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DVD Bells Are Ringing
Judy Holliday's final film, Bells Are Ringing, is, fittingly enough, a tailor-made vehicle for her brassy talent. She'd won a Tony for the Broadway version of the show, playing an overly sympathetic telephone receptionist who gets involved in her customers' lives. Betty Comden and Adolph Green adapted their stage musical, amusingly framing the film as a TV commercial for "Susanswerphone," the answering service Judy works for. Director Vincente Minnelli, in one of his less inspired outings, seems content to showcase Holliday's crack comic timing, which appears to have been transferred almost intact from the stage. Despite the somewhat muted tone, there are delightful bits: a typical Comden & Green showbiz party (with a number about name-dropping), Frank Gorshin's send-up of a Brando-inflected actor, and Dean Martin crooning while shouldering his way through a Manhattan crowd. "The Party's Over," that unforgettable end-of-the-evening lament, and "Just in Time" are the Jule Styne standards from the score. --Robert Horton
Judy Holiday is a gem - she sings, she dances with a smile that brightens the room
The first time I saw Judy Holiday was on the "Born Yesterday" trailer on the "His Girl Friday" DVD. Soon I watched that film and found Judy a blonde with a heart of gold. On that film she was supposed to be dumb but had an unusual talent for poker cards. She impressed and earned her an Oscar for Best Actress against Bette Davis and Anne Baxter(All about Eve)and Gloria Swanson(Sunset Boulevard).
That is why I bought "Bells are ringing" DVD the moment I saw her face on the cover. And I would like to say while "Born Yesterday" is a film not easy to forget, it is "Bells are Ringing" which really shows the fullness of Judy Holiday.
The Broadyway musical was tailored made for Judy. She doesn't need to play dumb. She has the chance to sing solo and duet. Though not particularly slim nor particularly young, she danced everywhere (cha cha on the sidewalk, waltz with Dean Martin in a quiet garden, solo dance in her answering phone office)with an elegance and lightness unparalleled even with other great dancers. Perhaps her early ballet training gave her the edge. She was 5' 10" and yet she practically danced effortlessly in the air. She may be passionate in saying the lines (afterall, this is a comedy) and yet she was sincere and never overdid them. More importantly, it is when she did not have the lines nor the dances that she revealed her particular worth - she could still steal a scene with her fluid moves. Watch how she would dash off to find Dean Martin, only to stop right before the door, turn back, hestitate and dash right off again. Most important of all, her smile lightened up the scenes. It is already worth every bit of your time to watch Judy Holiday on this film.
Having said that, "Bells are ringing" is made perfect with the music, the songs, the lyrics and the arrangement. You don't often come across with duet pieces so nicely put together. The group singing - the "names" song by the party goers and the "bookies rehearsing the passwords" song are fun to hear. Watch the "Midas Touch" singer closely for he was the leading man Mr. Moss on the Broadyway musical. The cast gave a solid performance.
The whole film is simply a delight to watch, hear and enjoy!
Trivia mentioned that Judy Holiday had an IQ of 172. She had a good career start in the movie business thanks to Katharine Hepburn, who tipped the columnists how good Judy was at Adam's Rib so that she secured her role in the "Born Yesterday" movie. That Judy was kind enough to let her partner (despite an understudy) had the spotlight he deserved when he sang in Broadway and tipped him to sing the "Midas Touch" song in the movie since Dean Martin, not he, got the leading role in the movie version. That Judy did not have the major roles she, as an Oscar winner and as a talented actress, should have deserved. All the more reason to cherish the few movies she has made and this is definitely one of them.
"She's rarer than uranium and fairer than a pearl."
I'm always happy to give the good word to BELLS ARE RINGING, a 1960 MGM musical comedy starring Judy Holliday and directed by Vincente Minnelli.
Unfortunately, BELLS ARE RINGING is something of an orphan among the canon of really great musicals. The original THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT! covered the period from the institution of "talkies" to 1958 and GIGI. This is fair, because GIGI is a truly exceptional movie and demonstrates so well the lavish, big-budget type of musical that was to be no more.
But BELLS ARE RINGING has its charms, too. Surviving relatively unscathed from its long run on Broadway, the movie kept the incandescent Judy Holliday but dropped stage leading man Sydney Chaplin (Charlie's son) in favor of Dean Martin. This may have been a mistake, for Dino seems to have phoned in about half of his performance; and since movies are usually filmed out of sequence we don't know when we're going to get the confident, likable Dean Martin of 1960s OCEANS ELEVEN and the Matt Helm movies, or a relative "stiff."
