This is How Movies Should Be Made

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

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."

First, let me say that I am a fan of Judy Holliday. She displays her broad array of talents in this film, but that is about all this film has going for it. See "Born Yesterday" for a vehicle that better uses her abilities. In that movie, Judy's romantic interest was William Holden, and the chemistry was there. In "Bells are Ringing" her romantic interest is Dean Martin. I felt no magnetism between the two. And I felt that he was unsuited for this role. It was interesting that Dean's character, a writer named Jeffrey Moss, was afraid of failure in the wake of losing his former partner, with whom he had success. Dean himself was only 3 years beyond his split with Jerry Lewis, and must have wondered--at first--if he could duplicate the tremendous successes they had as a team.Jeffrey Moss, when we first meet him, is in his bachelor flat, surrounded by used glasses, presumably used for alcohol consumption. And he has three cigarettes smoking at the same time. He is obviously used to drinking around the clock and seems to have little if any genuine affection for the numerous women in his life. He is a writer frozen with fear of failure and looks to be on the road to achieving that end.The concept that Ella, played by Judy, interjects herself into his life and becomes his muse is a good one. But their relationship works only on that professional level. No sparks ensue. Martin's character did not even seem to know anything about Ella, let alone have any deep feelings for her as a woman.The story itself is very dated, but interesting because of that. The conventions of 1960 as sometimes funny, sometimes ridiculous. Note that the men from Vice equate modeling and a red dress with prostitution, though film standards prevent them from using that word. New York City is caricatured as an emotionally cold city, where buildings from the past are destroyed to make way for buildings of steel and neon lights. It was probably totally believable because it was partially true.I noted the movie sign for "Gigi", which--like this film--was an Arthur Freed production.Frank Gorshin got to use his Brando impersonation, delightfully, in his role as the aspiring actor Blake Barton.Some of the off-screen voices that Ella converses with sound like they could have been voiced by Judy herself.I thought I detected similarities to "Guys and Dolls" (1955) and "Li'l Abner" (1959)), which is no criticism, just an observation. And Judy's performance makes me wonder if Streisand ("Funny Girl" in 1965) might have seen her performance.I read elsewhere online that one viewer thought the dance in the park by Martin and Holliday was the best part of the film. For me, the number was painful to watch, in part due to their lack of emotional attachment, in part because it seemed so contrived.

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.

Director Vincente Minnelli gets this stagy adaptation of the Broadway success off to a splashy start; however, like most musicals helmed by the erratic Minnelli, he never quite lives up to that colorful opening. Beginning with a succession of ringing rotary phones--all in kicky colors--the prelude acts as an advertisement for Susanswerphone, a telephone answering service. It looks as though this going be pure genius, until we find out that nervously-wired Judy Holliday is the only operator Susanswerphone seems to have (and she's the kooky type, getting involved in other people's lives because she has nothing going on in her own). Holliday is in love with one of the clients, a Broadway playwright who thinks he's washed up, and feels guilty about dating him under an alias, but her situation doesn't seem exceptionally dire. Dean Martin (miscast) sings a nice, funny version of "Just in Time" with Holliday, but otherwise hasn't much to offer. The stale plot, trite and cozy-contrived, gets a boost from the musical moments, but even those are not staged with much excitement. Too bad...Susanswerphone had great possibilities. **1/2 from ****