Hollywood Pinafore (book & lyrics by George S. Kaufman; music by Sir Arthur Sullivan; produced by Max Gordon). Hard on the heels of Memphis Bound (TIME, June 4), which throws a monkey wrench into the music of H.M.S. Pinafore, conies Hollywood Pinafore, which runs a saw through the libretto. Sir Joseph Porter, K.C.B., is now a timid tyrant of a producer (Victor Moore); Dick Deadeye is Dick Live-Eye (William Gaxton), a rapacious agent. Ralph Rackstraw (Gilbert Russell) is a lowlier writer than he was a tar; and Little Buttercup is Little ButterUp, a gurgling columnist named Louhedda Hopsons (Shirley Booth).
With Sullivan's tunes decked out in ingenious new lyrics, and Kaufman's pokes at Hollywood often hitting the mark, Hollywood Pinafore is clever enough. But the show remains frozen in its cleverness. The Hollywood it picks over is, as material for satire, a graveyard; there can be no new jokes about it.
The cleverness of Hollywood Pinafore, furthermore, is so insistently verbal that the show sadly lacks the bounce, pace, bodily movement that should go with a musical. Chained to one set, it does not even—except except for a lively Antony Tudor ballet — rattle its chains with dancing. The show boils down, in the end, to some smart lyrics, snappy lines, Victor Moore's mis cast charm, Shirley Booth's comic poise, Annamary Dickey's singing, Viola Essen's dancing — and Sullivan's delightful but rather dry-docked score.