Damn Yankees

Bob Fosse stands out as the new choreographer with longtime partner Gwen Vernon and cockthrob Tab Hunter in a drunken hepcat number Two Lost Souls.

Sweet Charity (1969)

Charity Valentine wears her heart literally tattooed on her arm, sacrificing herself on the altar of love with one undeserving man after another. Shirley MacClaine plays the quasi-prostitute who dreams of being a secretary, and stealing the role Gwen Verdon created for Neil Simon’s Broadway translation of Fellini’s Nights of Caberia.

The film is ultimately too dark, the characters too post, and it fails as an optimistic Hollywood musical. But New Yorker’s had embraced Gwen Verdon’s hardluck heroine on Broadway as if she were the city itself: mugged, abandoned, but still holding on to hope. Sweet Charity revived Broadway, brought tourists back to the city, and re-opened the venerable Palace Theater. But don’t think this is anyone’s show but Bob Fosse’s.
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