Kiss Me Kate

Two divorced actors face each other again in a musical version of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. The fight on stage spills backstage and the backstage fight goes back on stage. Two gangsters chasing a gambling debt wander into it. George Sidney directed. Kathryn Grayson and Howard Keel star, songs by Cole Porter. This was MGM's second 3-D attempt. The studio's head of production considered 3-D a passing freak, but executives who had sunk half a million dollars into buying the glasses pushed for it, so the film was shot both in 3-D and flat. Most theatres played the flat print. Bob Fosse choreographed for the screen here for the first time, in a passage lasting forty-eight seconds. His dance with Carol Haney is treated as the seed of everything that followed. Ann Miller's tap numbers carry the picture. Who it is for: lovers of classic MGM musicals and Cole Porter. Who it is not for: anyone unable to stomach the story's sexual politics, inherited whole from the source.