Red Garters

a pure joy!
Strikingly-filmed musical western delight with Rosemary Clooney, RED GARTERS makes it's DVD debut from Paramount with a fine transfer which does full justice to the film's bold Technicolor palette. Clooney plays Calaveras Kate (perhaps a sly dig at Calamity Jane), a saloon singer who's in love with the local golden boy Jason Carberry (Jack Carson). Though when she claps eyes on handsome cowboy Reb Randall (Guy Mitchell) she sees the perfect way of getting Jason jealous...and down the aisle! Some great Jay Livingston-Ray Evans tunes including "This Is Greater Than I Thought", "Red Garters" and "Meet a Happy Guy". Designed in avant-garde style by Hal Pereira and Roland Anderson, the striking visual look of the film is highlighted by a yellow sky backdrop and fanciful theatre-style set pieces.

Four years earlier, Clooney had been paired with up-and-comer Mitchell on a range of CALL ME MADAM cover singles for Columbia. They had a remarkable chemistry and continued their...

Outrageous!
"Red Garters" was so ahead of its time that they had to insert a title at the beginning that tried to point out that it was a satire! And not only a satire, but a complete re-thinking of how a movie was to look.

First, the sets were skeletal cutouts against primary colors (red, yellow, blue, purple). If you look and care, the effect came from colored sawdust (?) and a cyclorama lighted in the same color. Imagine a yellow world like this with black cut-out trees, a cowboy hero in pale buckskin riding a palamino pony, singing and riding into a town of white frame-only buildings, getting sent to a barbecue celebrating the death of notorious gun-slinger who turns out to be the cowboy's brother!

Most viewers would have run out by now. But if you sit and watch, one of the most fascinating and fun Hollywood musicals will play out before you.

While its always about the sets, the style of "Red Garters" is brilliantly carried out by the cast. The actors play it for...

Greatest parody of a western musical ever made!
When Red Garters was released in Europe in the mid 1950s, it created a sensation amongst European and English performing artists! The stagey sets, the great singing, the acting done straight, produced a humor not seen before on the screen. It was especially notable when you consider the flood of dead-serious westerns streaming out of Hollywood at that time. "It's the Code of the West!" became a byword for a time. When I returned to America I couldn't believe no one had paid admission to see it and that the critics had panned it.

Click to Editorial Reviews