Bells Are Ringing **** (1960, Judy Holliday, Dean Martin, Fred Clark, Eddie Foy Jr, Frank Gorshin, Jean Stapleton) – Classic Movie Review 5689

In her last film, the enchanting Oscar-winning actress Judy Holliday revives her great Broadway role (with nearly 1,000 performances) as Ella Peterson, a telephonist who interferes in her callers’ affairs and falls for the playwright Jeffrey Moss (Dean Martin) on the phone.

Holliday was Golden Globe nominated for Best Actress – Comedy or Musical and the film was nominated for Best Motion Picture – Musical. André Previn was Oscar nominated for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture.

Ella is determined to meet Jeffrey but has always pretended to be an old woman he calls ‘mom’, which kind of gets in the way of romance! Then one day he doesn’t answer her wake-up alarm, so she whizzes over to his flat to raise him for his vital date.

Rightly the movie is Holliday’s triumph, and she is such fun and so appealing. But old smoothie Martin also shares in the fun and the numbers very nicely and sweetly in director Vincente Minnelli’s thoroughly enjoyable 1960 MGM movie version of the outstanding Betty Comden and Adolph Green musical with stupendous all-time great Jule Styne songs (‘Just in Time’, ‘The Party’s Over’,’I’m Going Back to the Bonjour Tristesse Brassiere Company’).

Other assets are co-stars Fred Clark, Frank Gorshin, Jean Stapleton and Ruth Storey, plus there is Eddie Foy Jr as a bookie, a gleaming MGM studio production and nimble direction by Minnelli.

Sadly, though, the public failed to come out to see it as musical films had by then gone out of fashion.

Tragically, Holliday died aged 43 of breast cancer in 1965 after only a dozen movies.

Also in the cast are Dort Clark, Bernie West, Valerie Allen, Steven Peck and Gerry Mulligan.

It is written by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, shot in widescreen by Milton Krasner, produced by Arthur Freed, scored by André Previn, choreographed by Charles O’Curran and designed by George W Davis and Preston Ames. The music is by Jule Styne and the lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green.

Holliday was the Oscar-winning actress for Born Yesterday (1950). Her other successes are Adam’s Rib (1949), The Marrying Kind (1952), Phffft! (1954) and The Solid Gold Cadillac (1956).

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5689

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com