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1''One Touch of Venus'' is a 1943 musical comedy with music by Music/KurtWeill, lyrics by Creator/OgdenNash and book by Creator/SJPerelman and Ogden Nash.
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3As the play opens, Whitelaw Savory, at his Foundation of Modern Art, has been stubbornly carrying on for nine years his crusade to bring TrueArt to the ignorant masses. His latest acquisition, a three-thousand-year-old statue of the goddess Venus imported from Anatolia, was made not on aesthetic principle but for personal reasons. A barber named Rodney Hatch decides while waiting to shave Savory to try something funny with his engagement ring and finds out to his surprise that this Venus is more than a statue.
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5It was made into [[Film/OneTouchOfVenus a 1948 movie]] starring Creator/AvaGardner, which retained few of the show's songs and even less of its dialogue. That movie, in turn, was remade in the 1980's as the Kim Cattrall vehicle ''Film/{{Mannequin}}''.
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7!!Tropes used in the show:
8* CatchTheConscience: The song [[MurderBallad "Dr. Crippen"]] is intended to pressure Rodney into confessing to the murder of his fiancee. Since he didn't murder his fiancee, no confession results.
9* DarkReprise: Rodney's embittered reprise of "How Much I Love You".
10* DisposableFiance: Venus makes short work of Gloria Kramer, Rodney Hatch's betrothed.
11* DreamBallet: "Venus in Ozone Heights" imagines Venus married to Rodney in StepfordSuburbia.
12* {{Leitmotif}}: Venus's theme recurs several times.
13* LivingStatue: A statue of Venus comes to life.
14%%* LoveGoddess: It's Venus's job.
15%%* MagicalGirlfriend: Venus to Rodney.
16* MurderBallad: "Dr. Crippen", the Act I finale, tells the story of the real-life murderer.
17* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: Fabulously rich art patron Whitelaw Savory is more than a bit like fabulously rich art patron Nelson Rockefeller, trustee and sometime president of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
18* TheOneThatGotAway: Savory is obsessed with the Venus statue because it reminds him of a lost love.
19* PleasePutSomeClothesOn: The prudish Rodney Hatch is appalled by Venus's initial not-extensively-dressed appearance.
20* SassySecretary: Molly Grant, Savory's secretary, always has a one-liner ready and gets the racy title song.
21* StepfordSuburbia: Rodney Hatch can't wait to move into one of these, singing a whole song ("Waiting for a Wooden Wedding") about how delightfully boring and predictable it will be. This becomes the tipping point for Venus, our protagonist, who realizes during the song just how awful life with Rodney might be.
22** (Props to the creative team, by the way, for using this trope so ''early''. The show opened in 1943, just as suburbia was starting to become a recognizable concept.)

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