Anything Goes

Probably this version of Anything Goes would be far better remembered if it had been the actual Broadway show done with the whole score. As it is to fit the frame of the hour long Colgate Comedy Hour with commercials the script for the show becomes completely incoherent. And I do wonder how Cole Porter must have taken one of his biggest Broadway hits with commercials for the sponsor.

But the music which was taken from many Porter shows is what you want to hear and stars Ethel Merman, Frank Sinatra, and Bert Lahr deliver it with gusto. Saying that about Ethel Merman is almost an oxymoron, when did that woman ever do anything subtly? Songs that were actually in Anything Goes that made it to this production are You're The Top, Blow Gabriel Blow, All Through The Night, and of course the title song. Other Porter productions supply the rest, in fact there are so many numbers they crowd out a semblance of a story.

As it was live television all we see his a photographed stage play, but the songs and the performers are immortal.