Main >> Entertainment & Games >> Movies--Other

 
On The Town

ON THE TOWN

[IMAGE]

CREDITS

1949, 98 minutes, Technicolor.
Producer, Arthur Freed; Director, Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen; Screenplay, Betty Comden and Adolph Green; Music Direction, Lennie Hayton; Choreography, Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen; Cinematography, Harold Rosson.

CAST

Gabey, Gene Kelly; Chip, Frank Sinatra; Brunhilde Esterhazy, Betty Garrett; Claire Huddesen, Ann Miller; Ozzie, Jules Munshin; Ivy Smith, Vera-Ellen; Madame Dilyovska, Florence Bates; Lucy Schmeeler, Alice Pearce; Ballet Dancers, Alex Romero, Gene Scott, Carol Haney and Marie Grosscup.

SONGS

I Feel Like I'm Not Out Of Bed Yet; New York, New York; Come Up To My Place by Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden and Adolph Green; A Day in New York Ballet; Miss Turnstiles Ballet by Leonard Bernstein; Prehistoric Man; Main Street; You're Awful; On The Town; Count On Me; Pearl of the Persian Sea; That's All There Is, Folks by Roger Edens, Comden and Green.

PLOT SYNOPSIS

"Three sailors disembark from their battleship in the Brooklyn Navy Yard at six o'clock one morning and spend the next 24 hours in search of women and fun. Kelly falls in love with a poster of the subway's Miss Turnstiles (Vera-Ellen) and spends half the film searching for its model whom he finally tracks down at Symphonic Hall where she is receiving ballet instruction from an inebriated Maria Ouspenskaya-type ballet mistress (Florence Bates). Sinatra. . .is chased with relentless zeal by a lady cab driver called Brunhilde Esterhazy (Betty Garrett) while the third (Jules Munshin) makes quite a hit with an anthropologist (Ann Miller) he happens to meet at the Anthropological Museum."
- Clive Hirschhorn, The Hollywood Musical

NOTES

". . .the freshest, most invigorating and innovative screen musical of the decade, and the perfect vehicle for Gene Kelly. . .On The Town. . .pushed the Hollywood musical out of its claustrophobic confines in search of new ideas, and was a landmark of its time."
- Clive Hirschhorn, The Hollywood Musicals

". . .a film so exuberant that it threatens at moments to bounce right off the screen. . .leaves a happy impression that MGM has hit upon a bright new idiom for cinemusicals and a bright new directing team that knows how to use it."
- Time Magazine

"This musical about three sailors with 24 hours leave in New York has an undeserved high reputation. . .its exuberant love of New York seems forced, and most of the numbers are hearty and uninspired."
- Pauline Kael, 5001 Nights At The Movies

ACADEMY AWARD WINNER:
Scoring Of a Musical Picture

On the Town was the 13th highest-grossing film of 1950. See Box Office Hits

[IMAGE]

Return to The Great MGM Musicals Page