Bells Are Ringing (1960)
Ella Peterson works in the basement office of Susanswerphone, a telephone answering service. She listens in on others' lives and adds some interest to her own humdrum existence by adopting different identities for her clients. They include an out-of-work Method actor, a dentist with musical yearnings, and in particular playwright Jeffrey Moss, who is suffering from writer's block and desperately needs a muse.
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one of my absolute favorites!
Good idea lost in the noise
Don't listen to the negative reviews
It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.
Copyright 1960. A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer picture. New York opening at the Radio City Music Hall: 23 June 1960 (ran 7 weeks). U.K. release: 9 October 1960. Australian release: 20 October 1960. 11,309 feet. 125 minutes.SYNOPSIS: The operator of a telephone answering service falls in love with one of her clients.NOTES: Judy Holliday's last film. She died 7 June 1965. Also Arthur Freed's last musical and his second last film (see "Light in the Piazza"). M-G-M production number: 1760. Shooting from 7 October 1959 through 24 December 1959. Negative cost: $2,203,123. Initial world- wide rentals gross: $3,985,950 (which means that after adding print, advertising and distribution expenses, the film did little more than break even). The Screen Writers Guild gave Comden and Green an award for the Best Written American Musical of 1960.COMMENT: A much under-rated movie. Admittedly, it was, according to all reports, difficult to make. Judy Holliday (repeating her stage success) was not in good health, but there is no sign of any strain or nervousness in her typically ebullient performance. Her timing is absolutely perfect and she realty enlivens every scene in which she appears. Dean Martin also shines. In fact, he often looks as delightfully bewildered as we are by the enjoyably screwy plot. As a musical, "Bells Are Ringing" is commendably innovative – an odd mixture of realism, fantasy and even surrealism. But alas, unlike me and other professional critics, neighborhood audiences were not entranced. Nevertheless, I feel sure that this is a movie that will always have a central core of fervent admirers – and you can count me as one of them. You'll notice than Comden and Green, who wrote the Broadway success, also penned the screen adaptation. That's why, for once, all the elements, including the songs, that thrilled Broadway audiences have not only been carried forward intact to the movie, but even enhanced!
Arthur Freed's final musical production for MGM was this very bright musical comedy from Jule Styne-Betty Comden-Adolph Green, Bells Are Ringing. Sadly this was also the farewell film performance of Judy Holliday who was playing the role of Ella Peterson which she had created on Broadway.Bells Are Ringing ran for 924 performances on Broadway from 1956 to 1959 and won a few Tony Awards including one for Judy Holliday as Best Actress. I'm sure the Tony went well with the Oscar she won for Born Yesterday up on her mantel. According to a book about Arthur Freed and the films he produced at MGM, Bells Are Ringing was not an easy shoot. Judy Holliday was suffering a lot of health problems with bladder and kidney. In that sequence where she goes on a blind date and her dress catches on fire, Holliday was actually burned. And she had a constant battle with her weight.Her leading man on Broadway was Charlie Chaplin's son, Sydney who also won a Tony Award and with whom she was involved with. MGM wanted a name with a bit more box office to it, so Dean Martin was cast as playwright Jeffrey Moss. Holliday got along with Dean, but she felt him to lackadaisical in his attitude. That might have been a problem later on, but certainly not here. I'm sure she'd have preferred Sydney Chaplin to work with again.With the advances in telecommunications, Bells Are Ringing at this point has an almost quaint nostalgic look to it. I'm sure young viewers now who use cellphones and text messaging and have automatic answering systems built in to phones wouldn't even understand what an answering service was all about.They certainly all weren't like Susanswerphone which is run by Jean Stapleton and employs two other people including Judy Holliday. Despite warnings by Jean to just take messages and a visit by police inspector Dort Clark who misreads what's going on at the Susanswerphone switchboard, Judy is a compulsive do-gooder who insists on meddling in the lives of her customers. But she does it in such a sweet and winning way, Holliday creates one of the great screen characters and like Billie Dawn from Born Yesterday, one that originated on the stage. In one way Bells Are Ringing is a modern story, it's almost like an internet chatroom with Holliday running the board.Besides Judy, Jean Stapleton, Dort Clark, and Bernie West who plays the frustrated songwriting dentist all repeat their roles from the original Broadway cast. Freed and director Vincent Minnelli pulled off some real casting gems for some of the other parts. Fred Clark as the producer who's trying to get a play out of Dino, Eddie Foy, Jr. as the dapper conman/bookie who is romancing Stapleton and whose activities arouse the police suspicions in the first place, and Frank Gorshin who I love best playing a second rate Marlon Brando imitator of a method actor.Most of the musical score remained intact here. Arthur Freed would have been lynched had he attempted to bring Bells Are Ringing to the screen without Just In Time and The Party's Over. The last has become an automatic item the way Goodnight Sweetheart used to be signaling the end of an evening's festivities. And I do so like the Drop That Name number, try to see how many celebrities get their named dropped in that song.Despite the problems it had with shooting, Bells Are Ringing is certainly a fitting climax for Arthur Freed's career as a producer. Judy Holliday made no more films, but did have another Broadway show, Hot Spot which did not have a long run. What a terrible tragedy, one so talented left us at age 44.Still her fans can treasure her memory and her art in watching among other of her films, Bells Are Ringing.
I had high hopes for this when I saw it on TV, a Comden/Green musical directed by Minnelli and staring Judy Holliday, but I found this disappointing. It begins great, and can be very funny, but even by the standards of 50s musicals the story is too contrived, and the thing with the detectives is just so utterly dumb (it would not have been that difficult to come up with something a bit more convincing). The songs are generally mediocre, although it does have The Party's Over (unfortunately, Judy is great for comic songs but fails to really bring home this serious one). There are some really good moments throughout, and Judy gives a terrific performance, but overall I found this dumb and a little dull.
Fans of Dean Martino and Judy Holliday (né Tuvim) will enjoy this musical. I am a fan of both of them so I could overlook the awkward staging of the Susanswerphone set, the believeability of Maritn as a writer and the dead weight of the subplot involving the racketeers. Still there are some well-sung songs and good, if not great chemistry, between the stars. For non-fans: 6/10. For fans: 7/10.