Nothing has been
done, Crowther assures us, to alter the Broadway staging of this great musical,
and this is somehow important, let us say because we get to see the imaginative
surface only supplemented by sound stage and park, and because there is nothing
up the sleeve in Hollywood, no further considerations. That is important,
finally, because this particular work of genius is totally intricate and you
don’t want anything to louse up the works.
Supervisor (John
Raitt) and Grievance Committee (Doris Day) are in love, boss (Ralph Dunn) won’t
give raise amounting to seven-and-a-half cents. Supervisor gets secretary
(Carol Haney) drunk at Hernando’s Hideaway, obtains the key to the
ledger, finds the boss is charging for the raise but
not paying out, since six months ago. Compromise: no retroactive pay.
Employees at Sleeptite
plan whole lives upon that raise, “Steam Heat” is what you don’t
get without stoking the furnace. A once-in-a-lifetime
pact is formed at the company picnic, “my once-a-year-day.” The
time-study man (Eddie Foy, Jr.) is a knife-thrower jealously in love with the secretary, a slowdown and the rendezvous (“I know a
place”) drive him to distraction.
The Grievance
Committee’s father is a railroad man and stamp collector, they live by
the tracks. What makes the whole thing go and how to sleep tight are the great
themes of this all-around musical, which must be added to the audiovisual
curriculum of business schools right alongside Wise’s Executive Suite.