Musical Madness: On the Town

Moving further into the musical abyss, I find myself five years later than my first entry into this series.  While there were many musicals made in-between Meet Me in St. Louis and today's feature, On the Town, many are difficult to find on DVD, Blue Ray, or by other conventional means, the ones that are don't really do it for me.  On the bright side, On the Town happens to ranks as one of my all time favourite movie musicals.  Co-directed by Stanley Donan and Gene Kelly and with a cast featuring Kelly and Frank Sinatra, On the Town (1949) represents the Technicolor musical at its most fun.

On the Town revolves around three sailors, Gabey, Chip, and Ozzie (Kelly, Sinatra, and Jules Munshin respectively), who are on 24 hour shore leave in New York City.  It's their first time in the Big Apple and they want to pack in all the sites and dames that they can, and as you would expect misadventures abound.  The main plot thread that extends throughout the picture is Kelly's pursuit of Miss. Turnstiles, aka. Ivy Smith (played by Vera Ellen), the New York Subway's flavour of the month pin-up.  As the sailors search the city for Miss Turnstiles, each picks up a lady friend to aid in their quest.  First, female cabby Brunhilde (the incredibly underrated comedian Betty Garrett) takes a shine to Chip and decided to give them access to her cab.  Then while searching the Museum of Natural History they happen upon anthropologist Claire (Ann Miller) who declares Ozzie to be a perfect specimen of prehistoric man;  unfortunately a lively song and dance number brings down an entire dinosaur skeleton, and puts the heat on our growing group.  They decide to split up with the two newly formed couples taking off with each other and Gabey left to search on his own.  Of course, he just happens to meet up with Ivy again and after melting her seemingly haughty veneer gets her to meet up with he and the group for a night on the town.  The rest of the film is devoted to their night on the town and the continued hijinks of the three sailors and their gals as they try to do it all and avoid the cops. 

On the Town is one of the more successful musicals in the fact that it does not sacrifice story for the musical numbers (a crime that many other musicals of the era are guilty of).  While the story is pretty light and fluffy, it is always enjoyable and the enthusiasm of the performers shine through and infect the viewer with joy.  The film never takes itself too seriously.  I also can't think of a bad musical number in the whole film.  The introductory number New York, New York might be one of the most fun musical numbers put on film (the song is also an incredible earworm) and the film's centrepiece On the Town is similarly enjoyable with the six main player singing and dancing their hearts out.

Where the film falters (only slightly!) is the five minute A Day in New York ballet number where Gene Kelly, Vera Ellen and four other dancers representing the other character in the group pantomime the exact story we've just seen (the group on their night on the town).  It's a bit redundant, but of the extended dance sequences in Kelly's movies (there is usually one per picture in the films where he has some creative control) it is probably the shortest and least jarring.  It's also the least visually interesting.  I'll get into Gene Kelly's obsessive devotion to the art of dance and the demands that he made of the actresses appearing opposite his in future musical madness articles (there are more interesting tales to be told with regards to other films).  Of these films this one suffers the least under these creative demands.

On the Town is a wonderful film that doesn't demand much of the viewer.  It is light and airy and presents the talents involved at their best.  Noteable also is that this the first Hollywood musical to film on location.  Just to infect you with a little bit of the fun, and show off some of those great on location shots, here's the great New York, New York opening...

RIP: Jane Russell 1921 - 2011

Yet another sad passing to report.  Famed actress and classic Hollywood sex symbol. Jane Russel passed away on February 28 at the age of 89. 

Russell first rose to fame as the star of Howard Hughes' western The Outlaw (1943), in which the films entire marketing campaign revolved around Ms. Russell's ample cleavage.  If you've ever seen Martin Scorcese's The Aviator (2004), you're probably familiar with the scene in which Howard Hughes defends featuring Russell's breast so gratuitously in The Outlaw, at a moral decency hearing when it was believed that her assets violated the Hayes code. In spite of her controversial introduction to the world she went on to a successful film career, highlighted by staring roles opposite Robert Mitchum and Frank Sinatra.  Her most iconic role was in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1952), starring opposite Marilyn Monroe. 

Although Hollywood cast her as the sultry sexpot, in real life Jane Russell was a devout Christian.  As her film career declined she went on to headline various nightclub and musical acts.  She also became a Playtex bra spokeswoman during the seventies.  She married three times, staying happily married to her third husband until his death in 1999.  She was very active in the Christan community and was also passionate about helping orphaned children find homes, fonding the World Adoption International Fund in 1955.

A Bombshell for the Ages: Kim Novak

Marilyn Pauline Novak, more famously known as Kim Novak, has a rare indefinable beauty that enthralled audiences of the 1950s.  A combination of cool refinement and a sensuality that simmered just below the surface, she was known to many as the Lavender Blonde, mainly due to the studio mandated blue tone in her blond hair and her remote persona.  A persona that had never been seen in Hollywood and never been duplicated.  Unfortunately for Kim, her stunning beauty often obscured the fact that she was a very talented actress.

