August 20, 2012

32 On the Town (1949)

****
Country: US
Director: Stanley Donen/Gene Kelly

"What could happen to you in one day?" asks a longshoreman of three high-spirited sailors setting off on twenty-four hours' shore leave in New York City at the beginning of On the Town. The answer: a lot more than anyone might reasonably expect. In one day and one night, the three sailors—Gabey (Gene Kelly), Chip (Frank Sinatra), and Ozzie (Jules Munshin)—see more sights, meet more people, and get into more mischief than they could ever have imagined. And along the way they find romance in the form of three lovely residents of the city who accompany them as they visit tourist sights from the Statue of Liberty to the Empire State Building, romp from Manhattan to Brooklyn to Coney Island, and sing and dance their way all around the town.

The sailors are all small-town boys awed by the prospect of spending a day in what in their minds is the most glamorous and bustling city in America. The bashful Chip is an inveterate sightseer determined to visit as many of the city's landmarks as possible in twenty-four hours. The girl he hooks up with, a romantically aggressive taxi driver named Hildy (Betty Garrett), falls for him as soon as the boys hail her cab and immediately becomes their self-appointed tour guide. Gabey, a starry-eyed romantic from Indiana, falls in love at first sight with a girl whose picture he sees on a poster in the subway. She's Ivy Smith (Vera-Ellen), and she has just been chosen by the Transit Authority as Miss Turnstile, the subway poster girl of the month.

When Gabey sees her for real in a subway station but can't reach her before she leaves on the next train, he and his buddies, chauffeured by Hildy, set off after her. One of their first stops is the Natural History Museum, where a student of anthropology, Claire (Ann Miller), takes an immediate shine to the goofy Ozzie because of his resemblance to the statue of a caveman on display there. Soon she, Hildy, and the sailors are all involved in the pursuit of Gabey's elusive dream girl, an odyssey that takes them from one end of the city to the other.

The musicals made at MGM by On the Town's producer, Arthur Freed, in the 1940s and 1950s are legendary. Originally a pianist, vaudeville performer, and songwriter, Freed produced his first film (uncredited) in 1939. It was for MGM and the film was The Wizard of Oz. The same year MGM gave him his own musical film production unit, and for the next twenty years Freed and his unit were responsible for some of the greatest musicals ever made. Over the years Freed brought together a group of people—writers, musicians, choreographers, dancers, actors, directors—whose talent and ability to work together were unequaled in the film industry. In his foreword to Clive Hirschhorn's The American Musical, Gene Kelly, who worked on twelve films with Freed, described working with the Freed unit at MGM:
The members of the group who worked at MGM during my tenure there were very serious about musicals. That is not to say that we didn't make them to entertain and uplift the spirit, but we thought that to do this effectively they had to superbly crafted; and that meant the closest kind of collaboration. . . . There were probably more assembled talents in this field at Metro than anywhere else at any other time.
Gene Kelly and Arthur Freed

Freed's greatest musical film achievement is universally acknowledged to be Singin' in the Rain (1952), and I certainly wouldn't quarrel with that assessment. After that sublime film, any of a number of other musicals produced by the Arthur Freed unit could reasonably be designated for the number two position in the Freed canon. Meet Me in St. Louis, Easter Parade, An American in Paris, The Band Wagon, Gigi are all strong contenders. But my own favorite Freed-produced musical after Singin' in the Rain would be On the Town. It's a big, rollicking, unflaggingly kinetic movie that combines jazzy, assertive music, flippant dialogue and song lyrics, slapstick physical comedy—including a rousing car chase through Brooklyn, the three sailors in drag at Coney Island, and a collapsing dinosaur skeleton borrowed from Bringing Up Baby—and dance styles from tap to ballet to acrobatic in a package wrapped in nonstop creativity and inspiration.

