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Better Late Then Never

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

The writing team of Betty Comden and Adolph Green had successive hits with "Bells Are Ringing." The first was on Broadway where the musical play ran for 924 performances from 1956-1959. The second was this 1960 film starring Judy Holliday and Dean Martin. Holliday and Jean Stapleton reprised their roles from the play as Ella Peterson and Sue, respectively. The Broadway romp won Holliday a Tony award as best actress in a musical, and co-star Sydney Chaplin the Tony as best actor in a musical. While the film just received one Oscar nomination – Andre Previn for musical composition, it was a box office hit. Musicals were supposed to have been passé by 1960, but this film showed there was still interest in the genre. Indeed, every decade since has had at least one smash hit musical, and some have had a few to several. The ingredients for success in that genre today are either a knockout plot or dynamite music. Some have had both. This film has a dilly of a plot with a very clever story idea. And, of its songs, three became popular tunes in their day – "Just in Time," "The Party's Over," and "Long Before I Knew You."For history buffs, "Bells Are Ringing" also has a bit of nostalgia, showing the days when businesses and people used telephone answering services. "Susanswerphone" is a clever name the writers gave to the business in this film. Another very clever, and funny aspect is the bookie betting system based on music. Racetracks were represented by names of classic composers. The parody of Handel's Hallelujah chorus is excellent, and I don't think irreverent. Otto Prantz (played superbly by Eddie Foy Jr.), "What is Handel?" Chorus, "Hialeah, Hialeah!" Prantz, "What is Handle?" Chorus, "Hialeah, Hialeah." Prantz, "Oh, what a system."Holliday, Martin and the entire cast are very good. One of the numbers toward the end of the film, "Drop That Name" has Ella singing with an ensemble of a cast of people at the party. It may hold the record for most name-dropping ever in a movie. Holliday especially shows her talent with some skits in which she plays a number of different characters with voice changes and mannerisms to suit. Here are a couple funny lines from the film. For more funny dialog snippets, see the Quotes section on this IMDb Web page of the film. Blake Barton (played by Frank Gorshin), "So I get this image see, of a ostrich – a ostrich trying to bury his head in a cement pavement." Two guys listening to him, "Cuckoo. Cuckoo."Jeffrey Moss, "You know, if I hadn't found you crawling around on my floor, I wouldn't be invited anyplace. I'd just be resting comfortably, face down, in the gutter."

If I was asked to describe this musical with one word, it would be zany. Crazy, madcap, wacky, whacky, screwball, screwy and unconventional are the other words suggested by Microsoft Word. Pons asinorum, Dean Martin's character is a playwright in need of encouragement and inspiration. Judy Holliday's character, a telephone operator, is there to provide them. There's actually nothing standing between them except for the ancient old romantic comedy regulation that demands a misconception of any kind to drive a wedge between them.But this isn't why I decided to write a little review. I wanted to tell just how well they play together; what kooky characters they encounter; how they swing the Jule Styne songs. Imagine Seinfeld, the musical. That's it. The highlight of the film is Dino singing Just in Time. Saying hello to strangers and breaking into a cappella song never felt so nice, and easy.