Born in Chicago, in 1933, to second generation Czech-immigrants, Ms. Novak began her career as a model, first modeling teen fashions and later touring the United States as Miss Deep Freeze, the spokesmodel for an appliance company.  She was discovered by Columbia Studios after moving to Los Angeles in 1953 and signed to a brief six-month contract, with hopes that she would become Columbia’s answer to Marilyn Monroe.  The studio’s first point of business was to change her name, so as not to be confused with Miss Monroe.  The studio’s original suggestion was Kit Marlowe, however Novak was adamant about keeping part of her name and they soon settled on the moniker Kim Novak. 

In her first couple of roles, Kim was cast as a sexpot femme fatale, which instantly caught audience’s attention and led to a remarkable amount of fan mail.  Columbia, then cast Kim in her breakthrough role as Madge Owens opposite William Holden and Rosalind Russell in 1955’s Picnic.  During the next couple of years Kim starred in several hits including The Man With The Golden Arm, Pal Joey (both opposite Frank Sinatra), and Jeanne Eagles.  Audiences couldn’t get enough of Kim’s enigmatic persona. 

Kim’s career would reach an apex in 1958, when she was cast in Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece, Vertigo, giving a performance that was maligned when the film was released, but would later be reassessed and branded brilliant by critics and fans alike.  She also earned the ire of director Alfred Hitchcock, who considered her habit of not wearing a bra vulgar, and detested her constant questions and input into his film. That same year she was cast as a seductive witch opposite her Vertigo co-star, the great James Stewart, in Bell, Book, and Candle.  Both Vertigo and Bell, Book, and Candle had lackluster box-office returns, marking a decline for Kim that continued throughout the rest of the fifties and early sixties. 

By 1965, Kim had grown restless in her role as a movie star, and decided to take a break from acting and focus on some of her other interests.  She made intermittent returns to the screen between the late sixties and early nineties, but her love of art (she is an accomplished painter, sculptress, and poet) and animals (she lives on a ranch with her veterinarian husband) have since ruled her life.   

Now 77, she still maintains that indefinable quality that makes her so compelling.  Most recently she made an appearance at the Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles last August for a special screening of Bell, Book, and Candle and to promote The Kim Novak Collection on DVD.  It’s an awesome collection that I would recommend to any Kim Novak enthusiast.

A Bombshell for the Ages: Ava Gardner

Few women made the kind of impression that Ava Gardner did on the world.  Born on Christmas Eve on 1922, Ava Lavinia Gardner rose to fame in 1946 with a career-making role as femme fatale Kitty Collins in Robert Siodmak’s noir classic The Killers.  From that moment on the skies were the limit for Ava, and with her extraordinary good looks and often overlooked talent she became one of the great Hollywood stars of the late forties and fifties.

Ava was discovered in 1941 when a picture of her displayed in the window of her brother-in-law’s photography studio led to her being signed to a seven-year contract with MGM.  Once in Hollywood the studio went to work grooming Ms. Gardner to be a star.  During this time she also caught the attention of Mickey Rooney, whom she married soon after her arrival.  A year later they divorced, and she became involved for a brief time with Howard Hughes and later married bandleader Artie Shaw.  While on contract to MGM in the early stages of her career she was cast in bit parts, and spent a great deal of time posing for cheesecake pin-up photos for the studio.  Although, Ava’s photos never found the popularity of the iconic Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth pictures, her stunning beauty made them something special. 

Once her career took off after The Killers, and her marriage to Artie Shaw ended, Ava had many affairs with some of her famous leading men.  However it was her legendary affair and marriage to Frank Sinatra that immortalized Ava Gardner in the annals of great Hollywood beauties.  Theirs was a relationship of great intensity, made up of passionate love and volatile fighting.  Ultimately their marriage ended in 1957 after their long history of violent blow-ups had taken their final toll.  It is said that Ava was the great love of Sinatra’s life and he carried a torch for her up until his death.  The same has been said for Ava, who never remarried.

After her break-up with Sinatra, Ava left Hollywood for Spain where she befriended Ernest Hemmingway, became an avid fan of bullfighting (and bullfighters), took to drinking and dancing all night with bands of Gypsies, and became known for a wide range of bad behavior.  By the early sixties she was appearing in fewer pictures, and once Spain had lost its appeal she moved to London where she lived until her death in 1990. 

Some of Ava’s most famous films include Showboat, Snows of Kilimanjaro, Night of the Iguana, and Mogambo, for which she earned her only Oscar nomination.  Those who knew her loved her for her warmth, quick wit and salty language.   She was truly a bombshell for the ages. 

The Alberta Film Society is currently holding an eight film retrospective for famed director John Ford.  His 1952 film, Mogombo, staring Ava Gardner will be featured on October 18, 2010.  For more information visit their site at http://www.royalalbertamuseum.ca/events/movies/movies.cfm.