Movies - Kiss Me, Kate

Home > Listing Index > Movies > Kiss Me, Kate

	Movies - Kiss Me, Kate

Kiss Me, Kate is a stage musical by Samuel and Bella Spewack (book) and Cole Porter (music and lyrics) that ran for 1,077 performances and was first performed in New York on December 30, 1948. It was made into a popular 1953 MGM musical film (see below). It is roughly based on William Shakespeare's play The Taming of the Shrew, where the main characters are actors in a stage production of that play — the show within a show oeuvre.

Kiss Me, Kate was a comeback and a personal triumph for Cole Porter. After several successful musicals in the 1930s, notably Anything Goes, Du Barry Was a Lady, and Panama Hattie
, he experienced a terrible accident in 1937 which left him in continuous pain. Following the accident he continued to write songs and musicals but with limited success, and some thought he was past his prime. Kiss Me, Kate was a response to Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!, and other integrated musicals, and was in fact his biggest hit, receiving five Tony awards in 1949 (and again in its revival in 2000), and the only Cole Porter musical to have more than 1,000 performances on Broadway.

Synopsis

Kiss Me Kate concerns the two leading protagonists, Fred Grahame and Lilli Vannessi, who are a divorced couple, performing in Kiss Me Kate, a show within a show, based on The Taming of the Shrew. The pair begin to fight when Lilli discovers Fred's romance with the show's ingenue, Lois Lane. She threatens to leave, but is forced to stay by two gangsters, who are chasing up a debt, wrongly attributed to Fred by Lois's boyfriend, Bill Calhoun. As the show continues, Fred and Lilli realise that they are still in love with each other.

With a script by Sam and Bella Spewack, it is a very clever, witty show.

Kiss Me Kate. MGM Musical Film

It was made into a film musical in 1953 by MGM, starring Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson (as a divorced couple), Ann Miller and Tommy Rall (as a courting couple / specialty dancers), Keenan Wynn, and James Whitmore (as gangsters). Also featuring Bob Fosse, Carol Haney, Bobby Van and Jeanne Coyne as specialty dancers. It was filmed in 3-D using the most advanced methods of that technique, then available. Devotees of the stereoscopic 3-D medium usually cite this film as one of the best examples of a Hollywood release in polarized 3D.

Musical numbers

#"Another Op'nin', Another Show" (music only - no lyrics - in the film) #"Why Can't You Behave?" #"Wunderbar" #"So In Love" #"We Open in Venice" #"Tom, Dick, or Harry" #"I've Come to Wive It Wealthily in Padua" #"I Hate Men" #"Were Thine That Special Face" #"Cantiamo D'Amore (We Sing of Love)" #"Kiss Me, Kate" #"Too Darn Hot" #"Where Is the Life That Late I Led?" #"From This Moment On" #"Always True to You in My Fashion" #"Bianca" #"So In Love" - Reprise #"Brush Up Your Shakespeare" #"I Am Ashamed That Women Are So Simple" #"Kiss Me, Kate" - Reprise

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Kiss Me, Kate ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Kiss Me, Kate; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Searches on eBay