Broadway hustler Nathan Detroit (Frank Sinatra) bets high-flying gambler Sky Masterson (Marlon Brando) that he cannot take Christian missionary Sergeant Sarah Brown (Jean Simmons) on a date, in this 1955 musical they should have called Forgetting Marshal Sarah.

Guys and Dolls never seems to be as well-known as other classic musicals such as West Side Story or The Sound of Music, which is slightly baffling considering it is one of the best (and my personal favourite), largely thanks to Frank Loesser’s witty and wonderful songs. Maybe the film sold its reputation short, specifically the controversial casting of the two male leads (who apparently didn’t get on), chosen for their icon status rather than their suitability for a movie musical, since Brando can’t really sing and Sinatra can’t really act.

Regardless, the film succeeds in bringing much of the 1950 musical’s Broadway magic to the big screen, in an all-crooning, all-dancing tale of Prohibition-era saints and sinners. The sets and choreography are particularly dazzling for the showstoppers ‘Luck Be a Lady’ and ‘Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat’, while the Havana fight scene is incredibly well-executed and surprisingly violent.

The rest of the cast too are on point, especially Jean Simmons (not the one from Kiss) as Sarah Brown (not the one from Gordon Brown). She and Brando have chemistry (“yeah, chemistry”) having just co-starred in 1954’s Désirée, and her Bacardi-fuelled rendition of ‘If I Were a Bell’ is a tipsy highlight. Meanwhile Vivian Blaine is the perfect Miss Adelaide having originated the role on stage, and delightfully sneezes her way through ‘Adelaide’s Lament’.

Given its length at 2.5 hours, the movie clearly had to cut some of the songs from the stage version, but one misses the beautiful ‘I’ve Never Been in Love Before’, Arvide Abernathy’s ‘More I Cannot Wish You’, and the feisty ‘Marry the Man Today’, which serves an important plot point in bringing together Sarah and Adelaide. It does however introduce the new song ‘Adelaide’, which was written specially for Sinatra and is now performed in some versions of the stage show.

This is a chequered yet charming classic, full of brilliant songs, snappy dialogue and great jokes, and for unfamiliar musical fans it is well worth a throw of the dice.