No Skirt

The finest sight on Broadway this season is the lithesome legs of Noelle Adam, who dances in and out of Richard Rodgers' in-Paris-and-in-love musical, No Strings, in the role of a cheerfully chased photographer's assistant. A onetime ballerina, Mile. Adam scampers about in a baggy sweater that sets off a leotard hardly big enough to cover a Persian cat, blithely displaying the charms that her tutu used to hide.

In No Strings, Noelle also hints of charms the play never asks of her, much as it could use them. Noting this, Critic Walter Kerr fondly observed that her "mouth turns up at both corners like a gondola," a suggestion of affability that leotards alone cannot convey. She exults in pronouncing her dozen or so lines, testing her new command of English with a Webster's enthusiasm for the language.

Rodgers had the part largely rewritten once he had seen Noelle, sent her off to take singing lessons; she has been dancing for 19 of her 27 years, but has never sung before. She stretches to her full 5 ft. 4 in. and, for a change, faces the audience as she sings: Cett' jolie poupee, c'est moi. Jolie a croquer, c'est moi.

Je n'suis qu'un' jolie poupee, mais c'est assez, bien assez.*

Two years ago Noelle married Sydney Chaplin, who is conveniently starring in Subways Are for Sleeping just down Broadway. With that bit of luck, she is content with her role, including its high undress. "The role is in the personality," she says. "The costume suits my part."

*This pretty doll, that's me. Good enough to eat, that's me.

1 am only a pretty doll, but that's enough, that's plenty.

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