Even so, the film's originality is less the product of pure innovation than of innovative synthesis. From the earliest days of the movies sailors had been used as fodder for comedy by people like Harold Lloyd, Laurel and Hardy, and Abbott and Costello. Sailors had also been the subject of musicals like the Eleanor Powell film Born to Dance (1936), the Astaire-Rogers film Follow the Fleet (1936), even Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra's previous picture together, Anchors Aweigh (1945). Its antecedents in film comedies and musicals aside, On the Town was the result of its own evolutionary synthesis, from ballet to stage musical to musical film. It began in 1944 as a ballet called Fancy Free, with choreography by Jerome Robbins and music by Leonard Bernstein. Robbins and Bernstein invited Betty Comden and Adolph Green to provide book and lyrics, and the ballet was developed into a Broadway musical financed in part by the sale of the film rights to MGM. Finally, after much tinkering and modification, its book rewritten and most of the original songs replaced, it became the movie we know today.

A good example of an existing idea that the film adapted and advanced can be found in the "A Day in New York" number. Toward the end of the film Gabey, walking through the streets alone, comes upon a poster for a show called "A Day in New York" and slips into a reverie in which he imagines the show as a condensed version of the experiences of the three sailors' own day in the city, a dream ballet featuring Kelly, with the five other principals replaced by ballet dancers (one of them recognizably Carol Haney). Perhaps a holdover from the original concept of Fancy Free, the number is clearly inspired by both the dream ballet in the 1943 Broadway musical Oklahoma! as well as the Red Shoes ballet in Powell and Pressburger's The Red Shoes. The "A Day in New York" number in turn led directly to the ballet finale in An American in Paris and the elaborate movie-within-a-movie sequence "Broadway Rhythm Ballet" in Singin' in the Rain.

Another example of the adaptation and advancement of an existing film idea in On the Town is the use of real New York locations in the picture. One of the great creative developments of postwar American filmmaking was to get movies out of the studio and on location, the way the postwar Italian neorealists and certain prewar plein-air filmmakers like Jean Renoir had done. Yet for some reason this move away from the Hollywood studio didn't seem to reach the musical until On the Town. Only part of the picture was shot on location, but those parts give it an authenticity and realism that could never have been achieved on a sound stage or studio backlot. The next time you watch the Sharks and the Jets dance down the streets of the West Side, or the Austrian Alps come alive with the sound of the music of Rodgers and Hammerstein, or Barbra Streisand admonish the sky from that tugboat not to rain on her parade, think of On the Town as the musical that started it all.

The other great synthesis in On the Town is the way it unites all of Gene Kelly's prodigious talents and fuses them into one creative whole. Singing, dancing, acting, choreography, film direction—this is the first example of Kelly filling all these roles in a single film. While it's true that directing credit is shared with Stanley Donen, the creative life force of On the Town springs directly from Gene Kelly. Both Kelly and Donen have commented that working together showed them how difficult it is for two people to share directing chores, but that didn't stop the pair from topping themselves just three years later with Singin' in the Rain. Ultimately, On the Town might be seen as a warm-up act for that greatest of all musicals, but if so, what a warm-up act it was—a zany, colorful, exuberant movie that jet-propelled the musical film to new heights.

This post is part of the Gene Kelly Centennial Blogathon sponsored by the Classic Movie Blog Association. For more information on the blogathon, click here. On the Town plays on Turner Classic Movies on Thursday, August 23, the 100th anniversary of Gene Kelly's birth, as part of TCM's Summer Under the Stars. Check local listings for times. Also check out the 2012 TCM Summer Under the Stars Blogathon for more on Gene Kelly and all the stars featured on TCM this month.

32 comments:

  1. Great post, R.D. I agree that Singin' in the Rain is tops, but, like you, I think On the Town is great in its own right. I absolutely love Betty Garrett's Hildy and the musical numbers are highly memorable.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Kim, thanks. I like Betty Garrett too--she gets the most colorful female character--and also Ann Miller, who's always great. Garrett was also memorable in the musical version of "My Sister Eileen" in the Roz Russell role. It's too bad her husband's political history put such a damper on her film career in the 50s, but I did enjoy her years later in her recurring role in "All in the Family" on TV. Vera-Ellen I'm not so enthusiastic about. She's always struck me as a bit bland, although she does seem right for this role.

