Instead, I'm going to take the opportunity to alienate more readers. And / or bring them down to my loser-level.
I got real tips' last night and watched Thoroughly Modern Millie. Alone. Wanna hear about it? OK!
I never had any interest in the movie or the play basically because I only knew that it involved a young girl in the '20s making her way through New York City in every possible jazzy way. And frankly, that did not interest me at all. It sounded like it could only appeal to musical theater majors and very old ladies. I mean, doesn't this scene from the show look absolutely miserable - like how you'd feel if you ate three boxes of peeps?
But then Netflix recommended the original movie (thanks, Netflix), and I read that the movie is actually about a white slavery plot. White slavery. A musical about white slavery with Julie Andrews, Mary Tyler Moore, and Carol Channing. Clearly, it was worth checking out.Luckily, I was drunk enough to enjoy how FUCKING CRAZY this movie was. It's pretty much the musical movie version of the All Saints video. Millie (Julie Andrews) and Miss Dorothy (Mary Tyler Moore) live in a single ladies' hotel run by a very white Beatrice Lillie who pretends to be Chinese despite her non-Asian surname. Mrs. Meers targets the lonely, orphaned, single girls, kidnaps them, and has her bumbling (of course) Chinese henchmen (who are not given names and are listed as "Asian #1" and "Asian #2" in the credits) (Pat Morita plays Asian #2, natch) cart them off to Chinatown in a laundry basket. What I don't understand is why no one notices that the girls disappear; we see newspaper headlines that reveal the shocking news of kidnapped girls sold into white slavery, but how do the newspapers know if NO ONE REALIZES THE GIRLS ARE EVEN MISSING? (Reason why I wish all musicals were made in 1967: #1.)
Meanwhile, Carol Channing shows up as Muzzy van Hossmere. Carol Channing gets shot out of a motherfucking canon while yelling out her catchphrase, "Raspberries!" (Reason why I wish all musicals were made in 1967: #2.)
To make a long story short, there's a lot of jazzin' and razzmatazzin' going on until FINALLY Mrs. Meers kidnaps Miss Dorothy and sells her to the evil Chinese. Then Millie & Co. go to Chinatown and save her by igniting a fireworks factory. It takes two hours and fifteen minutes for the movie to get to this sequence, by the way. AND THEN there's a finale, wherein Mrs. Meers tracks down the crew at Muzzy's mansion and has Asian #1 and Asian #2 engage in an acrobatic battle sequence (literally - there are trampolines involved) with the three ladies. (Reason why I wish all musicals were made in 1967: #3.) Eventually, the movie ends and Millie marries her true love and says, "I don't want to be a woman anymore. I want to be your wife." I'm paraphrasing, but you get the idea. (Reason why I wish all musicals were made in 1967: #4)
In conclusion, what I learned from this movie can be summed up with the following mathematical proof:
Julie Andrews + white slavery > Julie Andrews + Nazis.
6 comments:
Uh you were pretty sober when you put that in yesterday afternoon.
snap.
no one notices that the girls are missing because they are all orphans. if I remember correctly mrs meers says something like "said to be all alone in the world" and once she finds out they have no one looking out for them she decides to kidnap them for slave trade.
i love that film.
I'm glad TMM's finally getting the attention it deserves. When I was a kid it was my dream to dance in a freight elevator with Julie Andrews and Mary Tyler Moore. I've yet to make this a reality.
Meg:
My question is how the authorities (or newspapers) knew that the white slavery plot even existed if they didn't know the girls were missing!
So according to wikipedia "'White slavery' was the focus of a major moral panic in the United States at the end of the Progressive Era" - so of course the newspapers would be talking about it...I guess. But my theory is that Carol Channing told the newspapers because lets face it, she's Carol Channing. But I have been drinking a lot of sangria. But let's talk about James Fox. Why don't people make up dances anymore? We should all just start dancing choreographed dances.
And Harriet Harris was the best part of the broadway production. Okay Sutton Foster too. But I digress, let's talk more about James Fox.
Stumbled onto your post via Chris/Tales of a Post Grad.... Am a fellow JMUer and my best friend and I still run around saying "Rasberries!" and "My Peals Aren't Straight." Thank God for Julie Andrews and Carol Channing's wigs.
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