Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.5

On the Town Blu-ray Movie Review

It's a Helluva—Oops!—WONDERFUL Town

Reviewed by Michael Reuben May 5, 2015

It's appropriate that the hit 1949 movie of On the Town is being released on Blu-ray just as the first commercially successful Broadway revival of the original 1944 musical has been nominated for multiple awards. (Two previous revivals failed to attract audiences.) But any fan of the film co-directed by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly who buys a ticket to the show currently wowing audiences at the Lyric Theatre on 42nd Street is in for a shock. The film, which was produced by the reliable Arthur Freed Unit at MGM, retained the stage show's basic story about three sailors spending a day's shore leave in New York City, and it kept a few well-known songs, but much of the book and most of the score were tossed aside.

Composer Roger Edens, who co-produced the film with Freed, didn't like Leonard Bernstein's original music for On the Town, which Edens considered too fancy. Edens proceeded to compose his own songs, and lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green were sufficiently adaptable (and wise enough in the ways of show business) to write new lyrics. They also revised the musical's story to capitalize on the re-teaming of Kelly with Frank Sinatra, who had previously played sailors on leave in the successful Anchors Aweigh four years earlier. On the Town already contained the germ of a similar friendship for the two actors to play, with Kelly once again cast as the ladies' man and Sinatra playing another tongue-tied romantic amateur (a joke in itself, given the crooner's notorious reputation). In revising their book into a screenplay, Comden and Green expanded on that notion, dropped subplots, altered characters and generally tailored the story to the stars' personas.

The result was a hit that has cast an indelibly romantic glow over post-war New York ever since, even though the movie script had to omit much of the sexual frankness that audiences of the current stage revival are now delightedly rediscovering. Under the prevailing Hays Code restrictions, the movie couldn't even celebrate New York in song as "a helluva town", despite the fact that the singers were sailors. Ironically, the passage of time and changing standards has rendered what did pass the watchful eyes of the censors so thoroughly unacceptable that today it would never survive the first draft. The movie retains its pleasures, but next to the original, it's more noteworthy for its lack of political correctness than its adult content.

As an unidentified hard-hat laborer reports to work ("I Feel Like I'm Not Out of Bed Yet"), three sailors disembark on a 24-hour pass: Gabey (Kelly), Chip (Sinatra) and Ozzie (Jules Munshin, who previously appeared in the Kelly/Sinatra vehicle, Take Me Out to the Ballgame). They immediately break into "New York, New York", one of the few Bernstein tunes that Edens kept, because he had no choice: It's the show's signature anthem. Thanks to Kelly's insistence that at least some of the film be shot on location, the sequence features a montage of real New York scenes, which makes it seem like the trio has already been everywhere when Chip sits down to plot out their itinerary. But in a musical, one shouldn't fret the details.

Gabey and Ozzie want to pick up girls, but Chip is too shy to consider such pursuits. He remains glued to his guidebook, which turns out to be outdated. (It's the subject of another song kept from Bernstein's score: "Come Up to My Place".) But Chip's reticence becomes a moot point, when an amorous female cab driver named Hildy Esterhazy (Betty Garrett) likes the look of him and won't take no for an answer, either from Chip or from Hildy's roommate, Lucy Schmeeler (Alice Pearce), who has inconveniently stayed home from work with a cold. (Fans of the TV series Bewitched will recognize Pearce from her future famous role as nosy neighbor Gladys Kravitz.)

Each of the remaining two finds his own true-love-for-a-day (and maybe the future—the ending leaves everything open). Gabey falls for "Miss Turnstiles" after seeing her picture in the subway. Her name is Ivy Smith (Vera-Ellen, White Christmas ), and Gabey assumes she's a celebrity, when in fact she's just an aspiring actress who happens to be that month's face of the transit system's promotional campaign. A small-town girl, and ashamed of it, she can barely afford the singing lessons provided by the imperious Mme. Dilyovska (Florence Bates) and has to support herself as a "cooch dancer" at Coney Island. This is hardly the glamorous life that Gabey imagines for his beloved, when he envisions Ivy leading the life of a star (in an elaborate dance routine choreographed by Kelly).

