*GUYS AND DOLLS ( 1955) 9:45 PM

[elleng]

A big-city gambler bets that he can seduce a Salvation Army girl.
Dir: Joseph L. Mankiewicz Cast: Marlon Brando , Jean Simmons , Frank Sinatra .
C- 149 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

TCM

[agingdem]

1. love the movie/love the music

Jean Simmons, Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra..what a cast!...who knew Brando could almost sing...... another favorite film is Desiree also with Simmons and Brando..

[Aristus]

3. It's great to see Brando back when he still took acting seriously and wasn't afraid to take risks.

And Jean Simmons' beauty never fails to astonish.

I heard Sinatra was angry at being cast as Nathan Detroit, thinking he was better suited for Sky Masterson. I think he was the perfect choice for Nathan

An all-around great film...

[elleng]

5. Looking forward to

(The movie cast, of course.)

[jimfields33]

2. Great movie!

[El Supremo]

4. I will watch it.

I recently discovered that my grandfather knew Damon "Runyan" (the original spelling) near the turn of the last century. They were both newspapermen in the southwest.

[lapucelle]

6. Fugue for Tinhorns

[elleng]

7. THANKS!

Can Do!!!

[lapucelle]

8. Can you imagine opening night on Broadway,

the overture and then that song opening the show?

And Sam Levene (who I know best from The Thin Man series) as Nathan Detroit?

Thank you for the programming heads-up.

[elleng]

9. You're welcome!

SO MUCH on Broadway was great! (Sadly, 'dark' now.)

[elleng]

10. RIGHT NOW!

[First Speaker]

11. Will someone kindly explain to me why the fuck Marlon Brando is playing Sky Masterson...

...when the man who was born to play the role, and sing his songs...*is in the same goddam film*? I once heard Sinatra sing "My Time of Night" live. It was sheer heaven. As it is, both he and Brando are miscast. (Frank playing the very Jewish Nathan Detroit is deeply, well, unfortunate.) A great musical, maybe the very greatest, ruined, for me, by some very strange producerial decisions...

[elleng]

12. Dunno, maybe TCM introducer has answers.

https://medium.com/@ronfassler/casting-guys-dolls-265cf408545d

[lapucelle]

13. This article has an interesting explanation.

For the Love of Sky Masterson

I watched a fair amount of movies with my dad when I was a kid, and if I had to name his favorite I’d say it’s the 1955 Joseph L. Mankiewicz film Guys and Dolls. The MGM spectacle was adapted from the Frank Loesser musical that debuted on Broadway five years before, which also happens to be my dad’s favorite play.

Guys and Dolls is a quintessential technicolor movie musical, meant to be a vehicle for some of the biggest stars at the box office. Marlon Brando had just won his first Academy Award for Best Actor in Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront when Sam Goldwyn, the prominent movie producer and executive of several Hollywood studios, decided to cast him as the romantic lead Sky Masterson. But Brando couldn’t sing. He himself told a reporter in a 1955 interview that his voice was akin to a dying yak. Even so, casting him would ensure the picture made money.

https://medium.com/very-dad-movies/for-the-love-of-sky-masterson-fe4e94099080