      Delete
  2. I really enjoyed your post, R.D. I have never seen On the Town -- until I wrote my profile of Gene Kelly, I never had an interest. But I'm looking so forward to it now! Your write-up was excellent -- both interesting and informative -- from start to finish.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Shadows, I took a look at your excellent post on Gene Kelly last night, but it was very late and I didn't feel mentally focused enough to leave a comment. I'll be returning shortly for a closer look. Hope you enjoy the film when you see it.

      Delete
  3. An excellent post on a really fun movie. You make a great point about the origin here of musical location shooting. A large cast to work with -- three couples -- but done so well.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jacqueline, it is a really fun movie. It has no aspirations to be taken seriously beyond the three sailors' vision of New York as a small-town boy's Wonderland. The musical seemed to struggling to redefine itself in the late 40s, in a time when movies were aiming for more substantial subjects and greater social relevance, and I think this film must in some ways have seemed a blast of fresh air, showing that the pure enjoyment provided by musicals wasn't out of date.

      Delete
  4. There's something so darn likeable about "On the Town". Over the years I've gone from thinking it was "just okay" to shouting "hooray" when it shows up on television. I'll use your wonderful article to convince others not to have that lag time I went through before truly appreciating the movie.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Caftan Woman, the joys of "On the Town" are to me very elementary. It didn't set out to make an artistic statement but to entertain with a sophistication that's very subtle and down-to-earth. I think that's why it wears so well and can actually grow on you with rewatching.

      Delete
  5. This is a musical which has really grown on me, and reading your review makes me want to see it again as soon as possible, R.D. I definitely think the on-location filming is vital to the whole feel of it, and, as you say, it showed the way forward to so many musicals which came afterwards. I always tend to like Comden and Green's dialogue and this is no exception. On Donen and Kelly co-directing, I've seen an interview with Donen where he also says it was very frustrating - he says to the interviewer something like, "How would you like to have someone sitting next to you saying, don't ask him this question, ask him that question?!" But all the same they did a great job working together, even if each would have liked to be the sole director.

    There are a couple of things that annoy me about the film, though - one is that Sinatra has to play second fiddle so much and doesn't get any songs to compare with 'I Fall In Love Too Easily' in 'Anchors Aweigh'. (I know his career was on the skids at the time of 'On the Town', but it is still a pity.) The other is all the gratingly unfunny stuff about Vera Ellen's plain room-mate - again, 'Anchors Aweigh' comes off better in this regard, since the "plain" girl in that one ends up with Sinatra! I do think 'On the Town' is the greater film of the two, but I love both movies.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Judy, I have to agree with you about Comden and Green's writing and lyrics. Their work on this film, "Singin' in the Rain," and "The Band Wagon" certainly puts them at the head of the class, and the rest of their work isn't too shabby either. I've read that they played Ozzie and Claire in the stage production of "On the Town." Supposedly they modeled the characters played by Nanette Fabray and Oscar Levant in "The Band Wagon" on themselves, and I believe it!

      I also have to agree that Frank Sinatra definitely plays second banana to Kelly. If they couldn't have done something more distinctive with his character, they should have at least given him a knockout song. After all, the fellow was the #1 song stylist of his day--and some would say all time. The complaint about the roommate character is one I hear a lot. But even though she is made fun of (and let's face it, a good deal of the humor in the film is fairly low), she is treated sweetly in the end by both Gabey and the film. For some reason I've never seen "Anchors Aweigh" (it seems that the Freed unit was not involved in the George Sidney-directed MGM musicals) but plan to catch it this week on TCM.

      Delete
  6. Along with Singin in the Rain, one of my favorite musicals. The opening NEW YORK, NEW YORK number shot on location sets the mood for the entire film. Betty Garrett almost steals the movie and seeing Sinatra as such a geek is a real hoot. Like Judy, the one thing that bothers me about the film is the way Vera Ellen's roommate is treated. Terrifice informative review.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. John, I recall your post on this film for the musicals countdown at Wonders in the Dark. I couldn't give my post the insider knowledge of a genuine New Yorker, as you did. But I did try to convey how important the movie's idea of New York is. Even if it is an idealized view filtered through countless movies, there's still an authenticity to it that the location work helps capture.

