PicoBlog

While this pairing of The Rat Race and Bells Are Ringing started out as a convenient way to highlight two final films from the year 1960 by grouping them together by their premier dates (both in the summer of 1960), I found these films have more in common than they might at first appear to have.

Bells Are Ringing is one of my absolute favorites and a film I have seen many many times. The production of the film continued an era of big blockbuster musicals with multi-act Radio City Music Hall premieres, most of which were based off of musicals that had also premiered in the city sometimes only a year or two prior. The Rat Race was a new discovery for me. The film features two very famous stars at their peak but is not very well-known in either of their careers.

Both films, are very true to their time, setting, and circumstance, and were shot almost entirely on sets. Fake New York City streets paint the visuals of both of these films in a way that feels reminiscent of their Broadway roots. Both films were based on plays (one a musical) that got their start in the city itself. Apart from one or two scenes shot in iconic area of the city (both films also share a scene filmed in Times Square), the backdrops of these films very quickly blend into proxy city streets, manicured beyond belief. Both films also have this strange illusion to prostitution without ever explicitly discussing it (a la peak production code). These two films highlight the theater town that film was trying to break into in the early 1960s that will continue for the better part of the decade.

The Rat Race 
Director: Robert Mulligan; Writer: Garson Kanin; Based on the Stage Play by: Garson Kanin; Producer: William Perlberg, George Seaton; Cinematographer: Robert Burks; Editor: Alma Macrorie; Music: Elmer Bernstein; Costume Design: Edith Head
Cast: Tony Curtis, Debbie Reynolds, Jack Oakie, Kay Medford, Don Rickles, Joe Bushkin, Sam Butera, Gerry Mulligan
Released by Paramount Pictures in association with Perlberg-Seaton Productions at Loew’s Capitol in Manhattan on May 25, 1960. 
Runtime: 105 minutes. This film is not rated.

★★★★ Garson Kanin’s adaptation of his own play about a musician (Curtis) and a dancer (Reynolds) who each come to New York seeking fame. Charming leads, energetic production.
The Rat Race entry. Blockbuster Entertainment. Guide to Movies and Videos 1998.

The play that this film was based on, of the same name, opened on Broadway on December 22, 1949, at the Ethel Barrymore Theater. Garson Kanin authored both the stage play and the film as well as directed the play. His most well-known works are Adam’s Rib (1949), Born Yesterday (the play, and also some work on the 1950 film), The Marrying Kind (1952), and It Should Happen to You (1954) which all starred Judy Holliday and were directed by George Cukor. On a handful of these projects, Kanin shared writing credits with Ruth Gordon who is probably best known as Maude in Harold and Maude (1971).

Director Robert Mulligan had started a career in television before shooting his first feature Fear Strikes Out in 1956. He returned to television winning an Emmy for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Drama for The Moon and Sixpence (1959), before filming his second feature The Rat Race in 1959. Most of the film was shot at Paramount Studios in Hollywood, except for two scenes in Times Square and some bus exterior shots of other cities in the opening credits.

Following this film, Mulligan worked with Tony Curtis on one more film called The Great Impostor (1961) before working with Rock Hudson on Come September (1961) and The Spiral Road (1962). His best-known work came next when he directed To Kill a Mockingbird in 1962 with producing partner Alan J. Pakula. Mulligan’s later films feature New York City romances Up the Down Staircase (1967), Love with the Proper Stranger (1963), The Pursuit of Happiness (1971), and Kiss Me Goodbye (1982). Pakula went on to also direct a handful of New York City romances of his own: Starting Over (1979), Rollover (1981), Sophie's Choice (1982) and See You in the Morning (1989).

Cinematographer Robert Burks worked with Alfred Hitchcock on every one of his films from Strangers on a Train in 1951 to Marnie in 1964 (except for Psycho in 1960, which was shot around the same time Burks was filming The Rat Race with Mulligan). Burks also shot Mulligan’s next film The Great Impostor

Edith Head headed up the costume department and by this time had already won 6 Academy Awards for costume design. She would go on to win 2 more in her lifetime, making her the most-awarded woman in Oscar history and having a total of 34 nominations over her career.

