Movie Review: The Belle Of New York (1952)

A routine Fred Astaire musical, The Belle Of New York is short, sweet, silly and stuck on the sound stage.

It's early in the 1900s, and Angela (Vera-Ellen) is blossoming into an attractive woman, dangerously pretty for her job at a Salvation Army-like mission in New York City. Meanwhile, playboy bachelor Charles (Astaire) is threatening to get married again, although he rarely goes through with his threats, and instead leaves a succession of women at the altar.

When Charles meets Angela on the streets of New York, the attraction is immediate. She explains to him that being in love feels like walking on air, and sure enough Charles finds that he can float, sing and dance high above the ground. Much to the shock of his rich Aunt Lettie (Marjorie Main) and lawyer friend Max (Keenan Wynn), Charles proceeds to woo Angela by accepting a succession of honest day jobs, but his playboy reputation and tendencies get in the way.

The Belle Of New York has the definite whiff of a project slapped together in a hurry. With a small cast, stage-bound sets and a minimum of plot, the material is lightweight, and frequently threatens to be blown away with all the other floating-in-the-air cheesy effects.

Once Charles and Angela meet and the love affair starts about 20 minutes into the film, director Charles Waters struggles to generate substance. The film defaults to a succession of song and dance numbers ever so briefly interrupted by a few acting scenes and some slapstick-level humour. The dialogue is often sharp and clever, but there is not much of it. The vivid colours do add welcome vibrancy, but keeping the luminous Vera-Ellen mostly hidden in the drab clothing of a mission volunteer is quite self-defeating.

Fortunately Astaire and Vera-Ellen make for a good duo, and what they lack in chemistry as unconvincing lovers they make up for in energetic and innovative song and dance performances. Astaire hovers elegantly high above the Washington Square monument in Seeing's Believing, they team up for the cleverly choreographed Oops in and and around a horse-drawn streetcar before lighting up the dance floor in A Bride's Wedding Day Song. Vera-Ellen finally shows off her legs in Naughty But Nice while Astaire enjoys a superlative solo in I Wanna Be A Dancin' Man.

At just over 80 minutes The Belle Of New York drifts away humming a few good tunes, the featherweight airiness not leaving much of a lasting impression.

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Movie Review: On The Town (1949)

A rapturous celebration of wild fun, quick love and the pleasures of New York City, On The Town is an infectious musical with a glittering cast.

Three sailor friends have a 24 hour shore leave in New York. Gabey (Gene Kelly) wants to find the girl of his dreams, Chip (Frank Sinatra) wants to see all the sites, and Ozzie (Jules Munshin) is the overwhelmed sidekick. Gabey falls in love with the picture of the latest winner of the monthly "Miss Turnstiles" subway competition, and soon catches a glimpse of her: Ivy Smith (Vera-Ellen) is a simple girl from a small town, but Gabey thinks that she is a high society star. He is determined to catch up with her, and convinces Chip and Ozzie that they should help.

But as soon as they start their search for Ivy, anthropologist Claire (Ann Miller) bumps into Ozzie at the museum and is immediately enamoured with him, while determined taxi driver Hildy (Betty Garrett) sets her lustful sights on Chip. Ozzie and Chip abandon Gabey as they set off to have fun with Claire and Hildy respectively, and Chip gets to meet Hildy's nasally roommate Lucy Schmeeler (Alice Pearce). Gabey does track down Ivy and a serious romance ensues as they reconnect with Chip, Ozzie and their girls. The wild night progresses from the top of the Empire State Building to a variety of nightclubs, ending with a madcap police chase across the Brooklyn Bridge and into Coney Island.

An adaptation of the war-time stage musical, On The Town is revitalized for the screen with on-location shooting (unique for the time), a largely new musical score, and high energy dance numbers. Most of Leonard Berstein's songs for the stage production were dumped in favour of more upbeat material by Roger Edens, as co-directors Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen start pushing to define the boundaries of the new form of screen musical that will take hold in the 1950s. The dancing is high tempo, athletic and mixed with large doses humour, Kelly getting the flamboyant best out of Vera-Ellen and Ann Miller.

