General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Pal Joey

Pal Joey is a 1957 American musical comedy film directed by George Sidney for Columbia Pictures, starring Frank Sinatra, Rita Hayworth, and Kim Novak. Sinatra plays Joey Evans, a charming nightclub singer who romances the wealthy widow Vera Simpson (Hayworth) into financing his own nightclub, while falling for the chorus girl Linda English (Novak). The film is loosely adapted from the 1940 Broadway musical by Richard Rodgers (music), Lorenz Hart (lyrics), and John O'Hara (book), which itself drew on O'Hara's stories in The New Yorker, written as letters signed "Your Pal Joey" by a mythical dancer.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Release	New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles premieres on October 25, 1957; distributed by Columbia Pictures¹
Director / producer	George Sidney; produced by Fred Kohlmar for Essex-George Sidney Productions¹
Cast	Rita Hayworth (Vera Simpson), Frank Sinatra (Joey Evans), Kim Novak (Linda English)¹
Running time	112 or 117 minutes, in Technicolor at 1.85:1¹
Source	Musical play Pal Joey (New York, December 25, 1940), book by John O'Hara, music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart¹
Awards	Four Academy Award nominations (art direction, costume design, film editing, sound recording); Sinatra won the Golden Globe for Best Actor, Musical or Comedy³
Reception	A box office success ranked among the highest-earning films of 1957; Sinatra's performance won him a Golden Globe⁴

Spoilers

Plot

Joey Evans arrives in San Francisco after being thrown out of town for romancing the mayor's underage daughter. He lands a job at the Barbary Coast Club in North Beach, where he meets Linda English, a chorus girl who aspires to be a singer. At a charity event he embarrasses the wealthy widow Vera Simpson by recognizing her as a former stripper and proposing she perform one of her old routines. Vera is nonetheless intrigued by Joey's insolence, and after he reveals his ambition to run his own club, she agrees to bankroll "Chez Joey" on Nob Hill.¹

When Joey promotes Linda to featured singer, Vera orders him to fire her, insisting that she "owns him." Joey declares that "no one owns Joey but Joey" and, for the first time in his life, gives up his dream to preserve his integrity. Vera closes the club, but in the ending Linda and Snuffy, the small dog Joey bought, drive up with Vera as Joey walks out, and the two leave together to bill their new act as Joey and Linda Evans.¹

Origins and long development

O'Hara's material began as stories in The New Yorker, portions of which were collected as a 1940 novel. The musical opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Christmas Day, 1940, staged by George Abbott, and ran there and at two other Broadway houses until November 29, 1941; Gene Kelly starred as Joey. According to a May 1957 Los Angeles Times news item, Columbia purchased the screen rights to the O'Hara, Hart, and Rodgers play in 1941. In 1951 Jerry Bresler was assigned to produce a film that would star Kelly in the role he originated, but Kelly's studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, demanded an exorbitant fee for the loan-out and the project was shelved. Seventeen years after the Broadway opening, the combined talents of Hayworth, Sinatra, and newcomer Novak brought the film to the screen.¹^•²^•⁵

Rodgers & Hammerstein's account notes that other leading men, including Kelly, Marlon Brando, Kirk Douglas, and Jack Lemmon, had been considered for the title role, and that Sinatra was a natural fit: he had already released hit recordings of several Rodgers & Hart and Rodgers & Hammerstein songs, including songs from Pal Joey itself.⁴

Censorship and changes from the stage show

The project was postponed for years in part because of censorship problems in adapting the play. The Production Code office demanded numerous changes, removing explicit sexual situations.¹^•⁶

Three suggestive songs, "In Our Little Den of Iniquity," "Happy Hunting Horn," and "Take Him (But Don't Ever Take Him to Heart)," were eliminated from the film.
Three others with racy lyrics, "You Mustn't Kick It Around," "Plant You Now, Dig You Later," and "Do It the Hard Way," are heard as instrumentals only.
A January 1957 Hollywood Reporter news item reported that some of the more suggestive lyrics from the stage production were toned down.¹

Two structural changes distinguish the film from the Broadway original: Joey was changed from a dancer to a singer, and the setting was moved from Chicago to San Francisco.¹ The musicologist Julianne Lindberg, assistant professor of musicology at the University of Nevada, Reno, situates the film in postwar America, where traditional forms of gender and domesticity were being challenged: in the film Joey is a singer rather than a dancer, vulnerable rather than a heel, and he gets the girl in the end.⁷

Music

The film keeps much of the show's original score while adding Rodgers and Hart songs from their other 1930s musicals: "There's a Small Hotel" from On Your Toes (1936), "The Lady Is a Tramp" and "My Funny Valentine" from Babes in Arms (1937), and "I Didn't Know What Time It Was" from Too Many Girls (1939).⁴^•¹ The stage songs used in the film also include "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered," "Zip," and "I Could Write a Book."¹

Sinatra sang all of Joey's songs, but the female leads were dubbed: Jo Ann Greer sang for Rita Hayworth and Trudi Erwin for Kim Novak.⁴^•¹ Morris Stoloff served as musical supervisor and conductor, with Nelson Riddle and George Duning handling arrangements and adaptation, and Hermes Pan choreographed.¹ The soundtrack album, debuting November 11, 1957, sent "The Lady Is a Tramp" to number 2.⁴

Reception and awards

The film opened on October 25, 1957 and became a box office success, later ranked among the highest-earning films of 1957.⁴ The New York Times wrote that Sinatra "added luster to these indestructible standards" in songs such as "The Lady Is a Tramp" and "Small Hotel."⁴ Although it was a large commercial success, the film was Rita Hayworth's last picture for Columbia.²

At the 1958 Academy Awards the film received four nominations: Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (Walter Holscher, William Kiernan, Louis Diage), Best Costume Design (Jean Louis), Best Film Editing (Viola Lawrence and Jerome Thoms), and Best Sound Recording (John P. Livadary). Sinatra won the Golden Globe for Best Actor, Comedy or Musical, and the film was nominated for Best Motion Picture, Comedy or Musical. At the Laurel Awards it won Top Musical and Top Male Musical Performance for Sinatra.³ The American Film Institute later nominated "My Funny Valentine" for its 2004 list of greatest songs and the film for its 2006 list of greatest movie musicals.³

The musical on stage

The stage Pal Joey ran on Broadway from December 25, 1940 to November 29, 1941, moving among the Ethel Barrymore, Shubert, and St. James theaters, with a touring production from December 1941 to February 1942. New York revivals followed at the Broadhurst Theatre (1952–1953), City Center (1963), Circle in the Square (1976), and Studio 54 (2008 to March 1, 2009), the last with a new book by Richard Greenberg.⁵^•⁸ The 1952 revival, which a 1950 studio cast recording had helped pave the way for, was the production Lorenz Hart, who died in 1943, did not live to see; it featured Vivienne Segal as Vera Simpson and Gene Kelly as Joey.⁹ A noted departure from musical comedy convention, the show has been described as one of the first in which the hero was a less than heroic figure.¹⁰

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Musical and music films (individual works) › Musical films of the 1930s to 1960s

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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