Customer Reviews

Silk Stockings (1955 Original Broadway Cast)

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Cole Porter's last major Broadway score, SILK STOCKINGS was based on Melchior Lengyel's "Ninotchka", which had been adapted for the screen in 1939 as a rare comedy vehicle for Greta Garbo. It's the story of a frosty Russian female communist, assigned to travel to Paris in order to collect some wayward comrades who've fallen 'victim' to the city's decadent delights. Along the way she, too, begins to thaw...

In Rick McKay's highly-recommended documentary "Broadway: The Golden Age", Gretchen Wyler almost walks away with the whole movie thanks to the recounting of how, shortly before the 1955 Broadway opening of SILK STOCKINGS, she replaced an ill Yvonne Adair--and her understudy Sherry O'Neil--as the singing and dancing lead, Janice Dayton. At the time of the doco's release, the cast album of SILK STOCKINGS (as released by RCA) was sadly out-of-print. Now DRG has brought it back into the catalogue, and Ms Wyler's new, post-"Broadway: The Golden Age" fanbase can finally hear why even Cole Porter himself raved about this talented Broadway trooper.

Not only does Ms Wyler deliver the goods with such delicious Cole Porter tunes as "Satin and Silk", "Josephine" and "Stereophonic Sound"; but her co-stars, Hildegarde Neff and Don Ameche, are hardly dead-weights in the musical department either. While Ms Neff later harboured misgivings about starring in a Broadway musical, she's a total delight, especially with the elegant "Without Love". Don Ameche was always fun in musicals (if you haven't already, check him out starring opposite Elaine Stritch in the cult flop favourite "Goldilocks"); he's totally charming with such numbers as "All of You" and "Paris Loves Lovers".

Those with the original RCA release won't find much of a reason to upgrade (sonically it's the exact same quality as before); but it's a must-buy for everyone who missed it the first time around.

Bill Rosenfeld wrote in the booklet for SILK STOCKINGS' original CD release: "The tryout has been described in various books as one of the most tortuous and tempestuous in Broadway history." All the firings, hirings, rewritings and delays must have sent Porter's creative muse on temporary leave. Get a load of these lyrics: "Remote from all the crowds, we'll float above the clouds as on through the seasons we sail" . . . "agitating eyes, titillating thighs, lubricating lips, undulating hips" . . . "I'd love to make a tour of you" . . . "a woman to a man is just a woman, but a man to a woman is her life" . . . "the urge to merge with the splurge of the spring" (my personal favorite). Porter obviously relished this dreadful rhyme, for within a few moments after it's sung, Ninotchka derisively tosses it back at Steve.

Thankfully, the muse returned, especially for "Too Bad (We Can't Go Back to Moscow)," "Satin and Silk'" "Siberia," and "Stereophonic Sound," which includes one of two Marilyn Monroe references in the score. A puzzlement: if "Sound" was one of the major production numbers, why did RCA record the show in mono? Two years later (1957) MGM released SILK STOCKINGS in "glorious Metrocolor, breathtaking Cinemascope, and stereophonic sound.

Of the three leads, Don Ameche is the easiest on the ears. ". . . a leading man who can sing without posing and flinging his arms about . . . " wrote John McClain in The New York Journal-American. Gretchen Wyler ". . . does not sing a song so much as she fires it point blank at the audience." (Brooks Atkinson, The New York Times) Rosenfeld further wrote that, according to Hildegarde Neff's memoir, the non-singing actress ". . . spent nearly a year wishing that [the producers] would call her and tell her that they had changed their minds." Let's just say her voice is full of character.

SILK STOCKINGS may not be prime Cole Porter, but it merits a space in your collection, along side Rhino's splendidly remastered soundtrack from the film, now out of print but with a few used copies still available. "As on Through the Seasons We Sail" and "Hail Babinski" are missing (no big loss), "I'd like to make a tour of you" becomes "the sweet of you, the pure of you," lush instrumental tracks for Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse abound and, as delivered by Fred Astaire, "the urge to merge with the splurge of spring" almost sounds appealing.

Both recordings are recommended.

After the great hit of Kiss Me Kate into what all came together to provide success, it seems that the master Porter had lots of bad luck, as an example is this recording with the worst arrangements I've heard. The movie version is so much better.

I'm very happy to have finally been able to purchase the original cast recording on cd. However, as great, and as important, as it is to have the original Broadway cast, I would love for there to be new full recording in stero. The irony is that one of the more famous songs from the show is "Stereophonic Sound" and yet it has that compressed old mono sound, while being authentic of the era's recordings, make me yearn for a clean, rich recording. Maybe City Center Encores will get around to this show and someone will care enough about Cole Porter to give it a first class recording. Not his absolute best work, but it's Porter.