So This Is Paris

Continuing our long-running series of obscure and semi-obscure musicals, here is the soundtrack from the 1955 sailors-on-leave epic So This Is Paris.

Musicals focusing on the antics of American military personnel at their leisure date back at least to the 1944 opening of On the Town on Broadway. I am not even sure this was the first musical that set sailors loose in Paris to pursue love and adventure. So there is nothing new here in that regard.

But we're concerned with the soundtrack and it is pleasant, if (like the story) hardly original. The songs are the handiwork of Phil Moody and Pony Sherrell.

A few words about this relatively unfamiliar team might be helpful. Phil Moody was a British-born composer and Doris (Pony) Sherrell was a lyricist and singer. They met when Moody became the music director for the act that Pony formed with her sister Grace. Phil and Grace married while Pony, who was then married to singer Gene ("My Blue Heaven") Austin, became Phil's musical partner.

In the mid-50s, Moody and Sherrell were assigned to a few low-powered musicals besides this one - including Three Nuts in Search of a Bolt and, in the 60s, The Second Greatest Sex. They also did songs for Paris Follies of 1956 and Fresh from Paris (I am detecting a theme here). Their two songs from those latter films were recorded by Margaret Whiting and can be found here on this blog. (Caveat: I called "All There Is and Then Some" an awful song when I posted that collection.)

Unusually, So This Is Paris starred Tony Curtis in a singing role. Of course I can't be sure that Curtis isn't dubbed; if so, the vocal double isn't that great a singer. Otherwise, we have Gloria De Haven, who can sing (she was a band vocalist), and Gene Nelson, who also can sing, although he was primarily known as a dancer.

The soundtrack was issued as a 10-inch LP and a double EP. The cover of my copy of the EP set is very worn but the records are in good shape, so the sound is pleasing.