Sister Sister

Ruth McKenney, a journalist from Columbus, Ohio, moved to New York City with her sister Eileen in the 1930s.  They paid $45 dollars a month for a rundown basement apartment in Greenwich Village.  She wrote a series of stories about herself and her sister which were published in The New Yorker and later collected in book form, but that was just the beginning.  Joseph A. Fields and Jerome Chodorov adapted the book for the stage, setting the action in the apartment, and the play, directed by George S. Kaufman, was a huge Broadway hit in the 40s. (Tragically, Eileen and her husband, novelist Nathanael West, died in a car crash four days before the played opened.) It was the kind of middlebrow comedy that Broadway loved back then, but has since mostly left the stage and moved into television.

The McKenney sisters' tale (changed to Ruth and Eileen Sherwood) is best known to us today as the basis for the musical Wonderful Town, a Broadway hit in 1953, book by Fields and Chodorov, music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green.  However, there are two films made from the play entitled My Sister Eileen that have nothing to do with Wonderful Town, and by chance I saw them both last week.

First, there's the 1942 adaptation of the play--in fact, it was released when the show was still running--starring Rosalind Russell as Ruth and Janet Blair as Eileen.  It starts in Columbus and spends some time on the streets of New York, but is never too far from its stage origins, with most of the film set in the apartment, where a lot of characters just happen to be running in and out.

The film is a breezy comedy that doesn't hit the heights of the kind of screwball stuff that Russell was so good at.  If it has a problem, it's probably Janet Blair. She's a fresh-faced lass, but doesn't quite have the sexiness I think the role calls for.  The point of the play is that men are always falling for Eileen and this leads to all sorts of trouble. I'm not saying Blair isn't lovely, but Russell is arguably as goodlooking and certainly has more charisma. Of course, that's the movies--even that average-looking sister has to be attractive.  In the play, the relatively dumpy Shirley Booth played Ruth.

Russell would go on to star in Wonderful Town, which keeps most of the characters and incidents from the play and movie--and ads a classic score (allegedly written in six weeks).  Columbia, which made the first film, owned the rights to the story and sought to bring Wonderful Town to the screen.  But studio head Harry Cohn didn't like how much the score would cost, so decided to remake the film with original music by Leo Robin and Jule Styne.  The end result from 1955 is another charming work that deserves a look.

I remember catching a bit of it on TV years ago. At first I thought I'd stumbled onto a film version of Wonderful Town, so it freaked me out when they started performing numbers I'd never heard of.

This one stars Betty Garrett as Ruth and Janet Leigh as Eileen.  That's more like it.  Garrett is by no means ugly, but she's not Hollywood beautiful, while Leigh is a knockout. It also has a young Jack Lemmon on the verge of stardom as well as Bob Fosse as a young swain.  Fosse did the choreography and already we can see the beginnings of the style that would make him one of Broadway's greatest directors of musicals.

Eileen was always supposed to be more naive than Ruth, but that difference isn't as strong in the 1942 version.  That probably has something to do with how women were portrayed on screen.  In the 30s and early 40s, even "dumb blondes" were fairly wised up.  By the 1950s, Hollywood liked them so innocent as to be almost stupid. It's the difference between Jean Harlow and Marilyn Monroe.

The story is also more innocent.  It was always a fairly innocent look at New York.  Originally set in the 30s, the girls have to withstand the occasional wolf, but for the most part the great big city's a wondrous toy.  By the 1950s version, set not only in Greenwich Village, but also Hollywood musical-land, everything is cute and sweet.  When Bob Fosse suggests Eileen is a bit "Bohemian," she takes it as a great insult.  And the wolves who chase Eileen are never going to do more than request a chaste kiss.

The script generally follows the original's plot, often quoting it verbatim (which itself was verbatim from the play), but it's more successful at getting out of the apartment.  I guess a musical is forced to open up if just for the dancing.  The tunes are serviceable, and would be a lot better if the memory of Bernstein's score weren't in our heads.  Probably the best number is a challenge dance where Fosse and Tommy Rall let 'er rip.  There's also a fun seduction number where Lemmon puts the moves on Garrett.  Of course, he's only joking, but that doesn't stop her from marching out in a huff.

Wonderful Town has them both beat, but since there's never been a movie version (though it has been revived on Broadway), these two films will have to do.  They might make for a fun double feature.