Meet Me in Las Vegas (1956)
Cyd Charisse headlines as an uptight ballerina in a Vegas show (??). Dan Dailey is an unlucky rancher who loves to gamble. A chance meeting in a casino leads them to discover they have an unbeatable winning streak as long as they hold hands. Having nothing else in common, can love grow when their luck eventually runs out?
The plot seems as unlikely as the pairing, until you learn that Cyd’s real-life husband was crooner Tony Martin, and perhaps the film was conceived as a vehicle for them both. Tony makes a brief cameo, along with a dozen other Vegas and Hollywood stars, but otherwise Meet Me in Las Vegas is a salami-thin slice from the waning days of MGM’s musicals. Rather than further the plot, most numbers appear as onstage acts, including a ravishing Lena Horne, and Cara Williams as a hot redheaded ringer sent by the casino manager to break up their winning streak.
Cyd is in beautiful form, but choreographer Hermes Pan prefers camp and costumes to actual stretching of talent. There is one ballet number that is a ridiculous Swan Lake meets volleyball in a neoclassical pavillion. The humor is pushed when jealous Cyd gets drunk and decides to out-perform a showgirl number. The wackiest number has four devil women gyrating behind a lounge singer who belts out “Hell hath no fury like a womaaaan scoooorned”. The finale puts Cyd back at the top of all MGM’s dancers in the classic Frankie and Johnny sung by Sammy Davis Jr.