      I recall that in her conversation with Robert Osborne on TCM, Ann Miller said that originally the girls weren't going to appear in the finale. But they complained to Arthur Freed about how unfair it was that the guys got to go to New York to shoot, so Freed relented and let them go too. The ending where the girls show up at the dock to wave the sailors goodbye was contrived for this purpose. This made me think that the New York parts were shot after the studio work. If you consider that the production dates were March-July 1949, that makes sense because the NY work would have been done in summer, and it sure looks summery in those parts of the film.

      Delete
  7. Oh, I just say "yippee!" every time I see this film. The score, the cast, the location and - best of all - Gene in his Navy whites!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. FlickChick, there is something very photogenic about those white sailor uniforms, isn't there? And they're cut almost as if they could have been designed for dancing.

      Delete
  8. Great post R.D. I'm a big fan of On the Town also - it's such a great combination of talents working together and producing such terrific fun. As we know, this formula was not always so successful, but this one was the cream - for fun, romantic musicals. And this is also one of those movies that could not be successfully reproduced today. Thanks for this super post for the Gene Kelly blogathon.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Christian, "terrific fun"--that's a succinct description of the effect this movie has on me. There's not a cynical note in the whole film, and that may be one reason this kind of film would be impossible to reproduce today. It's wonderful escapism with just enough realism to keep it grounded, a formula that served the classic musical well.

      Delete
  9. I'm also a huge fan of the classic musical, On the Town. It has the perfect all-star cast.. and you know when 3 sailors are on leave looking for girls, you know that you are in for some smiles.. I absolutely love/love the scene where they dress us as girls and sing and dance, trying to hide from the police.. who are hot on their heels.

    Fun review!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Dawn, that whole drag sequence is great fun, along with many other similar moments of the kind of physical comedy that's not just part of classic comedy movies, but has been part of popular comedy for centuries. The way the film uses this kind of traditional comedy in a musical makes for a great combination. The film's basic premise is hardly original, but what's done with it always seems clever and unpredictable.

      Delete
  10. Love, love, love this movie. Nobody could make a musical like MGM!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Silverscreenings, I'm on board with you over the glories of the MGM musical. Other studios did some wonderful musicals--RKO with Ginger and Fred, Warners with their backstage musicals, and Paramount with Lubitsch in the 30s--but from "The Wizard of Oz" on, nobody could touch MGM. When I wrote a post on my 30 favorite musicals awhile back, the top 10 was heavy with products of MGM from the Freed unit, with "Singin' in the Rain" of course at #1 and "On the Town" at #2.

      Delete
  11. One of my favorite musicals and Kelly films, and your write-up did it justice. I know some people tend to wince at Kelly's long ballet numbers - my father wasn't a fan of Kelly for that reason - but I thought it was well-staged here.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I hadn't seen "On the Town" in a number of years before watching it again in preparation for writing the post, and I had forgotten the "A Day in New York" ballet. As soon as I saw it, though, I recognized it as something important and a forerunner of Kelly's desire to integrate ballet with the popular musical film. The trick is how to make it seem an integral part of the movie, not something tangential to the main action, and I think Kelly did a good job of that here, suggesting perhaps that his real experiences are already being transformed in his mind into an idealized memory.

      Delete
  12. I absolutely love this movie and am glad you provided your usual top-notch analysis. Everyone things of the opening, but it's such a joyous movie that you can't help but enjoy it from beginning to end.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Filmboy, this is one of those movies that even if you've seen it before, you can still marvel at the imaginative turns the plot takes. Like "Singin' in the Rain" one thing leads to another in a very organic way, yet there's always the feeling that everything is a bit tongue-in-cheek and that Comden and Green were having great fun manipulating the conventions in a way meant to surprise. They seemed to have a loving attitude toward the genre even while spoofing it. I think that's why their work wears so well.

