Showmanship, frequently associated with making a dubious product look good to the public, is rarely employed in lending more gilt to an already gilt-edged property. But in making a movie out of Guys and Dolls, the Broadway musical classic that ran two and a half years in New York, old Hollywood Showman Sam Goldwyn has left no stunt unturned. First he paid its producers and authors a whopping million (plus 10% of the world gross) for the rowdy extravaganza. Then, as the oddly assorted rough diamonds that Damon Runyon created, he hired the expensive quartet of stars seen chinning at each other in the drugstore phone booths below. Finally he spent another fortune rounding up an expert directing, designing, composing and choreographic staff and revived the old Goldwyn reputation for pretty show girls.
All the effort and money-$5.5 million out of Sam Goldwyn's own pocket since he never has taken outside financial backing for any of his films-has been well spent. Goldwyn's movie Guys and Dolls, like its smash-hit stage predecessor, is a stylish, ear-filling movie with some notable surprises in it. Fast-moving and often exciting, it should pay off its eminent backer quite handsomely-in the words of the late Damon Runyon himself, a good deal more than somewhat.
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