New Musical in Manhattan

Arms and the Girl (book by Herbert & Dorothy Fields & Rouben Mamoulian; music by Morton Gould; lyrics by Dorothy Fields; produced by the Theatre Guild in association with Anthony Brady Farrell) can thank its stars that they are its stars. For Broadway's Nanette Fabray and the Continent's Georges Guetary, together with Singing Comedienne Pearl Bailey, have the charm and personality to make Arms and the Girl a good deal better evening than it is a show.

There is nothing very awful about the show; it's just that there is nothing particularly good. Morton Gould's music falls agreeably enough on the ear, but little of it will ever haunt the memory. Michael Kidd's dances have a lively but not unfamiliar spin. Adapted from 1933's The Pursuit of Happiness, the book, for something with history as well as humor on its mind, does fairly well, but it is only a book, and a much too bulky one.

Set in Ridgefield, Conn, during the Revolutionary War, it is about a patriotic young lady with twin penchants for bundling and bungling. She bundles once for love and once for country; she bungles all the time, thinking she is Joan of Arc and every man in uniform a spy. With the story go some mild scenic effects and, in the last act, George Washington on a white charger.

With her looks, voice, sense of fun and a kind of invincible girlishness, Actress Fabray not only reflects what is bright in the heroine's role, but also slides over what might well be embarrassing. Greek-Parisian Actor Guetary, cast as a Hessian officer who joins the Americans and wins the girl, is in the approved style of European-operetta tenors, with both comic and romantic virtues and a good schmalzy voice.

The prime delight of the show is Pearl Bailey. As a runaway slave named Virginia in Virginia and Connecticut in Connecticut, she manages to be now all charm, now all perkiness, now all rhythm. She gives Arms and the Girl its one sock number when she sings There Must Be Something Better Than Love.

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