The premise: Hollywood circa the 1950's divides its musical women into two categories, nice and naughty-but-nice. Nice would be the girl-next-door and Naughty, the prostitute-with-the-heart-of-gold. Since really the only difference is that one puts out and one doesn't, and since they never show anything anyway, both types can be played by, say, Doris Day. Taking Hollywood's cue, Naughty But Nice unites 16 femme vocal numbers for some not-so-naughty sex. Granted, it's not a bad idea, but when "bad" means "good," you wind up with gals like Rosemary Clooney and Janis Paige getting hot and steamy over stuff like ladies' underthings. (Rosemary: "Red garters on a dancing girl, now that's what I call art!" Janis: "Though a gal may have been born a prude she can quite reverse her attitude if she's wearing silk and satin"*) Meanwhile, Marilyn Monroe, Mitzi Gaynor, Lena Horne et al sing and dance the missionary position and it becomes clear that "nice" precludes any sort of challenge to gender role norms. Duh. Like dancing darkies, the happy hookers celebrate the good life so all the gents can feel good about themselves.
A couple songs aren't quite so generous to the status quo. Ann Miller's "I'll Be Hard to Handle" (the only lyric by a woman) disses marriage and, in "Ten Cents A Dance," Doris Day, portraying the real-life of the real-dead Ruth Etting, laments a situation in which she's forced to sell herself. To keep things in proper perspective, the liner notes (by Will Friedman) explain Etting's story: "The Gimp is a ruthless and repulsive gangster who forces himself on Etting, but Etting is a tease and, ultimately, a whore, who uses the Gimp even more cruelly than he uses her. He only molests her body, whereas she puts his very being through the wringer."
I'm assuming, of course, that leaving open the possibility for feminist readings of these songs is a good thing; what makes Naughty But Nice such a drag is its unchallenging politics, inseparable from musical/lyrical arrangements. To someone who accepts gender norms as a given in pop vocal music, this may seem like a crazy argument. But subversive sentiments are more common in musicals than you might think, particularly on stage (which, as folks like Sophie Tucker have pointed out, was much less restrictive than film). Songs like "100 Ways to Lose a Man" (Rosalind Russell in Wonderful Town), "Men" (Susan Johnson in Whoop-Up, and "Perfect Relationship" (Judy Holliday in Bells Are Ringing) become hard-hitting critiques once salvaged from narrative context (where the guy gets the gal and everything ends in bliss). It figures this compilation would pass over "I Hate Men" from Kiss Me Kate for the comparatively tame "I'm Always True To You Darling (in my Fashion)." Such a song, left unresolved, would be too unsettling, i.e. not naughty-but-nice.
The compilation does make one important point. It reminds us that the idea of feminine-sexuality-as-liberating-force is hardly a new one. Yet women comfortable with their own aggressive sexuality still manage to be an oddity. The "I'm in control" credo popularized by Mae West in the 1920s survives to this day in Madonna "I decide who wears the dog collar" Ciconne and Liz "Blow Job Queen" Phair. In other words, a credo over 70 years old still seems kinda radical. Now that's naughty. (Carrie McLaren)
* Note: Silk and satin increase risk of yeast infection.
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