In an article in the New York Times Mulligan described the role of New York in the film, “I wanted to catch the feel of the city… This is a simple story about a country boy, a jazz musician, who comes to the city and is overwhelmed by the wonder of it all… I wanted to avoid the conventional skyscraper effect, the stock shot you’ve seen in so many movies about New York. I always remembered driving into New York over the New Jersey Turnpike, after a long absence. The car came around the cliffs and there it all was, almost on top of you—the whole city, in one big panorama. I felt engulfed by it—I’ve never loved the city so much. That’s what I tried to do in the opening of the film.”

This film was released on the heels of the end of Debbie Reynolds’ marriage to Eddie Fisher prompted by the scandalous affair between Fisher and Elizabeth Taylor who had previously worked together on Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) and were wrapping production on BUtterfield 8 (1960) for a release in November 1960. Lots of drama surrounded the promotion of both this film and BUtterfield 8 and in line with this kind of publicity, gossip rag Photoplay ran a story about the butting-head relationship between Curtis and Reynolds on the set of The Rat Race sharing, “whispers have it that all was far from sweetness and light between Debbie Reynolds and Tony Curtis on “The Rat Race” set. Could be Tony is taking his publicity too serious these days.”

As promotion for the film Motion Picture Exhibitor publicized this dress designing contest:

PARAMOUNT and the Tailored Junior Dress Company with “Movie Life” are handling a nation-wide “Design A Dress For Debbie” contest to be advertised in high school newspapers throughout the country, with ads set to break in March and April. At the same time, the dress manufacturer will launch an intensive promotional drive among more than 6,000 of its retail outlets. Naturally, this ties-in with Debbie Reynolds two upcoming Paramount attractions, “The Rat Race” and “The Pleasure Of His Company.”
“Company Assists,” Motion Picture Exhibitor, March 2, 1960: EX-204

The film premiered at the (New) Loew’s Capitol Theater on Broadway and 51st Street on May 25, 1960, to fair reviews.

It is still a clear-eyed, pungently atmospheric view of two youngsters—a hopeless, cynical girl and a fresh, unbeaten, hopeful musician—caught in the savage, frenetic business of storming our town’s slightly tarnished artistic and commercial towers. But while the hearts and the talents of the troupe involved in “The Rat Race” are in the right places, the point of view is standard and somewhat removed from genius.
A.H. Weiler, “The Screen: ‘The Rat Race’ Has Premiere at Capital,” New York Times (New York, NY), May 26, 1960: 37

The seamy underside of New York’s jazz and dance hall world and the dreams of success and disappointments that exist side by side in its many cheap boarding-houses has been given a colorful, and, at times, highly absorbing treatment in this Technicolored Perlberg-Seaton production of Garson Kanin’s Broadway comedy-drama. With Tony Curtis and Debbie Reynolds furnishing marquee power, and the presence of popular jazz personalities (Gerry Mulligan, Joe Bushkin, Sam Butera) sprinkled throughout the story, this Paramount release gives every indication of rolling up above-average boxoffice returns in metropolitan markets.
“Films of Distinction,” Film Bulletin, May 9, 1960: 14

Bells are Ringing 
Director: Vincente Minnelli; Writers (screenplay and lyrics): Betty Comden, Adolph Green; Based on the Stage Play by: Betty Comden, Adolph Green; Producer: Arthur Freed; Cinematographer: Milton Krasner; Editor: Adrienne Fazan; Music: Jule Styne; Casting Directors: Don McElwaine, Bobby Webb; Costume Design: Walter Plunkett
Cast: Judy Holliday, Dean Martin, Fred Clark, Eddie Foy Jr., Jean Stapleton, Bernie West, Dort Clark, Valerie Allen, Frank Gorshin, Nancy Walters, Ruth Storey
Released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan on June 23, 1960. 
Runtime: 126 minutes. This film is not rated

★★★★ An answering-service operator gets involved with her clients’ lives and loves. Broadway hit vehicle for Holliday, scripted by Comden and Green, comes to the screen with its stars, and with most of its score intact. Outstanding songs: “Just in Time” and “The Party’s Over.” Holliday’s last film.
Bells are Ringing entry. Blockbuster Entertainment. Guide to Movies and Videos 1998.

