dir: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
GUYS & DOLLS
Sick #121, June 1978
w: David Allikas
a: Bill Burke
Sick tried to do what MAD did parodying traditional musicals and putting them in contemporary settings. Here they updated the backdrop of Times Square's gamblers and gangsters in Guys and Dolls with the then-current life of pimps, prostitutes, porn, and drugs. If they were to do it today, it would be about tourism and theme stores. They obviously knew nothing about vice other than what they saw in TV, movies, and comics, and not using a Mort Drucker or Mort Drucker imitator, they didn't even try to attempt likenesses for the most part.
Sky Masterson was played by Marlon Brando in the movie, so he's portrayed here as Brando in The Godfather. The mayor is a pun on Ed Koch.
In order to raise money for a crap game, Nathan Detroit (Frank Sinatra) bets Sky Masterson that he won't be able to ask out Sarah Brown (Jean Simmons) from the Save Our Souls mission, a church that works in the streets, and he woos her pretending to be a recovering gambler. He ends up falling in love with her and attempts to save her church. Here she's a Moonie, a religious cult known at the time for brainwashing runaways. They were called that because they were disciples of Rev. Sun Myung Moon.
It's not a parody, or even much of a review, but Joe Simon and Jack Kirby did a real nice two-page spread on the movie for an early Mad imitator called Cockeyed.
ReplyDeletehttps://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/effect/realfolks/1956-guys-and-dolls/
And just for kicks, here's a sequence spoofing the stage show's 1992 revival, from the long-running off-Broadway satirical revue Forbidden Broadway.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pcB3nGM210