was considered a "B" effort by MGM, which put up three times the Seven Brides budget for its simultaneously shot and considerably inferior film version of Brigadoon. It wasn't until Seven Brides' Radio City Music Hall premiere that it became clear to MGM that the studio had a sleeper on its hands.
Viewed again in this new edition, Seven Brides holds up very nicely. Two years after Seven Brides, Kidd and songwriters Mercer and De Paul not to mention Julie Newmar reunited for Broadway's Li'l Abner. Now how about a DVD of the film version of that musical hit?