Judy Holliday starred in the Broadway musical Bells Are Ringing, which opened at the Sam S. Shubert Theatre on November 29, 1956. Writing partners Betty Comden and Adolph Green, both native New Yorkers, wrote both the musical and the film adaptation. They had been part of the nightclub act called The Revuers with Holliday that started in the late 1930s before their careers as writers. Their most famous production would have to be the original film Singing in the Rain (1952), which was also produced by Arthur Freed who had a longstanding contract with MGM. Freed’s most famous prior collaborations with director Vincente Minnelli under this MGM contract were Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), Ziegfeld Follies (1945), An American in Paris (1951), and Gigi (1958). This film was Judy Holliday’s last film before her death and the last time Freed and Minnelli worked together after a 13 film run.

A scene in Times Square and the opening credits were both shot on location in New York City. Interiors and some New York City street exteriors like the final dance scene of the film were shot at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios in Culver City in Los Angeles.

While I always assumed that the abandoned exterior block scripted to be in “Brooklyn” where the Susanswerphone (the answering machine service) office is located in the film was shot on a set, according to IMDb, the location is San Juan Hill, the neighborhood demolished by Robert Moses to build The Metropolitan Opera, New York Philharmonic, and Fordham University in 1959. While I couldn’t find any other sources to corroborate this, the film did shoot exterior in New York City in August of 1959. The historically Black and Latino residential neighborhood whose residents were forcibly evicted was also the filming location for West Side Story (1961) around the same time before being demolished.

MGM went all out with the promotion for the film, involving the Bell Telephone Company to send promotional material as “…telephone customer bill inserts…” and the Pacific Telephone Company in San Francisco which hosted the “‘Miss Telephone Voice’ contest in which female employees of the telephone company were eligible.” The prize for the Miss Telephone Voice contest was “…a visit to Hollywood and the MGM studios…” and “…the telephone company added to this by taking the winner to Disneyland.” This contest was also mimicked in other US cities.

In New York City, Stern’s (the department store chain) hosted a bridal fashion show featuring Holliday. Advertisements for the show were featured in Daily News, World Telegraph and Sun, New York Times, Herald-Tribune, and Journal-American, as well as “posters and counter cards were on display in many of the store’s departments and a full bank of eight windows on 42nd Street were devoted to the film. Cards also were posted in all elevators and at all escalator stops.” The studio also partnered with Fred Astaire Dance Studios to offer “free dance lessons to some movie patrons, plugging the cha-cha featured in the movie.”

The film premiered at Radio City Music Hall on June 23, 1960, with a performance called “Hawaii, U.S.A.” “with exciting undersea, aboard-ship, and in-the-air effects… featuring for the first time the New York Naval Shipyard Choir… Harrison and Kossi, spectacular adagio artists… the great Marco… the exotic Bhaskar… Richard Conn, dancing accordionist… Corps de Ballet in glamorous luau festival… famed Rockettes “dancing on the deck”… and Symphony Orchestra, directed by Raymond Paige,” as publicized in the film’s New York Times advertisement.

New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther had mixed feelings about the film and ended his review with this punctuation on Holliday’s performance: “You can take our word for it: “Bells Are Ringing” owes more to Miss Holliday than it does to its authors, its director… or even to Alexander Graham Bell.”

Motion Picture Daily echoed this praise for Holliday in the opening lines of their review of the film:

The news is all to the good about "Bells Are Ringing," a musical big and gorgeous in the Arthur Freed— MGM manner, but the best part of the news is that Judy Holliday is back. Away from the screen for four years, she has been sorely missed.

She is one of those rare and remarkable entertainers (like Judy Garland, Danny Kaye, Ethel Merman, et. al.) who can be compared to no one but themselves. On that basis it is fair to say that she has not had such a winning part since "Born Yesterday." Nor has she given a performance so entrancing as this new one since that time.
”Review: Bells Are Ringing,” Motion Picture Daily, June 8, 1960: 1

Both films are available to stream online. The Rat Race is available to rent and on Paramount+ and Bells Are Ringing is available to rent.

More romance to come…
xx Paris

More 1960 films:
BUtterfield 8: another film with prostitution illusions, based on the John O'Hara novel about a Manhattan call girl who falls for a married man, starring Eddie Fisher and Elizabeth Taylor at the beginning of their affair-turned-marriage.
From the Terrace: another film based on a John O’Hara novel, also starring real-life partners Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, about a married couple who gets caught up in their own affairs.
Please Don’t Eat The Daisies: Columbia professor turned theater critic moves his wife (played by Doris Day) and kids to the suburbs.

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