Given that my two very intelligent daughters in the past month have played...

...shall we say, rather dim-witted characters in retro-musicals (Frenchy, the "Beauty-School-Dropout," in Grease and Tracy's best friend Penny in Hairspray, respectively), I'm hoping that at least one of them has Born Yesterday somewhere in her future!

How sweet would that be!

After thoroughly enjoying the New Britain High School production of "Hairspray"...

(photo by Gail Koerner)

...with any number of references to things that one may think a tad inappropriate for a high school cast, I had to chuckle heartily as I watched the 1956 film version of Anything Goes (Bing Crosby, Donald O'Connor, Mitzi Gaynor, and a French performer I'd never even heard of, Jeanmaire). 

The familiar title song, of course, written in 1934, is Cole Porter's take on the recurring fear that culture and society, at large, are going to hell in a hand basket.  As he writes:

In olden days a glimpse of stocking
was looked on as something shocking. 
Now heaven knows,anything goes!

Good authors too who once used better words
Now only use four-letter words writing prose.
Anything goes!

Well, take a listen to the opening part of Mitzi's version in the film.

And, yes, you heard right!

I don't even know what a "three-letter word" is supposed to suggest.

Ah, the good old days, when proper reserve meant not even using euphemisms!