Ankles Aweigh is a musical

Musical theatre

Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...

 with a book by Guy Bolton

Guy Bolton

Guy Reginald Bolton was a British-American playwright and writer of musical comedies. Born in England and educated in France and the U.S., he trained as an architect but turned to writing. Bolton preferred working in collaboration with others, principally the English writers P. G...

 and Eddie Davis, lyrics by Dan Shapiro, and music by Sammy Fain

Sammy Fain

Sammy Fain was an American composer of popular music.-Biography:Sammy Fain was born in New York City. In 1923, Fain appeared with Artie Dunn in a short film directed by Lee De Forest filmed in DeForest's Phonofilm sound-on-film process. In 1925, Fain left the Fain-Dunn act to devote himself to...

.

The plot centers on Hollywood starlet Wynne, who violates a clause in her contract by marrying Navy flyer Bill while filming a movie in Sicily

Sicily

Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...

. With the aid of her sister Elsey and two of her husband's service buddies, Wynne disguises herself as a sailor and stows away on his ship. When they reach Morocco

Morocco

Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...

, Bill finds himself accused of participating in an espionage

Espionage

Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...

 ring, and he and his bride must find a way to absolve him of the charges so they can live happily ever after.

By 1955, audiences had become accustomed to book musicals that seamlessly integrated dialogue scenes with musical numbers, so this throwback to vaudeville

Vaudeville

Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...

-style entertainment, complete with burlesque

Burlesque

Burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects...

 jokes, chorus girls, and impersonations of Marlene Dietrich

Marlene Dietrich

Marlene Dietrich was a German-American actress and singer.Dietrich remained popular throughout her long career by continually re-inventing herself, professionally and characteristically. In the Berlin of the 1920s, she acted on the stage and in silent films...

 and Zsa Zsa Gabor

Zsa Zsa Gabor

Zsa Zsa Gabor is a Hungarian-born American stage, film and television actress.She acted on stage in Vienna, Austria, in 1932, and was crowned Miss Hungary in 1936. She emigrated to the United States in 1941 and became a sought-after actress with "European flair and style", with a personality that...

, was an anomaly for the times. Rodgers and Hammerstein

Rodgers and Hammerstein

Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II were a well-known American songwriting duo, usually referred to as Rodgers and Hammerstein. They created a string of popular Broadway musicals in the 1940s and 1950s during what is considered the golden age of the medium...

 invested in the show but made no creative contributions. During rehearsals, lead comic Myron McCormick

Myron McCormick

Myron McCormick was an American actor of stage, radio and film.McCormick was born as Walter Myron McCormick in Albany, Indiana....

 was replaced by Lew Parker, and Sonny Tufts

Sonny Tufts

Sonny Tufts was a United States film actor....

 was fired in New Haven. Jerome Robbins

Jerome Robbins

Jerome Robbins was an American theater producer, director, and choreographer known primarily for Broadway Theater and Ballet/Dance, but who also occasionally directed films and directed/produced for television. His work has included everything from classical ballet to contemporary musical theater...

 spent two weeks revamping the show in Boston

Boston

Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

, to little avail.

The Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 production, directed by Fred F. Finklehoffe and choreographed by Tony Charmoli

Tony Charmoli

Tony Charmoli , an American dancer, choreographer, and director, began dancing on Broadway in such shows as "Make Mine Manhattan" but soon began choreographing for television with "Stop the Music" in 1949. Charmoli then choreographed dance sequences for the popular "Your Hit Parade," winning his...

, opened on April 18, 1955 at the Mark Hellinger Theatre

Mark Hellinger Theatre

The Mark Hellinger Theatre is a generally used name of a former legitimate Broadway theater, located at 237 West 51st Street in midtown Manhattan, New York City. Since 1991, it has been known as the Times Square Church...

, where it ran for 176 performances. The cast included real-life sisters Jane

Jane Kean

Jane Kean is an American actress.-Career:Jane Kean and her older sister, , formed a comedy duo that worked the nightclub circuit throughout the 1940s and '50s, and the two appeared on Broadway as sisters in the short-lived 1955 musical Ankles Aweigh.She studied acting with Sanford Meisner at the...

 and Betty Kean as Wynne and Elsey, Mark Dawson as Bill, and Thelma Carpenter

Thelma Carpenter

Thelma Carpenter was a jazz singer and actress, best known as "Miss One", the Good Witch of the North in the movie The Wiz.-Career:...

 as featured singer Chipolata.

The producers immediately posted the closing notice, but Mark Hellinger owner Brady Farrell decided to keep the show running with his own financing. Broadway columnists Walter Winchell

Walter Winchell

Walter Winchell was an American newspaper and radio gossip commentator.-Professional career:Born Walter Weinschel in New York City, he left school in the sixth grade and started performing in a vaudeville troupe known as Gus Edwards' "Newsboys Sextet."His career in journalism was begun by posting...

 and Ed Sullivan

Ed Sullivan

Edward Vincent "Ed" Sullivan was an American entertainment writer and television host, best known as the presenter of the TV variety show The Ed Sullivan Show. The show was broadcast from 1948 to 1971 , which made it one of the longest-running variety shows in U.S...

's glowing reports failed to generate much business, and when salaries were cut to keep losses to a minimum, most of the major players quit in protest. After struggling for five months, the show finally closed at a loss of $340,000, $65,000 more than its initial investment.

An original cast recording was released by Decca Records

Decca Records

Decca Records began as a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its U.S. label was established in late 1934; however, owing to World War II, the link with the British company was broken for several decades....

.

In the summer of 1989, the Goodspeed Opera House revived the musical with a new book by Charles Busch

Charles Busch

Charles Louis Busch is an American actor, screenwriter, playwright and female impersonator, known for his appearances on stage in his own camp style plays and in film and television. He wrote The Tale of the Allergist's Wife, which was a success on Broadway.-Early life:Busch was born in 1954 and...

, who transformed it into a camp satire of 1950s movie musicals and an affectionate tribute to the genre http://www.charlesbusch.com/Ankles%20Aweigh!.htm.