Bells Are Ringing is a 1960 romantic comedy-musical film directed by Vincente Minnelli.
Production notes
Based on the successful 1956 Broadway production of the same name by Betty Comden, Adolph Green, and Jule Styne, it focused on Ella Peterson, who works in the basement office of Susanswerphone. Peterson, based on Mary Printz,[1] who worked at Green's telephone answering service, is an answering service operator who listens in on others' lives and adds some interest to her own humdrum existence by adopting different identities for her clients, including an out-of-work Method actor, a dentist with musical yearnings, and playwright Jeffrey Moss, who is suffering from writer's block and desperately needs a muse. Adding complications to the plot are the police, who are certain the business is a front for an "escort service," and the owner's shady boyfriend, who unbeknownst to her is using the agency as a bookmaking operation.
Judy Holliday and Jean Stapleton reprised their stage roles for the film. The cast also included Dean Martin, Eddie Foy Jr., Fred Clark, Frank Gorshin, Bernard West, Hal Linden, and Gerry Mulligan.
Bells Are Ringing was the final musical produced by MGM's "Freed Unit", headed by producer Arthur Freed, which had been responsible for many of the studio's greatest successes, including Singin' in the Rain, An American in Paris and Gigi. The film also proved to be the last for Holliday.
Comden and Green won the Writers Guild of America award for Best American Musical. Together with Styne, they shared a Grammy Award nomination for Best Soundtrack Album or Recording of Original Cast from a Motion Picture or TV. Minnelli earned a nomination from the Directors Guild of America. André Previn was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture.
Holliday was already ill when she made the film. Her boyfriend, jazz musician Gerry Mulligan, had a small part in the film as a bumbling blind date; he remained with her through her final years as she died from cancer.[2]
Plot
Ella Peterson (Holliday) works for her cousin Sue (Stapleton) as a switchboard operator at the Susanswerphone answering service. Sue is the no-nonsense sort who worries about the image of her little business, and Ella is the kind of girl who likes people and is interested in their lives. Ella pretends to be different characters depending on whose messages she is taking; Sue disapproves of Ella's flippant attitude. Whenever she catches Ella "in character" she lectures her on professionalism and the possibility that they might get mistaken for an escort service. Ella claims "It's A Perfect Relationship"; none of her clients has any idea who she really is.
Meanwhile, Sue is seeing a courtly fellow named Otto (Foy), who convinces Sue to take orders for his "mail-order classical record business" at the service. When one of the ladies gets a call on Otto's line, she will write down the order and then call it in to Otto's "warehouse". Unfortunately, Otto is a bookie whose orders are codes for betting on horse races; he and his cohorts celebrate Otto's "Simple Little System" in a musical number detailing the code.
One of the service's subscribers is playwright Jeffrey Moss (Martin), for whom Ella is "Mom", an older, motherly voice who tries to give Jeffrey advice about women, drinking, and getting his plays produced. One morning, she takes a message from a producer who wants to meet with Jeffrey, and Ella, suspecting Jeffrey is at home, asleep and hung over, tries to get hold of him to wake him up in time for the appointment. Sue frowns on this, so Ella sneaks out for a break and goes to Jeffrey's apartment herself.
Jeffrey, who is indeed hung over, is perplexed at Ella's appearance and her obvious familiarity with his work, lifestyle, and predicament. She gives him a false name ("Melisande Scott") and comes across as a mysterious muse who only has his success in mind. Jeffrey makes the meeting with the producer and begins to write in earnest.
Meanwhile, Sue has had a visit from NYPD Inspector Barnes (Clark) of the Vice Squad, who suspects something fishy is going on at Susanswerphone. Sue gets on Ella's case even more for her antics. Ella takes a phone call for Otto's mail-order business, and calls it in as "Beethoven's Tenth Symphony" (Belmont Park, tenth race). A young musical friend who has dropped by insists (correctly) that Beethoven only wrote nine symphonies, so Ella calls in a correction. Unfortunately, this changes the resulting bet, and the bettor, who loses a bundle, comes looking for Otto in a rage.
Ella continues her forays into the lives of her clients. She visits dentist Dr. Kitchell (West), a lonely guy who composes music using the hose on his air compressor, and convinces him to try writing music for Jeffrey's play. She drops in on Blake Barton (Gorshin, doing a brilliant Marlon Brando), an out-of-work Method actor, and talks him into auditioning for the play. She attends a star-studded party with Jeffrey and realizes she's out of her league when everyone starts to "Drop That Name". On the way home she and Jeffrey sing "Just In Time", but Ella manages to give him the slip and get back to the answering service.
At Susanswerphone, Sue is in a tizzy over a visit from the inspector, the losing gangster, and Otto. Ella throws up her hands and says "I'm Going Back (Where I Can Be Me)":
- I'm goin' back where I can be me
- At the Bonjour Tristesse Brassiere Company...
- They've got a great big switchboard there
- Where it's just "hello", "goodbye"
- It may be dull, but there I can be
- Just me, myself, and I!
Too late, though—Jeffrey has finally figured out who she is and where to find her.
Cast
References
- ^ Fox, Margalit (1 March 2009). "Mary Printz, an Ear for the Famous, Dies at 82". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/02/nyregion/02printz.html. Retrieved 1 March 2009.
- ^ Robert Osborne, Turner Classic Movies
External links
