During Second World War, people had plenty of tragedies. Thus what the public asked from cinema was an escape. It was time for comedies and, above all, for musicals. Hollywood producers traveled to New York and bought tickets to Broadway shows. One of these shows was titled ‘The Tattooed Odontologist’ and Samuel Goldwyn was enthusiastic about it because “it was so pointless that you had no choice but to escape.” The story revolved around an obsessive compulsive dentist accumulating complaints of arbitrary tooth extraction. The musical numbers focus on the scenes where the dentist unleashes his obsession, so the patient’s shrieks of pain are naturally integrated into the merry melodies in the manner of a chorus. Goldwyn purchased the film adaptation rights and entrusted the making of the film to Walter Girsh, a puppet theater director who was determined to direct the actors using strings moved from above with his own hands and those of his puppeteer collaborators. This greatly limited the freedom of movement of the dancers, which resulted in the film’s resounding failure.