But that's about the only major complaint people have about this movie, which details the trials and tribulations of a telephone-answering service switchboard attendant at "Susanswerphone" (Holliday) as she provides information linking one subscriber to another -- over and over, to the great consternation of the business's owner, Sue (Jean Stapleton, in a light but decidedly non-dingbat role). Complications ensue when the cops start listening in, while at the same time an entry-level gangster (played to the hilt by Eddie Foy, Jr.) starts using Susanswerphone as a place for bookies to make their bets--all in code, leading to Minnelli's wonderful *tableau vivant* song "It's a Simple Little System." Further Minnellian wit is evident in the movie's opening credits, which show the neighborly, small-scale old Upper East Side of Manhattan under the wrecking ball, lying largely in ruins and awaiting the inevitable appearance of the then-new Upper East Side, with its sterile high-rises and high rents.
A witty screenplay by Comden and Green refers to the "Bonjour Tristesse Brassiere Company" (a smart nod to a 1955 bestseller), and the "Crying Gypsy Cafe," among other bits of comic pleasure that separate an excellent script from a mediocre one. The immensely talented Jule Styne was at his lyrical best in numbers like "Just in Time" and "The Party's Over." The supporting cast is terrific, too, including Frank Gorshin as a Brandoesque beatnik turned Anglophilic gent so he could secure roles in posh plays; and taskmaster Fred Clark, who here gets to play the bon vivant Broadway producer, Larry Keating.
Unfortunately, the movie has no running commentary, but the disc does include a trailer and a 15-minute documentary about the making of the movie. Happily, this was made when Gorshin and Comden, among others, were all alive and kicking. Also included are two songs from the original score that were filmed, but did not survive editing. As always, we can't take our eyes off Holliday.
I know of no bad Judy Holliday movie; she is indelible and memorable in every single picture she made during the brief ten years of her screen career. At this price BELLS ARE RINGING is a great investment, which surely deserves its place in the great canon of Vincente Minnelli's, and MGM's, musicals.
Spectacular Showcase For Ruth Storey
We watched this the other night, six of us, each of us looking forward to a great evening of fun. Well, we had some fun but not the flotilla of mirth we'd expected. Judy Holliday is super, but the plot had her hamstruck. None of us could figure out what was taking her so long to tell Jeffrey Moss who she was, or why bother even telling him? The device of having to keep her "Ma" identity a secret is just dumb, dumb, dumb. Maybe it worked in the 1950s but it just seems puzzling now that an otherwise smart woman would nearly ruin her whole life because of a silly qualm about not wanting to say she was "Ma." Well, one of us argued, the police were going to arrest her if she dared see anyone on the outside with whom she talked on the phone. So she couldn't see Jeff for fear of being put under arrest and her reputation ruined.
That's pretty much the whole plot and my, oh my, does it sag. However the good parts are legion. It was great to see the late Frank Gorshin with his spectacular Brando impersonation (and later on, his take on Rex Harrison and sophistication). Great also to see Gorshin commenting on the film during the featurette, "Just in Time." He will be sadly missed. The gay neighbor is also great, the one who teaches Ella the cha-cha-cha. Maybe he's not gay in the movie, but he is super gay acting and he's adorable. Who plays him anyhow and what is he doing in the movie? I like a film that has room for extra side things, lines of development and odd characters, that have no strict relevance to the plot.
There must be a story behind the casting of Ruth Storey as Gwynne, Ella's co-worker who tries to cool herself off with an electric fan under her skirt. Was she one of Arthur Freed's girlfriends? (She made few movies, but she had a good part in Freed's version of Kerouac's SUBTERRANEANS a little later on.) She has an interesting stage presence, slinky, sensual, always bending and stretching, and she's not classically beautiful. Film fans will remember her as one of the Kansas victims of the two killers in IN COLD BLOOD, and, early on, she played in Fritz Lang's romantic thriller THE BLUE GARDENIA with Nat King Cole and Ann Sothern. Here she goes for the hardened New Yorker type and she really nails it, though it's funny she doesn't get to do any singing or dancing.
