Silk Stockings (1957)

What the trade papers reported

The Canadian Moving Picture Digest of 27 Oct 1956 carried a Hollywood item saying that M-G-M had signed Peter Lorre as a Russian commissar in the picture. The item described the film as the screen version of a Broadway musical comedy hit and named Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse and Janis Paige as its stars. Lorre’s part appears in the cast as Brankov, one of the three commissars. Motion Picture Exhibitor’s 1957 listing credited the same three leads.

The reviews

Bosley Crowther of The New York Times proposed legislation requiring Astaire and Charisse to appear together in a musical at least every two years, and he recalled their pairing in The Band Wagon in 1953. He called the new film “an all-round refreshing show” with “a bright book, delicious music” and the dancing of its two principals. Harrison’s Reports judged the story “not as mirthful as the original” and somewhat overlong, while granting that it “keeps one chuckling throughout.” Whitney Williams of Variety wrote of Charisse’s “fascinating brightness” and gave Paige “a knock-'em-dead type of performance,” though he too felt the film could have been shorter. Edwin Schallert of the Los Angeles Times called the Porter music “delightful and clever,” and he credited Lorre with “hilarious counterpoint” and Buloff with “antic fun.” The film also received Golden Globe nominations for Best Film and for Best Actress (Charisse) in the Comedy/Musical category.

Later accounts of the production

Later accounts say that producer Arthur Freed decided to buy the screen rights during the Broadway run, making this his first independent film project. Under his arrangement with Loew’s, MGM’s parent company, he held a 25 percent stake in the films he produced with MGM’s money. MGM had the right of first refusal because it owned the 1939 film, and Freed paid $300,000 for the rights. Leonard Spigelgass wrote the first draft, which displeased Mamoulian, and Harry Kurnitz followed him with revisions that also failed to satisfy. Freed then brought in Leonard Gershe to finish the script one month before filming, and principal photography ran from 7 Nov 1956 to 31 Jan 1957. It was Mamoulian’s first film in almost a decade, a period he had spent largely on Broadway.

Charisse was cast first, and Bing Crosby and Howard Keel were both considered as her partner. Freed let her choose between Les Girls with Gene Kelly and this film with Astaire, and she chose Astaire. Astaire, who had finished Funny Face, was unsure about accepting because he felt too old, and he agreed after hearing Mamoulian’s ideas at a luncheon. Freed had promised the part of Peggy Dayton to Ann Miller, who had sought it on Broadway and could not take it because of scheduling conflicts. Miller came to MGM for a costume test and found that Freed had already cast Paige. Paige, who had left Hollywood after Two Gals and a Guy (1951) and become a Broadway star in The Pajama Game in 1954, was returning after six years away.

Mamoulian said he wanted the two leads’ relationship told through dance rather than dialogue, and he described the action itself as “merely a repeat of Ninotchka.” Hermes Pan, Astaire’s frequent collaborator, worked with him on the choreography. Astaire asked Porter for a rock and roll song to show that he had kept up with current music, and Porter studied the appropriate records and returned with “The Ritz Roll and Rock.” The number, a parody of the new genre, ends with Astaire smashing his top hat, a gesture read as a sign of the retirement from movie musicals he announced after the release.

What the stars and the historians wrote afterward

In his autobiography, Steps in Time, Astaire called Charisse “beautiful dynamite.” In her own autobiography Charisse compared her two great partners, writing that Kelly was the stronger and the more inventive choreographer, while Astaire had the better coordination and “his sense of rhythm is uncanny.” Astaire’s retirement was partial, since he went on to four television specials with Barrie Chase, a non-dancing role in On the Beach, and a last major film musical, Finian’s Rainbow, in 1968.

The later judgments of the film do not agree on how it was first received. Tom Milne, author of the 1970 book Rouben Mamoulian, called the film “so crammed with delights” that he found it hard to credit that “the entire pack of British critics” had failed to respond, and he hoped writers on cinema would someday see it as “one of the great musicals.” Marc Spergel, in Reinventing Reality (1993), wrote that audiences and critics praised it as “an inventive, enjoyable entertainment” and that Mamoulian’s standing with Hollywood executives rose as a result. MGM’s figures record a loss all the same. Accounts of Charisse’s career now describe it as a classic MGM musical that initially lost money for the studio.