I notice that uncredited, but still making a vital contribution to this film was the original Broadway lead Gwen Verdon who assisted her then husband Bob Fosse with the choreography. This has to be one of the truly unselfish acts in a business that's built on ego.

Sweet Charity ran 608 performances on Broadway with a flock of Tony Award nominations including Gwen Verdon for the lead of Charity Hope Valentine and two Tony Awards for Bob Fosse for direction and choreography. Fosse came over to Hollywood to repeat his dual roles. But instead of Gwen doing the lead, Shirley MacLaine steps into the part and Gwen assists in the choreography. Quite frankly had she told Universal and her then husband to take their film and follow explicit directions what to do with it, who could have blamed her.

Yet there was Gwen Verdon, helping another performer do good in a part she created. Shirley MacLaine did do good in the role and it was a return to MacLaine's own musical roots. Shirley MacLaine has done so many dramatic roles and been Oscar nominated and once a winner for them, people do forget her beginnings were musical. Had she come along ten years earlier she would have been a great musical star. As it is she does have films like Can Can, Artists and Models, and What A Way To Go where we see Shirley singing and dancing. Her first big break was on Broadway replacing Carol Haney in Pajama Game.

Charity Hope Valentine, someone who is charging more than 10 Cents a Dance Depression prices in a dance hall keeps having the worst luck in men which is established early on when at the beginning a guy she was just getting interested in threw her off a bridge into Central Park lake and robbed her purse. The latest in a long line of romantic failures. But quite by accident she gets involved with two men, Italian film star Ricardo Montalban and insurance actuary John McMartin who is repeating his role from the original Broadway production.

The Cy Coleman-Dorothy Fields score is a bit cut down, but you couldn't do Sweet Charity without Hey Big Spender and If They Could See Me Now. In the latter Shirley's musical talents, singing and dancing, get their full range. It must have been something however to see Gwen Verdon cavorting around the Italian film star's apartment doing that soliloquy of finally hitting the big time and wishing her dance hall girls could see here.

As for the dance hall girls, Shirley's peers are led by best friends Chita Rivera and Paula Kelly who along with Shirley do the big production number of Hey Big Spender. Who wouldn't want a little quality time with any one of them.

And we get a special treat with Sammy Davis, Jr. doing the Rhythm Of Life church, a satire on those who claim religious tax exempt status for some interesting beliefs. It maybe his best musical moment in film.

The ending for a musical is rather unusual, I can't reveal, but nothing similar comes to mind at the moment. Though Shirley MacLaine is great, poor Gwen Verdon died having only had one of her Broadway hits filmed, Damn Yankees.

But Gwen was quite the girl helping someone else score a hit with her role.

"Sweet Charity" is about the adventures of a terminally optimistic 'woman of easy virtue' (Shirley MacLaine) who seems to be happy no matter what horrible things are thrown her way. While the prostitution angle is highly de-emphasized (which is odd, given it was made in the later part of the swinging 60s and in the original she was CLEARLY a prostitute),she is a 'dance hall hostess'. But she also is very dumb--a terrible judge of character and some one who always seems to be bouncing from one problem to another. Through the course of this film, you hope that somehow things will finally work out for this sweet but ditsy lady.

"Sweet Charity" is a hard sell for me. This is because the musical is based on Fellini's film "Nights of Cabiria"--a technically well made but incredibly unpleasant film that I saw twice. Why twice? Because it is very, very highly touted as one of his best films but one that left me so depressed that I couldn't understand why anyone would want to actually watch it. Imagine--the film is about a sweet prostitute who is constantly being abused, disappointed and degraded. Not pleasant stuff, that's for sure.

It's also a hard-sell because it's a movie so deeply entrenched in the late 60s that it has not aged well. The best example is the bizarre dance numbers that occur when the Italian actor (a miscast Mexican-born Ricardo Montalban) takes her to a trendy club. The dance numbers look almost like a combination of Italian high fashion of the day which is performed by a bunch of Twiggy-like models and was designed by Andy Warhol and Richard Avedon!! It may have seemed really cool in the day, but now it just comes off as bizarre...very, very bizarre. And, very slow...as the dancers keep blank expressions while they move in a manner that requires the minimum of energy! It's just strange and goes on, seemingly, forever.

Now I did not thoroughly dislike the movie--but I did dislike it. MacLaine was cute in the lead (though, oddly, her singing sounded very tinny and canned--but she could sing well so I don't blame her for this). And, if you love modern dance, then you'll most likely like the film--it just wasn't my taste but I could respect the effort it took to make this. Overall, not a particularly enjoyable film...at least for me.

Sweet Charity from a personal point of view wasn't a great film as such. The pace does ramble at times, John McMartin has moments where he is amusing but on the most part he's rather bland and the non-musical scenes are dull and gaudy. However it is a good film, a promising start in film for Bob Fosse and it didn't deserve to bomb the way it did. Some of the non-musical scenes do show signs of directorial inexperience, but in the musical numbers his direction does come to life and even very early on we see signs of his distinctive style. Even better is his choreography, it is full of energy and fun and was quite daring for its time, at its absolute best in There's Got to be Something Better Than This. The songs are justifiably famous, Hey Big Spender and Rhythm of Life are the biggest hits and are still iconic. If They Could See Me Now is also very well done. The production values are very colourful and vibrant too. The writing on the most part is sharp and sophisticated, if not quite as much as the stage show, while the somewhat bittersweet ending is very moving. The performances are fine. Shirley MacLaine gives a charming and energetic lead performance, allowing us to root for her character Charity later on by bringing some much needed subtlety in the latter parts of the film. Riccardo Montalban is very funny even when chewing the scenery, Paula Kelly and underseen Chita Rivera are electrifying and Sammy Davis Jnr absolutely mesmorises in the Rhythm of Life number. All in all, a good film that was undeserving of its bomb status but Bob Fosse did go on to better things. 7/10 Bethany Cox