Of the cut-out musical numbers on the DVD, "My Guiding Star" is fantastic, and the alternate version of "The Midas Touch" is fascinating, in a later era of musicals it could have fit right into Fosse's ALL THAT JAZZ. "Is It A Crime?" however, is just terrible. It's one of those "Rose's Turn" "My Boy Bill" type of numbers that go all over the place and reveal the singer's character. "Is It A Crime?" however, is just excruciating, it hurts to watch it. You feel you are standing next to the brink of a black hole that will suck in your sanity never to let it go.
Don Hewes (Fred Astaire) is devastated when his longtime dancing partner, Nadine Hale (Ann Miller), breaks up the team to set out on her own. Determined to prove that he can succeed without her, Astaire vows that he can pick any random chorus girl and make her a star. Fortunately for him, the chorus girl he picks happens to be one of the greatest entertainers of the 20th century, Judy Garland (playing Hannah Brown). Easter Parade turned out to be the first and only collaboration between the two screen legends. Garland made the 1948 film despite ongoing health problems then had to pull out of a planned follow-up, The Barkleys of Broadway (Ginger Rogers replaced her); Astaire had retired following Blue Skies in 1946 but was brought in for this film as an emergency... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Judy Garland - Fred Astaire Director(s): Charles Walters DVD Release Date: Released the 15 March 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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The Band Wagon (1953) marked the culmination of a series of near-autobiographical pictures Fred Astaire made for MGM following his return from premature retirement in the late '40s. Astaire plays Tony Hunter, a fading film star (his big hit: Flying Down to Panama) who decides to return to his former glory, the Broadway stage. (In 1931, Astaire had starred on Broadway with sister Adele in The Band Wagon, a revue that lent some of its songs to this film.) His playwright-songwriter friends (Nanette Fabray and Oscar Levant) hook him up with Broadway's hottest director, Jeffrey Cordova (a nicely hammy Jack Buchanan), who proves that the "new" theater traditions can be an awkward fit with the old. Hunter also finds himself at odds with his prima ballerina leading lady (Cyd... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Fred Astaire - Cyd Charisse Director(s): Vincente Minnelli DVD Release Date: Released the 15 March 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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This silky smooth film noir pits gruff police detective Dana Andrews, stiff and blunt in his street-bred manners, against a cultured columnist and acidic wit (Clifton Webb at his prissiest) in a battle of wits during a murder investigation. The cop is a romantic hiding under a hard-boiled exterior who falls in love with the beautiful victim through the portrait that hangs in her apartment. Gene Tierney, whose heart-shaped face mixes the exotic with the girl next door, brings the poise and calm of a model to her role as the object of every man's gaze and the target of a killer. Laura, handsomely shot in dreamy black and white, is the first and best of Otto Preminger's cool, controlled murder mysteries. In the gritty world of film noir it remains the most refined and elegant example... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gene Tierney - Dana Andrews Director(s): Rouben Mamoulian - Otto Preminger DVD Release Date: Released the 15 March 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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A funny thing happened to Finian's Rainbow in between its debut as a Broadway musical in 1947 and its appearance as a film in 1968. After 21 years, its theme of racial tension in the American South was no longer cutting edge, and the fact that its heroes are a group of sharecroppers called the Rainbow Valley Tobacco Cooperative dates it even further. Add a number of subplots and the heavy hand of a 29-year-old Francis Ford Coppola directing his first and only musical, and the two-and-a-half-hour running time feels bloated. Hermes Pan (best known for the classic Astaire-Rogers movies) is credited with choreographing the overbusy musical numbers, but he was reportedly overruled by Coppola at every turn. Still, there is a lot to enjoy in this movie, most notably Fred Astaire in his... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Fred Astaire - Petula Clark Director(s): Francis Ford Coppola DVD Release Date: Released the 15 March 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Two innocent sisters from Ohio hit Greenwich Village and must cope with wall-shaking subway construction, the neighborhood kooks, and a whopping $65 a month for an apartment. My Sister Eileen is one of those "Look out, world, we're conquering Manhattan!" movies, with Betty Garrett as a plain, would-be writer and Janet Leigh as her knockout sister, an aspiring actress who draws men like milk draws kittens. The 1955 movie's well-scrubbed Greenwich Village is a delightful fantasy playground. The city was never like this, but it probably should have been. In one of his early roles, Jack Lemmon (crooning one of the Jule Styne-Leo Robin songs quite charmingly) plays a magazine publisher, one of the many Young Men with Ideas he would play in the subsequent decade. Even more interesting... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Richard Quine DVD Release Date: Released the 22 February 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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