Girl Most Likely and Best Little Whore House

58 YEAR WAIT FOR “GIRL”

When I first saw “The Girl Most Likely” in 1957 at Spokane’s State Theater, who knew it would take 58 years before I would own a copy.  The DVD arrived this past week and it was worth the wait for Gower Champion’s choreography and Jane Powell vocals in RKO’s last movie at 790 Gower St.  

When I sat at the same picnic table with Jane and Louis Nye at NBC in 1963 I wisely didn’t butt in to compliment her on “Girl” but the water ballet, “Balboa,” is super.  (Jane must have been rehearsing a Vegas act.)

Now I am starting a campaign to get Universal to release on DVD “The Second Greatest Sex,” a western musical with George Nader, Jeanne Craine and Mamie VanDoren. I saw that at the Riverside in Spokane.  It has a good cast.

Elsewhere … the campy Mexican horror movies, “Brainiac” and “The Vampire’s Coffin” on Netflix are worth a few laughs, particularly the monster with the paper mache mask in “Brainiac.”

PERFECT PRE SUPERBOWL SHOW

BLOOMINGTON —  “Too much cussin’,” opined the matron next to me Sunday at Artistry’s “Best Little Whore House in Texas” staging with a spirited group of “college football players” doing a Texas line dance that looked like clogging or tap dance.  Kudos to Tyrone Russell the lead college boy and director Joe Chvala for this memorable moment in an otherwise forgettable 1978 Tommy Tune Broadway musical.

Remiscent of Ted Cruz as a Texas windbag politician was Hazen Markoe as the mayor and Senator Wingwoah, also inspired by the cartoon character Foghorn Leghorn.

The Texas line dance was such a smash that it was reprised during the curtain call by much of the ensemble.  Those who left during the curtain call missed a lot of fun.

Kudos to Jim Pounds as Sheriff Ed Earl, a good ole boy no doubt inspired by Dukes of Hazard.  Anita Ruth on the honky tonk piano provided the right notes to make us believe we were at the notorious Chicken Ranch where Texans played when they weren’t at the local Baptist church.