Review of Three for the Show

I didn't think this much maligned "minor" musical was all that bad. In addition to the story about Betty currently having 2 husbands, a number of imaginative musicals, and stand alone singing are featured. This is a musical remake of the 1940 B&W comedy "Too Many Husbands", which suffers from a lack of musicals to break up the constant bickering between the 2 husbands of Jean Arthur, which became tedious after a while.........This(1955) was the last year of many musicals produced by Hollywood. It was also the last year for Betty and Marge Champion to be in a film, and the last for Gover Champion to be in films until a few in the '60s. In contrast, this was only the 3rd film for the 4th star: Jack Lemmon, who would go on to be in many more, mostly non-musicals..........Gover and Marge were a good athletic dance team, included in the occasional musical, either as a specialty act, or as major characters in the screen play.........Reviewer David-240 pointed out that , in her musical numbers, Betty usually more resembled Marylin Monroe's more sexy style of singing and body movements. The reviewer thought it sad that Betty thought she had to imitate the then popular style of musical comedy divas. However, in the Trivia section at this site, it states that the choreographer, Jack Cole, had worked with Marylin in several pictures, and wanted to turn Betty into another MM. I'd say Betty did a pretty good job for a beginner...........In the screenplay, Betty has to decide whether her first husband, played by Jack Lemmon, and thought dead until recently, or his, too soon, replacement, played by Gover Champion, was to be her husband of the future. She took her time deciding, enjoying the extra attention showered on her by the 2 men. In fact, she remarked that she would like even more husbands. In her daydream, she is a Middle East queen, and has maybe 20 men who stay in individual cages, until she beckons them: an imaginative musical production, singing "You Gotta Stay Down".........A bit later, Marge has quite a long daydream, in which she apparently is a princess, wearing a tiara, interacting with a bunch of men, often dressed in formal Georgian style, and eventually forced to fight with a rival princess. Quite imaginative! In her real world, she would be happy with the husband Betty discards in the film. See it at YouTube.