I have not seen the Broadway play of Thoroughly Modern Millie, but wonder if Broadway was able to recreate the magic of 1967’s madcap musical for the big screen, also named Thoroughly Modern Millie, based on Richard Morris' book Millie. The play, not here reviewed, has won this year’s Best Musical and Best Lead Actress in 27-year-old Sutton Foster.

It's hard to imagine any other actors or actresses being more perfect for the roles than the actors and actresses for the 1967 movie musical. Julie Andrews as the country girl turned "modern" flapper searching saucily for a husband, Millie Dilmount; Carol Channing (singing "Jazz Baby" and crying "raspberries!) as the alto saxophone-voiced, glass-breaking Muzzy; Mary Tyler Moore as the sweet, beautiful, checkbook-using Miss Dorothy; James Fox as the Cornelius Hackleby-looking(Hello, Dolly!), arm-flapping Jimmy Smith; John Gavin ("swell, just swell!") as the Superman clone and Millie's prince-like boss who calls her John, Trevor Graydon; and Beatrice Lillie with the hilarious spoof of Rebecca’s Mrs. Danivers in white slave trader/house mother, Mrs. Meers.

I laughed and grinned through the movie's quickly-moving two hours and eighteen minutes of Elmer Bernstein’s grand-sounding overture, George and Ira Gershwin or Jimmy Van Heusen songs like “Baby Face” and “ The Tapioca,” Joe Layton choreographed tap numbers in the fickle elevator that only worked when riders tapped, for example, sumptuous Jean Louis costumes for the Roaring Twenties and George Roy Hill’s thrilling direction of Richard Morris’s irrepressible, atmospheric screenplay. It felt like enjoying a night of dinner theatre in my own living room because it was spoofing the mannerisms, dialogue and intrigue of the 1920's.

If you’ve never had that distinct pleasure of such comedy, think of Arsenic And Old Lace made for the screen after its wildly popular theatre run. Perhaps the more recent Moulin Rouge?


The Story


After five mood-setting, classy numbers without vocals, starting with Oscar-winning “Baby Face,” we find a curly-haired, long-skirted Millie wandering in 1922's New York City, but when she notices the other women, her look soon modernizes. To her utter dismay a new brassiere will not contain her heaving bosom and give her the flat chest with straight hanging beads that rich girls sport. When the bra pops her out, she and the vendor gape at each other, then wide-eyed, newly made-up Millie shrugs and saunters away.

Already I know I’m going to love this movie. Too bad I hadn’t been a flapper, I muse. I’d have fit right in and looked rich as well!

Soon she meets the soft-speaking Miss Dorothy who must be helped paying the thirty-five cents for the cab (he expected a tip, poor guy) and also with the three bags into the hotel for young, single ladies. Mrs. Meers checks her in, wondering if Miss Dorothy has family, but she says she’s an orphan. That puts a gleam in the plain-faced woman’s eyes, who smugly observes, “it’s so sad to be all alone in the world!”

The Chinese “laundry men” hidden behind the mailslots eye their next victim gleefully, but Millie unwittingly keeps them and Mrs. Meers at bay several times by being across the hall from her friend (once, soy sauce was what Mrs. Meers called her stain remover-that-was-chloroform and Millie tries it out later on with disastrous results).

Her goal after becoming “modern” is to finish off her success with landing a rich husband and though she goes gaga over a fellow she danced flapper-style with, Jimmy, she then flips for her new boss, Trevor Graydon with a “baby face”. (She's a "stenog" in demand because she types forty words a minute!)

Carol Channing (Muzzy, Jimmy's "employer") has a couple of far-out performances, the first includes playing a xylophone wih her feet, the last being fired from a cannonball onto stage with The Human Yoyos, the Bernini Brothers. She advises Millie to only marry for love (“when it comes to marriage, follow your heart always”), but when an exuberant Millie in love floats over to Jimmy’s room at Muzzy’s mansion where they’re staying, she spies Miss Dorothy giddily skipping to him and entering his room.

Oh my. What else can Millie think? She mustn’t ever see the rounder again! Her sudden standoffishness the next morning at the three-seater airplane with four red and white-striped wings deeply puzzles the two and Muzzy, also. And then Trevor and Miss Dorothy lock eyes a little later and they're belting out in their minds “oh sweet mystery of life, at last I have found thee!” which we all thought had originated on Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein.

But then Miss Dorothy stands him up on their second, unchaperoned date and Mrs. Meers says that she has checked out. Oh, the problems, the problems! They all know she is lying and set out to find clues. It’s an explosive and undescribable adventure that keeps them on their toes (and holding on for dear life from a twentieth-floor pole outside a window) and a simply marvelous choice if you are seeking such wonders as a gas masked Mrs. Meers, mixed up, poisoned fruit punches, wild roadster rides through town and starry-eyed kisses.


Final Comments


I’ve never seen Julie Andrews in a bad performance yet (Mary Poppins, Sound of Music, Victor/Victoria) and her angelic voice is in top form again throughout the picture at a Jewish wedding or while daydreaming. She’s the only one that mugs (double takes) for the camera and occasionally has her written thoughts on a separate screen as in the silent pictures. She’s easy to love right away, but so are the others, even the evil Mrs. Meers who winds up in the laundry basket herself when her Chinese “launderers” assume in the dark she is Miss Dorothy.

I just can’t imagine how I could enjoy the new Broadway production as much, but I am sure it would still be worth seeing after twice enjoying the Ross Hunter-produced movie. After all, it won for Best Musical over all. Children could definitely also learn the rewards of an old-fashioned romance and musical by watching 1967's Thoroughly Modern Millie.

It’s a pull-out-the-stops winner. Buy or rent it today from your favorite video store. Now if only I could understand the Chinese (shoe show, shoe show!) and French lines sprinkled in! Actually the Chinese was probably made up, making it all the more hilarious.



Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day