Silk Stockings

Silk Stockings is a 1957 American musical comedy film directed by Rouben Mamoulian and produced by Arthur Freed for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, starring Fred Astaire as American film producer Steve Canfield and Cyd Charisse as the Soviet commissar Ninotchka Yoschenko. It is a musical remake of the 1939 Ernst Lubitsch comedy Ninotchka, which starred Greta Garbo, and it adapts the 1955 Broadway musical of the same name with songs by Cole Porter.^{1 • 2}

From Ninotchka to Broadway to Hollywood

The chain of adaptations runs from Melchior Lengyel's story Ninotchka, first filmed in 1939 by Ernst Lubitsch with Greta Garbo, to the 1955 stage musical, to the 1957 film.¹ Producers Cy Feuer and Ernest Martin, coming off Guys and Dolls, saw that the Lubitsch film was source material that, in one account's phrase, practically cried out for song.⁷ George S. Kaufman and his wife Leueen MacGrath wrote the book, but the producers balked at the romantic aspect of their adaptation and brought in Abe Burrows to rewrite it on the road; it remains the only time in his career that Kaufman was fired from a production.⁸ The show opened at the Imperial Theatre on February 24, 1955, ran 478 performances, and toured from April 23 to August 4, 1956.^{3 • 9} On Broadway the Garbo role was played by Hildegarde Neff and the male lead by Don Ameche.¹⁰

The film made several changes. The character of Count Leon, the Parisian charmer of the 1939 film, was dropped, and the love interest became the American producer.² Mamoulian, remaining faithful to the stage version, emphasized the love story, which he called "the main theme of our picture," and gave greater importance to the dancing than to the action, saying he had "two of the best dancers in the world."¹¹ The film also feminized the heroine relative to Kaufman's book.¹²

Production and music

Filming ran from early November 1956 to late January 1957, with dance rehearsals beginning September 18, 1956.^{1 • 13} Choreography was by Hermes Pan and Eugene Loring, cinematography by Robert Bronner, editing by Harold F. Kress, and costumes by Helen Rose.^{1 • 13} The film was shot in CinemaScope and Metrocolor with stereophonic sound.²

Cole Porter's score includes "Too Bad," "Paris Loves Lovers," "Stereophonic Sound," "It's a Chemical Reaction, That's All," "All of You," "Satin and Silk," "Silk Stockings," "Without Love," "Fated to Be Mated," "Josephine," "Siberia," "Red Blues," and "Ritz Roll and Rock."¹ Porter wrote "Fated to Be Mated" and "Ritz Roll and Rock" new for the film; the movie retained all but two of the Broadway songs.^{1 • 14} "All of You" has become a standard.¹⁴ "Stereophonic Sound," sung by Astaire and Paige, is a witty dig at widescreen movies and Hollywood excess, mocking the fashion for "Glorious Technicolor, breathtaking Cinemascope, and Stereophonic sound" even though the film itself was presented in exactly those formats.^{15 • 16} As was common in 1950s film adaptations, some racy stage lyrics were laundered: a "mouth," rather than a "bosom," is five feet wide in the song.¹² Charisse's singing was dubbed by Carol Richards.¹⁴

A film of "lasts"

Silk Stockings is known more for its "lasts" than its "firsts." It was the last movie Fred Astaire made at MGM and the last time he appeared with Cyd Charisse, after Ziegfeld Follies (1946) and The Band Wagon (1953); the last film directed by Rouben Mamoulian; and the last MGM musical made entirely at Culver City in the 1950s, the period generally acknowledged as the genre's golden age.² Critics have described it as effectively marking Astaire's retirement from dancing, his final significant on-screen hoofing before Finian's Rainbow.^{4 • 19} In "The Ritz Roll and Rock," a top hat, white tie, and cane solo, Astaire symbolically smashes his top hat, one of his trademarks, signaling the retirement from movie musicals he announced after the film's release.¹³

The film also contained a first for Arthur Freed: it launched his independent production unit at the studio, with Freed thereafter holding a 25 percent profit participation deal.²

Reception

The film opened at Radio City Music Hall in mid-summer 1957, played there for two months before opening nationally, and became a hit with both older and teenage audiences, grossing nearly $4 million domestically against a $1.9 million production cost.² Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote that "there should be legislation requiring that Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse appear together in a musical picture at least once every two years."² A contemporary New Yorker review found the plot tired but the Porter score lively and the dialogue consistently funny.¹⁷

Later critical opinion has been divided along a familiar line. Time Out calls the film a dazzling musical version of Ninotchka with both stars at the top of their dancing form, while other critics hold that it suffers in any comparison with its nearly flawless predecessor.^{15 • 18} The Toronto Film Society traces the perceived inferiority to two factors: musical remakes almost always begin from behind because they adapt a solid success, and Lubitsch's 1930s comedies represent a high point of screen comedy.¹² The stage show itself has had no Broadway or West End revival, perhaps because its Cold War romance is now thought dated.¹⁴

References

1. Silk Stockings (1957), AFI Catalog of Feature Films
2. Mel Neuhaus, "Silk Stockings," Turner Classic Movies article
3. Silk Stockings, IBDB (Internet Broadway Database)
4. Silk Stockings, Rotten Tomatoes
5. Silk Stockings, Cornell Cinema
6. The Postwar Hollywood Musical (academic text)
7. Goodspeed Musicals program notes on Silk Stockings
8. Silk Stockings (1955), George S. Kaufman official site
9. Silk Stockings national tour, IBDB
10. Silk Stockings: Original Broadway Cast 1955, Masterworks Broadway
11. Tom Milne, Rouben Mamoulian criticism, eNotes
12. Ninotchka (1939) and Silk Stockings (1957), Toronto Film Society film notes
13. Silk Stockings Blu-ray review, Le Cinema Paradiso
14. Robert Deutsch, Silk Stockings Blu-ray review, Sound & Vision
15. Silk Stockings film review, Time Out
16. Thomas Leitch, adaptation studies (Loc e-book)
17. John McCarten, "Perdurable," The New Yorker, July 27, 1957
18. Jesse Mitchell, Silk Stockings review, Letterboxd
19. Astaire Looks to the Rainbow Com 329699, playbill.com

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 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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