The highlights include the opening number New York, New York, as the sailors start their shore leave, and the quite hilarious Prehistoric Man with Claire wrapping Ozzie around her finger as Ann Miller tap dances up a storm. The aggressive Hildy finds all sorts of reasons for Chip to abandon his tour of the city and instead Come Up to My Place, while Gabey and Ivy imagine a small town date on Mainstreet.

Vera-Ellen features much more prominently than her sixth-ranked billing suggests. She shines as the multi-talented Ivy in Gabey's Miss Turnstiles imagination before he even meets her, and again dancing with Kelly in the dreamy ballet sequence.

As the day draws to an end the energy of the movie just gets stronger, the screenplay by Adolph Green and Betty Comden drawing inspiration from all that New York has to offer to maintain momentum. The sub-text of man-hungry women like Claire and Hildy hunting down the sailors is somewhat surprising, but likely linked to the war-time origins of the musical, with men absent from the home front and women doing their duty to entertain those on leave. A clever tour of various nightclubs adds more humour and builds the romance between Gabey and Ivy to a crescendo, complete with a Cinderella-style runaway lover close to midnight.

With a compact running length of just under 100 minutes, On The Town turns into the perfect day in the big city, and a perfect musical experience.

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Movie Review: Three Little Words (1950)

A biography of the Bert Kalmar - Harry Ruby songwriting team, Three Little Words is an infectiously bubbly celebration of musical creativity and friendship.

It's the early 1900s, and Bert Kalmar (Fred Astaire) forms a successful vaudeville dance partnership with Jessie Brown (Vera-Ellen). Kalmar is full of show business ideas and ambition, and wants to also prove himself as a magician. Harry Ruby (Red Skelton) is a piano plugger, wannabe baseball player, and struggling to get his music writing noticed. The two have a disastrous first encounter, with Harry inadvertently wrecking Bert's magic show.

A backstage accident injures Bert's knee, forcing him to temporarily retire from dancing. Another fortuitous meeting with Harry results in their writing a hit song, Bert providing the lyrics to Harry's music. A series of hit songs follow, and the partnership grows to include stage shows and movie soundtracks. The men also develop a deep friendship, Harry helping Bert and Jessie to reconnect and get married, while Bert and Jessie together save Harry from a series of disastrous relationships before he finally settles down with screen star Eileen Percy (Arlene Dahl). But every friendship has its rough spots, and Bert and Harry have disagreements that seriously threaten their partnership.


A perfectly constructed film, Three Little Words is one of the more underrated classic musicals. Finding an impeccable balance between dancing, singing, comedy and story, the movie just simply works as a seamless whole. Within the packed 100 minute running length, director Richard Thorpe gives each element of the film its proper due, and the result is an experience with just the right ingredients mixed in just the appropriate amounts.

Astaire and Vera-Ellen are a formidable dance team. She is full of balletic energy and fluid leggy seductiveness as she partners Astaire in the classic Where Did You Get That Girl? and the much more modern and thoroughly delightful Mr. and Mrs. Hoofer At Home. She then goes it alone with Come On, Papa before they team up again the the beautifully dreamy Thinking Of You.


The songs are just as good, and Three Little Words explores that always mystical and sometime frustrating process of creating a successful song. Sometimes every word is a struggle, while at other times inspiration just descends in the middle of the night. My Sunny Tennessee, So Long, OO-Long, Who's Sorry Now? (sung by Gloria DeHaven), Nevertheless (I'm in Love with You), and I Wanna Be Loved by You (featuring one of Debbie Reynolds' earliest performances as the boop-boop-a-doop girl Helen Kane) are all featured. And the film's running joke is Bert's long-term inability to find lyrics to a simple Harry tune, which finally ends up being Three Little Words.

The George Wells screenplay effortlessly weaves the song and dance numbers into the story, and keeps them short and sharp. The result is that rare movie in which the music only enhances the narrative, without unnecessarily interrupting or delaying it. At its heart Three Little Words never forgets that this is a story about a friendship and a partnership between two real people, and the relationship is portrayed with all the magic moments and troubled patches that emerge when two men work closely together over the decades.

The presence of Skelton adds a natural dose of comedy, Harry portrayed as a well-meaning, positive personality, but susceptible to getting himself into trouble. Astaire gets to dance, sing and act in one his most well-rounded performances, while Keenan Wynn provides his reliable support as Bert's agent Charlie Kope.

Greatness arrives in modest packages. The words may be little, but the success is large.

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