User Reviews

If you have any interest in Leonard Sillman's "New Faces" series of Broadway shows, this is the better of the two preservations. The other, a 1954 film (in color and 'scope, from 20th-Century Fox, amazingly enough) is quite hard to watch, though rather fascinating. Imho, the 1956 edition was vastly superior to that of 1952 (-- and this is a minority h.o., incidentally, though I've never understood why -- apart from the incomparable presence of Eartha Kitt in the earlier edition). There is a mix of the two editions in this TV "Play of the Week" compilation. It was once available (now that I think of it, though, it was probably a bootleg) on VHS. Worth a search, as this TV version does include players not mentioned in the IMDb cast list, including, if I recall correctly, Maggie Smith and Jane Connell. Mr. Sillman himself plays host, and, by and large, this is a rather entertaining 90 minutes or so of excellent to middling 1950s revue material. Of course the film, awful as it is, is essential in that it includes all of Eartha's numbers from the show ("Love is a Simple Thing," "Bal Petit Bal" and -- most memorably -- "Monotonous," as well as two bonus interpolations, her hits "Santa Baby" and "Uska Dara.") And she performs them brilliantly.