      Delete
  13. R.D., I watched "On the Town" again when it aired on the 23rd. It struck me as absolutely "rollicking" - it is such sheer entertainment from the opening right through to the end. Each of the six characters is so distinctive, each actor in top form. Pure delight. I have to say that I enjoy seeing Sinatra in his earlier awkward, geeky roles - no one would have guessed he would later specialize characters at the opposite end of the spectrum. I'd never really thought about my favorite films from the Freed unit, but I suppose mine is "Meet Me in St. Louis." Much as I enjoy and admire "Singin' in the Rain" and "American in Paris," they are not my personal favorites - I prefer "St. Louis," "On the Town," "The Band Wagon" and "Gigi" in terms of multiple viewings.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Eve, Sinatra's persona here is a far cry from his intensely dramatic persona of the 50s. I'm not really familiar with his earlier films, but I did find him charming here as an average and actually rather shy fellow. But this is clearly Kelly's show.

      All of the Freed musicals you name are great. These are movies that I cannot let myself start to watch with the intention of doing something else in a while, because once I start watching them I can't stop! I do think "Singin' in the Rain" is the best of them all, but I agree with you about "An American in Paris" being a film that inspires more admiration than affection. It still has much to recommend it, though.

      Delete
  14. R.D.
    I apologize for my lateness here. Such an interesting look back at On the Town. I enjoyed it very much.

    Your discussion on sailors. servicemen and how their presence has changed throughout the history of film was so nicely done. Being ex Navy myself and coming from a long line of sailors. Thanks for that!

    I like Vera-Ellen and Ann Miller so I was really pleased that they were given parts along side our talented stars. (Funny but my mom has this unusual hatred for Ann. She can't even articulate why that is. We've had a few debates about that over the years. Between us. she looks a lot like my Aunt Bertie who could be a real pain in the backside so maybe that's it! Ha Ha)

    New York made the perfect backdrop for this film and I'm so glad you touched upon using actual locations as well.

    Overall. just a wonderfully written. informative and well thought out review. OF course your reviews are always a treat.

    Page

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Page, thank you so much. A lot of war movies and service movies have been made, but the ones about sailors seem to be in a class by themselves. I don't know what it is about those uniforms, but they seem to define the people in them in a way other military uniforms don't. As for New York, the movie is really about the city and the effect it has on people as much as it is about the people and what happens to them. Same with Paris in "An American in Paris."

      Delete
  15. I'll admit I am not th ebiggest fan of this musical as I note during last year's musical countdown. But I have come to believe that it's me and not the film, and that I often overemphasize the score often at the expense of other elements at play that in this film mean a great deal. As you engagingly note in a breezy and engaging piece, the New York locations are vital here (love that shot of the Brooklyn Bridge!) and as a lifelong New Yorker (I live just minutes from te city across te Hudson river) I should and do at least appreciate how setting is quite important in the film. I do need to look at this film again. I must applaud your stupendopus effort here R.D.!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sam, with your hyper-awareness of the music in a movie, I can see why you might have reservations about this one. The music is definitely the weakest element here. The catchy "New York, New York" is the most memorable song, the only one that actually stays with me, and it's sung within the first few minutes. I understand the stage version had more good songs by Leonard Bernstein but that they were dropped or replaced because they didn't fit the tone of the movie. I know I rate this film more highly than most people do, and I think its remarkable consistency of tone has a lot to do with that. I find that "Singin' in the Rain" also has this quality.

      Delete
  16. Most people who know me understand why, but I really enjoy reading the observations of someone who loves a movie that I'm not overly fond of. It's like getting to see the film through fresh eyes and (if I'm lucky) being made aware of something that I might have overlooked that would alter my opinion.
    Your information-filled appreciation of "On the Town" is a great read, as I never knew much about its genesis and enjoyed learning about its history. I especially liked your recounting of the Dream Ballet which i haven't seen in some time but remember as the one part I did enjoy in the film. Thanks for another terrific, well-researched post!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ken, thanks. The reason the post is so information-heavy is that I find comedies and musicals incredibly difficult to write about. It's so hard to explain one's enjoyment. Analysis of ideas is easier and so is looking at a film from the perspective of details about its production and placement in the filmographies of those involved with it. I understand what you mean about getting pleasure from reading about films I'm not that fond of because I like it when writers explain why they feel the way they do about a movie or any work of entertainment or art.

      Delete