Judy Holliday gained Broadway stardom and entry into Hollywood with her performance as Billie Dawn in BORN YESTERDAY. She also would score on Broadway for the last time in the musical THE BELLS ARE RINGING. I find it amazing, given the paucity of her film career, that these two stage performances were preserved, while so many great stage performances (of Ethel Merman, Mary Martin, Ethel Waters) failed to get preserved in the Hollywood system. Obviously the saleability of Holliday in 1960 was higher than that of Merman (even after ANNIE GET YOUR GUN), most likely due to her Oscar. One can only be grateful to providence or whatever for coming to Holliday's aid here - one wishes it could have stepped up for the others more often.THE BELLS ARE RINGING was directed by Vincent Minelli, and has some great musical numbers in it: Eddie Foy's "It's a Simple Little System" where his record sales mask a bookie operation, culminating in a mock song spiel of serious music lovers singing the names of race courses to the "Hallelujah" Chorus; the "Drop that Name" number at Fred Clark's party, wherein the only name of a celebrity Judy can recall is Rin Tin Tin; the "Just in Time" song and dance by Dean Martin and Judy Holliday in a mini-park, and it's follow-up of "The Party's Over", probably Judy's best sung tune in her career. Not all the show's tunes are in the movie. Eddie Foy sings a song to Jean Stapleton (Sue of Sue's Answer Phone) to romance her with his mock European elegance - the song is called "Salzberg by the Sea" which shows how phony he really is (Salzberg is in the center of landlocked Austria!).The film is well set in it's period, in two odd ways. One is a gag in the story: Frank Gorshin as method actor Blake Barton, who is an obvious spoof of Marlon Brando. The other is the appearance of Dean Martin as Jeffrey Moss, the troubled composer hero of the musical who romances Ella Peterson (Judy). In the Broadway production it was Hal Linden who played opposite Judy (he appears in this film, in his first film role, singing the song "The Midas Touch" at a nightclub). But Martin was a nationally known singer, and movie star. But he was, in real life, facing a situation exactly like Jeffrey Moss. Moss (before the story of the show begins) has been in a successful theater team, like Gilbert and Sullivan or Rodgers and Hammerstein...or like Martin and Lewis. In fact, Moss's partner just broke up the partnership (and is doing well on his own - like Lewis did at first). Moss's funk is what the public in 1960 thought Martin had faced a few years earlier when Lewis split with him.The movie showcases Judy's comic talents, as she stimulates Martin, Gorshin, Bernie West (the musically inclined Dr. Kitchell), confronts Dort Clarke (the ambitious Inspector Barnes), and aids a desperate Otto when threatened by hoods. She handles the situations well, reminding us of how talented a lady she was. It was a fitting conclusion to her career - but a sad reminder that that career deserved to be far longer than it was.

Vincente Minnelli's "Bells Are Ringing" (1960) generally gets a bad wrap from reviewers and critics alike. While it is true that the film came at the tail end of MGM's reign of supremacy in musical motion picture entertainment – and it is equally true that the film falls short by direct comparison to, say, Minnelli's "Meet Me In St. Louis (an unfair but often used example), all the pistons are firing on this occasion with this delightful story of a phone operator who falls in love with one of her clients.The story concerns lonely Ella Peterson (Judy Holliday in her final performance). Working out of a basement apartment for Susan's-a-phone (a personal message service), Ella longs for the good life and the right fella to fill her needs. However, that doesn't prevent her plucky personality from offering equal portions of good advice and smart talk to her roster of happy clients. Ella's fraternization doesn't particularly sit well with her employer, Sue (Jean Stapleton) who is all dollars and cents, or police detective, Barnes (Dort Clark) who advises Ella that it's illegal to provide unsolicited information in the capacity of a business acquaintance. But Ella is all set to throw caution to the wind when she falls in love with Plaza 0-double four, double nine. That extension belongs to Jeffrey Moss (Dean Martin), a once successful playwright who fears that his days of popularity are numbered and has since turned to shallow women and hollow relationships for solace.Screenwriters Betty Comden and Adolph Green transform their Broadway original into a sublime cinematic treat. Minnelli directs adroitly and – given the limited budget he had to work with – delivers a film that appears to be on a much grander scale than it actually is. Particularly in his execution of the "Drop that Name" sequence – in which Ella lampoons her association with the hoi polloi, Minnelli's brisk camera work and staging is flawless. The same is true during Eddy Foy Jr.'s charming romp in "Oh, What A System". Delivered with comedic panache and laconic savvy a la the darling Holliday and charming Martin, the rest of the score, including such standards as "Just in Time" and "Drop That Name" is brilliant and bouncy.Thanks to Warner's stunning new transfer, "Bells are Ringing" arrives 'just in time' on DVD. The anamorphically enhanced Cinemascope image is outstanding. Colors are nicely balanced. Image quality is a marked improvement over anything this film has looked like before on home video. Blacks are rich, deep and solid. Whites are crisp, but never blooming. There is a hint of film grain and the occasional shimmer of fine detail but nothing that will distract you from wallowing in the riotous splendor of this musical classic. The audio has been impeccably remastered in 5.1 and delivers an unexpectedly powerful kick during the songs. The one disappointment for admirers of this film is that the featurette on the film "Just in Time" is way too short to be considered a valid supplement. Others include two outtake musical sequences made available previously, and the film's theatrical trailer. Regardless of these shortcomings, "Bells Are Ringing" comes highly recommended as great good time fun.