Today marks the 100thanniversary of the birth of composer/conductor/pianist Leonard Bernstein. In celebration, movie houses around the country are showcasing films scored by the legendary maestro.My local theater, the Smith Rafael Film Center (aka/the Rafael) put together a three-film tribute to Bernstein, with On the Town (1949), On the Waterfront (1954) and West Side Story (1961) screening on separate Sundays in August.
On August 12, I was delighted to see On the Town on the big screen for the first time. Afterward I asked myself, “Why is it that every time I see a film on a theater screen after having seen it more than once at home I feel like I’ve just seen it for the first time?” But that’s a subject for another blog post…On the Townwas based on a hit Broadway musical of the same name that opened at the Adelphi Theatre in late December 1944 and ran for 462 performances. The music was all Bernstein’s with lyrics by his friends, the incomparable Betty Comden and Adolph Green. But before that, there was Fancy Free, a ballet by Jerome Robbins set to Bernstein’s music. Fancy Freedebuted, performed by the Ballet Theatre (precursor to the American Ballet Theatre) at the Metropolitan Opera House in April 1944. It was Robbins who felt the ballet had Broadway musical potential and convinced Bernstein, who brought Comden and Green on board. Once George Abbot was attached to direct, the Robbins-choreographed project quickly moved forward, with some of its funding provided by MGM in exchange for the movie rights.Fancy Free followed the story of three sailors out for drinks in a New York bar who spend the night vying with each other for the favor of young ladies they encounter over the course of the evening. When it was fashioned into a musical comedy, the plot was transformed into a tale of three sailors seeing sights and looking for girls during their 24-hour shore leave in New York City. This remained the film’s storyline.
Arthur Freed, Judy Garland and Roger Edens, 1930s
But there were changes as On the Town made its way to the screen. One of the biggest differences - aside from an almost completely revamped cast - was that only a few Bernstein/Comden and Green songs were kept in the movie. The rest of the tunes were dropped and replaced by those penned by the film’s associate producer, Roger Edens, a member of MGM’s “Freed Unit,” Arthur Freed’s fabled musical production team. Bernstein, Comden and Green were among those credited under the music department and Comden and Green got a writing credit, but when Oscar time rolled around and On the Town won for Best Scoring of a Musical, the Oscar went to Edens and the film’s music director, Lennie Hayton. Of course, Edens and Hayton were securely established in Hollywood with MGM at the time, Edens having won an Oscar the year before for Easter Parade (1948), his fifth Oscar nomination. And Hayton had already received two prior Oscar nominations. But still…Bernstein’s score for the original stage version of On the Town is considered one of his four best, along with his work on Wonderful Town, Candideand West Side Story. “New York, New York” and “Come Up to My Place,” both by Bernstein/Comden and Green, are rollicking showstoppers and, thankfully, Edens and his cohorts kept these two songs in the MGM adaptation of On the Town.Frank Sinatra and Betty Garrett knock it out of the park with "Come Up to My Place"
The opening lines of “New York, New York,” the tune that launches On the Town, were famously changed to mollify the then still powerful Hollywood Production Code. The original lyrics, “New York, New York, it’s a helluva town” are much more in keeping with the musical’s boisterous tone than the changed lyrics, “New York, New York, it’s a wonderful town,” but this modest adjustment did nothing to diminish the song’s jubilant spirit or its wham-bam delivery by Frank Sinatra, Gene Kelly and Jules Munshin.
The boys (Sinatra, Munshin & Kelly) arrive in the Big Apple con brio and ready for action
On the Town would be the first of three films co-directed by Stanley Donen, only 25 when the movie was made, and Gene Kelly. Donen had made his Broadway debut as a dancer at age 16 in Pal Joey, the musical that made Gene Kelly a star; both joined MGM two years later, in 1942. In On the Town, Kelly carries the male lead, as Gabey, a sailor who falls for a photo of the New York subway system’s “Miss Turnstiles” for June, a young lady named Ivy (Vera-Ellen) whom he is determined to find, meet and romance.
Frank Sinatra has the second lead, Chip, the more-or-less innocent of the trio, who wants to see the sights but gets sidetracked (or ambushed) by an aggressively smitten girl-cabbie, Hildy (Betty Garrett). Jules Munshin is Ozzie, who meets anthropologist Claire (Ann Miller) while roaming the Museum of Natural History.
It was apparently Gene Kelly, choreographer as well as co-director on the film, who insisted on location shooting, and so New York City circa 1949 is one of On the Town’s finest co-stars, vibrant with life in glorious Technicolor. Other stand-outs in the supporting cast are Florence Bates and Alice Pearce in comic roles.
Garrett, Sinatra, Miller, Munshin, Vera-Ellen and Kelly...on the town!
On the Townis pure fun, jam-packed with singing, dancing, romancing plus a twist of screwball farce toward the end. Kelly and Vera-Ellen are well-teamed, Sinatra and Garrett are a joy, Jules Munshin holds up his end as third banana. And Ann Miller – well, she tap-dances up a storm, flashing that 1,000 watt smile and those long and shapely gams of hers. The art direction of Cedric Gibbon and Jack Martin Smith conjures a bright and colorful display case for this energetic 98 minutes of entertainment.And a good amount of color fills the screen courtesy of costumer Helen Rose.
On the Townopened at Radio City Music Hall on December 8, 1949 and New York Times critic Bosley Crowther greeted it with a rave review, the first of many accolades. The film’s roaring success would have a ripple effect on most of its cast and crew. Kelly and Donen would go on to co-direct Singin’ in the Rain (1952) and It’s Always Fair Weather (1955), Sinatra’s career would crest, fall, and then shoot into the stratosphere, the Freed Unit would continue to produce musical masterworks for MGM well into the 1950s, Comden and Green would become legends, as would Leonard Bernstein, whose greatest success in the arena of popular musicals would come a few years later with West Side Story, on Broadway, and later on film as the winner of 10 Academy Awards.
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“Lonely Town” is one of the Bernstein/Comden and Green tunes that was dropped from the film version of On the Town. In the stage version, Gabey performs the song in the first act, while in a blue mood, before he connects with Ivy. In 1957, Frank Sinatra included the song on his celebrated LP Where Are You? The song was, as were all songs on that album, arranged by Gordon Jenkins.
