jwb001 Cast: My favorite--Gladys Hotchkiss played by Carol Haney. A fine actress with an interesting voice...and she's an excellent dancer. Otherwise, a little overacting by some of the other characters (Vernon Hines and Sid Sorokin, come to mind).Songs: Catchy tunes including "There Once Was A Man (I Love You More)". Famous songs such as "Hernando's Hideaway". Doris Day has an excellent voice; she hits high, loud parts perfectly. The rest of the songs are standard for musicals of that era.Dance Numbers: A couple of standouts--"Once-A-Year Day!" and "Steam Heat". The latter has an eerie resemblance to Michael Jackson signature moves and clothing.Dialog: Quite unremarkable...as evidenced by the fact that 2,311 people have rated this film on IMDb but the "Quotes" page contains only two entries.Scenery: Again, a couple of excellent sets at the factory and the park. Otherwise, standard for musicals of this era.Problems: I thought that Babe Williams and Sid Sorokin fell in love way, way too quickly.

Justin1983 While I did not hate or greatly dislike The Pajama Game, watching the movie did feel to me like a tedious chore. Quite simply, I was not entertained (a simple and primary criteria of mine for any musical I watch... I don't have to be entertained by an art-house movie, but I better be by a musical), nor did I feel as though it was a particularly well-made film. I have heard several people (who are fans of musicals) praise The Pajama Game, which is why I was somewhat surprised by the mediocre nature of it. Maybe that is just the problem, as you might very well have to be an enthusiastic and die-hard fan of musicals to be able to overlook the unremarkable quality of The Pajama Game.I am indifferent when it comes to the genera of musicals, I don't have a bias in their favor (like I do for say film-noir) or against their favor (like I do for say fantasy films). But if I am to enjoy a musical, I notice that more often than not I desire (among a dozen other things) that the film have a solid script. A solid script that contains an interesting story, is told in an entertaining way, includes well-written dialogue, and contains legitimate substance (as opposed to being just a depthless vehicle for song and dance)--and while this is not dogma, it sure helps me feel like I'm still watching a film, and just not people singing and dancing for the sake of singing and dancing.The Pajama Game's dialogue is unmemorable, the story is uninteresting (that goes for the plight of the pajama factory workers for their potential raise, and the budding romance between the films main characters), and what shallow story there is is told in a way completely devoid of entertainment. But, to me, the biggest crime of all is that the script for The Pajama Game really is a shallow vehicle of a script of scenes strung together merely for song and dance (and in my opinion, mostly mediocre song and dance that can not begin to compare to some other classic musicals).The cinematography certainly could have been better in The Pajama Game. Primary colors are the main choices in the color palette for the movie (after all, it is a movie that mainly takes place in a factory that makes brightly colored pajamas), but they are never used as richly as they are in other musicals such as Singin' In The Rain, Une Femme Est Une Femme, Parapluies De Cherbourg, or even The Wizard of Oz (which some people define as a musical, myself included as its songs progress the plot, but others merely consider Oz as a "classic family film"). In those movies the constantly present primary colors enthrall the viewer, and are photographed and lit in a manner that creates a bright and vibrant world that seems richer than the actual real world in some ways. In The Pajama Game the cinematographer failed to elicit any such enthrallment from the viewer. They are just colors—-nothing more, nothing less. And while it may seem like I am being nit-picky, if you are making a lighthearted and silly musical with primary colors as the main choices in your color palette, you should make those colors "pop".In The Pajama Game it would be very easy to accuse the actors of not acting as people, but of acting as "imitations of humans". Sure, it's not realistic for characters to break out into song and dance at the drop of a dime—-but the characters in a musical should at least feel realistic to the viewer at least in some manner. The majority of the characters in the movie have as much realistic believability as the characters that might populate a vintage Hannah-Barbera cartoon. Even Babe feels like an imitation of a spunky factory worker, and Sid the imitation of a stern "by-the-books" factory superintendent.As for the positive: the one thing I took interest in with The Pajama Game was the duet that Sid has with himself (by means of a tape recorder used for dictation in his office). To my memory I had not seen a musical where a character performs a duet with themselves until I saw this film.While a lot of people I know who have seen this film enjoy it, I would exert that I feel there are better musicals (such as the ones I referred to while discussing the cinematography of the film several paragraphs above) that you could better spend your film-watching time with.

