Amazon.com video review:
Three of Frank Sinatra's best musicals are bundled together in
one boxed set. Anchors Aweigh teams Sinatra with Gene Kelly in a
musical about sailors on leave who get into all kinds of adventures
(including Kelly dancing with Jerry the mouse of Tom & Jerry fame). On
the Town is a variation on the same theme, but a much better movie;
again, Sinatra and Kelly are teamed as sailors on leave (with Jules
Munshin) for a day in New York. This time, however, they have music and
lyrics by Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green, New York
locations, and direction by Kelly and Stanley Donen. High Society is the
Cole Porter
musical based on The Philadelphia Story that teams Sinatra with Grace
Kelly and Bing Crosby; one of the greats.
--Marshall Fine
Amazon.com Essentials:
New York, New York--it's a helluva town; the Bronx is up and
the Battery's down; the people ride in a hole in the ground.... Well,
you get the idea. Those lyrics (by Betty Comden and Adolph Green),
set to Leonard Bernstein's music, have made On the Town a
permanent part of the psychological landscape of New York City. The
story (inspired by Jerome Robbins's ballet Fancy Free) is
pretty slight: Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Jules Munshin play
sailors with 24 hours' leave to take their bite out of the Big Apple.
When they meet, and then lose, this month's Miss Turnstiles
(Vera-Ellen), they scour the town in search of her, bumping into a
lady anthropologist (Ann Miller) along the way. Shot mostly in the
studio, but with location exteriors all over town, from Coney Island
to the Statue of Liberty to Central Park, this 1949 gem was the first
of three great musicals codirected by Kelly and Stanley Donen,
followed by Singin' in
the Rain (1952) and the underrated It's Always Fair
Weather (1955). --Jim Emerson
Amazon.com Essentials:
New York, New York--it's a helluva town; the Bronx is up and
the Battery's down; the people ride in a hole in the ground.... Well,
you get the idea. Those lyrics (by Betty Comden and Adolph Green),
set to Leonard Bernstein's music, have made On the Town a
permanent part of the psychological landscape of New York City. The
story (inspired by Jerome Robbins's ballet Fancy Free) is
pretty slight: Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Jules Munshin play
sailors with 24 hours' leave to take their bite out of the Big Apple.
When they meet, and then lose, this month's Miss Turnstiles
(Vera-Ellen), they scour the town in search of her, bumping into a
lady anthropologist (Ann Miller) along the way. Shot mostly in the
studio, but with location exteriors all over town, from Coney Island
to the Statue of Liberty to Central Park, this 1949 gem was the first
of three great musicals codirected by Kelly and Stanley Donen,
followed by Singin' in the Rain (1952) and the underrated It's Always Fair
Weather (1955). --Jim Emerson