While helping Gabey look for Miss Turnstiles, Ozzie finds his lady at the Museum of Anthropological History (now known as the Museum of Natural History, where the first Night at the Museum was set). Her name is Claire Huddesen (Ann Miller), and she's trying to swear off her addiction to men by occupying her mind with serious study. Fortunately for Ozzie, Claire makes an exception for him when she notices his remarkable resemblance to one of the statues of early homo sapiens, leading to a song-and-dance routine to the tune of "Prehistoric Man" (an original Edens song). With images of a club-toting caveman dragging a woman by her hair and "primitives" dancing in an obvious parody of African tribes (or what the 1949 audience probably imagined were African tribes, after watching too many Tarzan movies), the sequence may have been funny then, but today it's squirm-inducing.

In the original stage play, Claire was engaged to the sober-minded Judge Pitkin W. Bridgework, who tolerated her indiscretions and followed her around town paying everyone's tab. With Pitkin dropped from the screenplay, Claire has to come up with cash, of which she magically seems to have large quantities without explanation, as the group hops from one nightspot to another. No one has ever questioned how Claire manages to be so well-financed.

After the usual misunderstandings, hijinks and missed connections, the three couples ultimately connect, first, atop the Empire State Building and ultimately at Ivy Smith's cooch dancing exhibit at Coney Island, where our three heroes are forced to enact a miniature version of Some Like It Hot in an effort to escape the various pursuers they have picked up during their travels. Ultimately, love and patriotism prevail in equal measure to set our boys on course back to their ship just in time to encounter the next group disembarking for a 24-hour pass, as their three ladies wave good-bye.

On the Town Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

On the Town was shot in three-strip Technicolor by Harold Rossen, who would also shoot Singin' in the Rain for Donen and Kelly. Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray was clearly not the beneficiary of the patented "Ultra Resolution" process recently featured on Warner's release of The Band Wagon. Aside from the fact that Warner never applies Ultra Resolution without touting it in their press materials, the image doesn't measure up. It's colorful enough, but detail and sharpness are lacking, along with almost any evidence of grain. In a few long shots, there's some obvious ringing to indicate the application of electronic sharpening, but the most prevalent negative is the absence of high frequency detail, which appears to have been rolled off to facilitate the compression of a film filled with energetic motion onto a BD-25. (The average bitrate is 23.91 Mbps.)

I have no doubt that fans of the film who have been eagerly awaiting its release on Blu-ray will protest that "This is the best it's ever looked!"—and they're probably right. But that's setting the bar very low for a high-definition format that is fast approaching its ninth birthday. With its corporate affiliate, the Warner Archive Collection, repeatedly setting high standards for the film-like reproduction of niche titles, using the same facilities as Warner Home Video, WHV has no excuse for offering lesser quality on catalog films it believes to have broader appeal. Reliable reports continue to indicate that change is coming, but it hasn't arrived with On the Town or the other titles new to the Frank Sinatra Collection .

On the Town Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

On the Town's original mono track has been encoded as lossless DTS-HD MA 1.0. The source is in fine shape and, within the limitations of the era, does justice to the musical numbers and vocal performances, which were studio-recorded. The dynamic range is limited, but the highs aren't harsh and the lows aren't boomy. Both dialogue and lyrics are clearly rendered. As a personal matter, I prefer Bernstein's compositions to Edens', but the reproduction can't be faulted.

On the Town Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Warner previously released On the Town on DVD in 2000 and again in 2008. Both releases had only a trailer. This Blu-ray version adds a few more extras:

• Mr. Whitney Had a Notion (480i; 1.37:1; 10:47): In this 1949 MGM short, Eli Whitney (Lloyd Bridges), the inventor of the cotton gin, creates a system for mass producing muskets for the U.S. military.



• Doggone Tired (480i; 1.37:1; 7:36): In this 1949 MGM cartoon, a wily rabbit sets out to ensure that the hound who will track him in the following day's hunt is sleep-deprived. Directed by Tex Avery.



• Trailer (480i; 1.37:1; 3:01): As an advertising hook, the trailer specifically references Anchors Aweigh.

On the Town Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Some people consider On the Town to be more Gene Kelly's film than Frank Sinatra's, and it's true that Gabey is considered the lead role on Broadway. Still, the show remains a quintessential ensemble piece, and it wouldn't work—on stage or screen—without strong performances by all six actors and actresses playing the sailors and their whirlwind romantic partners. As directors, Donen and Kelly found the right chemistry, which is why the film worked despite a watered-down script and Roger Edens' workmanlike but ultimately uninspired songs. (Think about it. What do you remember from the film beyond "New York, New York"—which Leonard Bernstein wrote?) Since Warner is unlikely to redo the Blu-ray, this is the best we'll probably get, but it's passable. Buyer's choice.