Ephraim Gadsby Can Stanley Donan end a movie? Two classic movies he directed, "Charade' and "The Pajama Game" end so abruptly it's almost like he has them on a stopwatch and simply decides to cut them off with a cleaver.Otherwise, "The Pajama Game" is a dandy diversion. The Broadway hit hosts a handful of great songs ("Hey There", "I'm Not at all in Love", "There was a Man", "Steam Heat" and "Hernando's Hideaway" have all become standards). The movie might be a little too stagy. About half way through it opens up about at a picnic with the less famous, but energetic number "Once a Year Day" where choreographer Bob Fosse has his dancers in a park performing all sorts of tricks on what appears to be uneven ground. Otherwise, the movie is a little too aware of the proscenium. The pajama factory is far larger than it could have been on stage, but it looks like a set.The "Hernando's Hideaway" number has STAGE is stamped all over it, but it's the most effective number in the movie.Many actors are recreating their Broadway characters. The big replacement is Doris Day, a proved movie performer who does well in a new role. The male lead, John Raitt, reprises his Broadway role. Male lead Raitt has a good voice and sings well in a duet with himself in "Hey There"; but he's so stiff he might have played the Commendatore in Mozart's Don Giovanni before he came to life. He desperately needs Day's inestimable charm to pull him through as well.The second leads, Eddie Foy Jr. as Vernon Hines and Carol Haney as Gladys Hotchkiss, are both pros able to translate their practiced Broadway performances to the screen with new energy. Their parts are truncated from Broadway, and this is a good thing: with their energy they'd have swamped Day and Raitt and it would have become the Gladys and Hinesy show. Although, from what I understand, the excisions mean that Hines comes off as unreasonably (maniacally, even) jealous of Gladys, if these two were allowed any more to do in this picture Day and Raitt might as well have stayed home and phoned in their lines.The plot – based on Richard Bissel's slight novel 7 ½ cents, about a labor dispute at a pajama factory, is of no interest. The workers themselves don't even seem to care about the story until it raises its head again as a convenience. The story is simply a clothesline to string up a collection of great songs.There's nothing here for anyone with a low threshold for musicals. This is no treatise on arbitration. It's a fun romp through romances in a pajama factory with lots of singin' and dancin' and knife throwin'.

MARIO GAUCI I'm not a big fan of vintage Hollywood musicals any more and can only return, even if with trepidation, to just a handful of classic titles. For that reason, I haven't watched one in ages…but this film had always been a highly-touted example of the genre – being also more adult than usual, with a social theme involving an impending factory strike – so, I decided to give it a go. That said, my adjustment to the schmaltzy style which so characterizes musicals of this era wasn't immediate...However, there's no denying that the songs by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross are splendid – even if I preferred the more intimate numbers; likewise, Bob Fosse's choreography felt impersonal for the most part (though I was, admittedly, conditioned by the fact that I'd seen the musicals he later directed – which exhibited a definite, and unique, stylization to the dance steps – prior to this one!). Anyway, the best musical sequences are: Doris Day's "I'm Not At All In Love", John Raitt's melancholy "Hey There" (later reprised by Day), "Steam Heat" (a recognizably Fosse number highlighting Carol Haney) and the stylish "Hernando's Hideaway" (though, in retrospect, it seemed silly to me that the latter is ostensibly a "secluded place" and yet all the factory-workers seem to hang out there!).The cast, of course, is headed by Day (ideally cast here as the head of the factory's "Grievance Committee", with the film itself generally considered as her best); many of her fellow performers had originated their characters during the show's Broadway run – including leading man John Raitt (rather stolid in his only major film role), Eddie Foy Jr. (as the burly manager at the factory whose fits of jealousy and penchant for throwing knives could turn dangerous when he's had one drink too many!) and Carol Haney (as the latter's fiancé and the factory-boss' secretary in what proved to be her last film, as she died quite young).Ultimately, the film isn't up to Donen's best (and better-known) musicals – such as ON THE TOWN (1949), SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (1952) and SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS (1954) – nor do I see myself watching it as frequently as his two delightful imitation-Hitchcock comedy-thrillers, namely CHARADE (1963) and ARABAESQUE (1966). Still, even if I wasn't quite as enthused with the film as I'd hoped, I'd still like to catch the same team's follow-up musical – DAMN YANKEES (1958), if anything for its Faustian overtones.