Robert Hurwitt, Chronicle Theater Critic

    "Charming" is the word most often applied to Tony Curtis these days, and it applies at times to the musical "Some Like It Hot," in which Curtis opened Wednesday at the Golden Gate Theatre. But not to long stretches of this 2 3/4- hour Best of Broadway offering. And not to the few scenes in which Curtis appears.
Don't blame Curtis. The only surviving star of the classic Billy Wilder movie is clearly out of his element. At 77, he can't really dance and his attempts at singing are painful to witness. But he isn't onstage long enough for such problems to color the entire experience. And when he is, he seems to be having such a good time that even his ineptitude is kind of endearing.

    "Hot" has much bigger problems than that. Peter Stone's book is a fairly faithful adaptation of Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond's '59 screenplay (based on a story by Robert Thoeren) about two jazz musicians in Prohibition-era Chicago who, on the run from the mob (having witnessed the St. Valentine's Day Massacre), join an all-girl band in drag and head for Florida. But Stone hasn't found a way to capitalize on the risque setup that's nearly as frisky as in the movie.

    Many of Wilder and Diamond's classic quips are retained. But Stone and lyricist Bob Merrill haven't added enough witticisms to create a similar comic density. And Jule Styne's score, rich in jazz-age energy in the opening scenes, loses steam once the action shifts to Miami.

    Even Styne and Merrill's best songs pale beside the one number interpolated from the film, A. Harrington Gibbs' feverish "Runnin' Wild" (words by Joe Grey and Leo Wood), a 1922 standard so memorably breathed-sung by Marilyn Monroe on screen.

    Monroe, of course, played the dumb beauty Sugar Kane, a perilous temptation to both Curtis' disguised, opportunistic saxophonist, Joe, and Jack Lemmon as his hapless bass-playing buddy, Jerry. Joe E. Brown was the joyfully clueless old playboy millionaire Osgood Fielding III in hot pursuit of Jerry in his guise as Daphne. That's the part now played by Curtis.

SHOW REVISED FOR TOUR
    Stone, Styne and Merrill's adaptation opened on Broadway in '72 as "Sugar," achieving moderate success largely on the strength of Robert Morse's performance in the Jerry-Daphne role and his chemistry with the legendary Cyril Ritchard as Osgood.

    The show was substantially revised for its national tour. It has been reworked again by Stone and director-choreographer Dan Siretta for the new, renamed version that premiered in June to open Houston's Theatre Under the Stars' $100 million new home.

    This is the same production, now on a 50-city national tour. It looks good, with its shimmying, long-legged chorus in Suzy Benzinger's sharp, colorful flapper gowns, bathing suits and lingerie.

    James Leonard Joy's set pieces and backdrops -- and Ken Billington's painterly lights -- alternate black-and-white and fuzzily colored images to evoke the movie one moment and period postcards the next. Musical director Lynn Crigler's orchestra handles the score with jazzy zest.

    It starts hot, with a clever take on the movie's opening car chase and the impressive tap dancing of William Ryall -- amazingly tall, craggy and sinisterly smooth in the George Raft role of the mobster Spats -- and his fleet-footed thugs.

    It gets hotter as bandleader Sweet Sue (a dynamic, brassy Lenora Nemetz) leads her Society Syncopaters in Siretta's buoyant Charleston to "We Play in the Band" and Spats and his men tap up a storm to "Tear the Town Apart."

POTENT SINGER
    But "Hot" doesn't build on its strong start. Partly it's a problem of leads that not only suffer by comparison to the movie originals but from the showier performances of Ryall and Nemetz. Jodi Carmeli looks enough like Monroe to drive the men wild.

    She's a much better dancer and a potent singer, belting "Runnin' Wild" and a soulful, searing "People in My Life" with riveting intensity. But she lacks Monroe's masterful comic timing and the breathy-sexy delivery that could bring Sugar to life.

    Arthur Hanket is a smooth, attractive Joe with a strong voice but doesn't invest the role with much personality. Timothy Gulan, though a less impressive singer, gets more mileage from Jerry-Daphne. He's especially effective in his giddy "Magic Nights" mode, reveling in bride-to-be euphoria.

    But Gulan never has a chance to develop any give-and-take with Curtis' walk- through as Osgood. And the show pretty much lies down and goes to sleep for Curtis' big solo "I Fall in Love Too Easily" (a Styne-Sammy Cahn number from "Anchors Aweigh").

NICELY STAGED SEDUCTION
    The second act picks up at times. The yacht seduction scene is nicely staged. Nemetz leads a spirited "When You Meet a Man in Chicago" and Ryall's death -- desperately last-gasp tap-dancing the "Runnin' Wild" theme -- is, well, to die for. But too much of "Hot" is not.