Welcome to Saturday Night at the movies.

I'm your host, Glenn Holland.

This week's film is the 1949 technical MGM musical "On the Town."

It's a film adaptation of the 1944 Broadway musical with book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and Music by Leonard Bernstein.

Comden and Green also wrote the movie's screenplay, provided lyrics for several new songs by Roger Edens.

The film was a product of MGM Studio's famous Freed Unit and was directed by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly.

"On the Town" stars Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Betty Garrett, Ann Miller, Jules Munshin, and Vera Ellen.

Gabey, Chip, and Ozzie are three US Navy sailors with 24 hours leave in New York City starting at six in the morning.

Since none of them has visited New York before they're determined to make the most of the opportunity.

After a whirlwind tour of the city's major attractions Gabey and Ozzie are ready to seek out romance with the city's most beautiful women.

While riding the subway, they spot a poster of Miss Turnstiles for the month of June.

A young woman named Ivy Smith.

Gabey is smitten.

The three sailors get off at the next stop where it happens Ivy is posing for publicity photos.

The photographer asked Gabey to pose with Ivy but before Gabey can make any impression on her, she catches the next train.

Gabey is determined to find her again following clues from her Miss Turnstiles bio With Chip and Ozzie helping him.

They catch a taxi driven by Hildy, an aggressively amorous female cabby who immediately falls for Chip.

Their search for Ivy takes them to the Museum of Natural History on the Upper West Side where they meet Claire, a wealthy young woman who has taken up anthropology as a way to overcome her attraction to men.

But as it happens, Ozzie closely resembles a museum figure of a prehistoric man and Claire's libido flares up again.

While dancing, Ozzie accidentally knocks over a dinosaur skeleton and they all flee the museum.

The five of them decide to split up to look for Ivy and agree to meet at 8:30 that evening at the top of the Empire State Building.

Hildy and Chip take off in one direction and Claire and Ozzie in another while Gabey goes to Symphony Hall in search of Ivy.

He finds her in a dance class and asks her out, despite his concern that a major New York celebrity would have little time for a small town guy like him.

To his surprise, she agrees and they plan to meet at the Empire State Building at 8:30.

But after Gabey leaves, Ivy's dance instructor, Madame Dilyovska, reminds her that she has a show at a Coney Island sideshow that night at 11:30.

Ivy has to show up if she intends to keep her job and pay Madame Dilyovska the money she owes her for lessons.

Otherwise, Madam Dilyovska will demand the money from Ivy's parents who live back in the small town where Ivy grew up.

"On the Town" had its origins in a ballet by Jerome Robbins with music by Leonard Bernstein titled "Fancy Free."

First performed in 1944, it told the story of three sailors on leave in New York City, who meet two women, leaving them to decide which of the three will remain dateless.

This became the basis for the Broadway musical, "On the Town," with a book and lyric by Betty Comden and Adolf Green, and a musical score by Bernstein.

Comden and Green also played the parts of Claire and Ozzie in the original cast.

"On the Town" premiered on Broadway on December 28th, 1944 and closed more than a year later after 462 performances.

The original production was notable for its racially diverse cast and intentional avoidance of racial stereotypes.

Sono Oasato, who starred as Ivy, was Japanese-American and this was when the United States was still at war with Imperial Japan.

There were also six African Americans in the cast who were treated as a normal part of New York's population.

When producer Arthur Freed wanted to buy the rights for MGM, he had to overcome Louis B.

Mayor's objections.

Mayor had seen the stage version and criticized it as smutty because in one scene a Black woman had danced with a white man.

Like the other Hollywood studio heads of the era, Mayor would never let anything like that happen in one of his motion pictures.

When MGM Studios bought the rights to "On the Town," they hired Betty Comden and Adolf Green to adapt their own stage script into a screenplay.

But because Leonard Bernstein's music was considered "too complex and operatic" for movie audiences only four of his songs were retained for the movie, including "New York, New York."

Even that song was slightly modified, changing the lyric "It's a hell of a town," to, "It's a wonderful town."

New songs were composed by associate producer, Roger Edens with Comden and Green providing the lyrics.

"On the Town" was given a budget of one and a half million dollars and a shooting schedule of 46 days.

Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly wanted to shoot the film on location in New York City but studio head, Louis B.

Mayor, objected that MGM already had a fine selection of New York streets on his Hollywood back lot.

Ann Miller later claimed that she helped bring Mayor around the idea of shooting on location, primarily because she had never seen New York.

In fact, "On the Town" was the first musical feature film to be shot on location.

Location shooting presented a series of problems including bad weather and crowds who wanted to get a glimpse of the stars.

This was when Frank Sinatra was at the height of his fame among teenage Bobby Soxers.

The cast used taxis to get around instead of limousines and cameras were hidden in station wagons to avoid detection.

Audiences can get some idea of the problems involved from the finale of "New York, New York," at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, where Kelly, Sinatra, and Munshin dance below the statue of Prometheus.

At the top of the shot, hundreds of curious onlookers stare down at them, although that could also just be a natural New Yorker's reaction to seeing a random trio of sailors singing and dancing in the plaza for no apparent reason.

"On the Town" was also notable for following the stage musical and using modern dance to advance the plot.

Vera Ellen showed off her skills as a ballet dancer in both the Miss Turnstile section and the dream sequence, "A Day in New York," both set to music by Leonard Bernstein.

Four trained ballet dancers performed with Gene Kelly and Vera Ellen in, "A day in New York," taking the place of Sinatra, Munshin, Garrett, and Ann Miller.

Although Miller was a dazzling tap dancer as she demonstrates elsewhere in the film, she had no experience with ballet.

Modern dance sequences would be a major part of Gene Kelly's later musicals, including, "An American in Paris," in 1951, "Singing in the Rain," in 1952, and "Invitation to the Dance," in 1956.

The only performer to appear in both the original Broadway cast and in the motion picture version of "On the Town," was Alice Pierce who played Hildy's sneezing roommate, Lucy Shmeeler.

If she seemed familiar, it's because she later became well known as Gladys Kravitz, the nosy neighbor who lived next to the Stevens on television's "Bewitched."

In fact, several uncredited actors in "On the Town" later became famous in television comedies.

The Brooklyn Girl on the subway complaining about her boss was played by Bea Benaderet, who appeared as Blanche Morton on the "George Burns" and "Gracie Allen Show," and as Kate Bradley on "Petticoat Junction."

She was also a versatile voice actress who provided the original voice of Betty Rubble on "The Flintstones."

Sid Melton, who played Spud, Hildy's supervisor from the taxi company, later played Charlie Halpert on the "Danny Thomas Show."

Hans Conried, who played Francois, the head waiter at the Samba Cabana nightclub.

also appeared regularly on that show as Stanley Williams, uncle to Moose.

Like Bea Benaderet, Conried also had a long career as a voice actor, notably as Captain Hook in Walt Disney's animated "Peter Pan" in 1953.

"On the Town" grossed $4,400,000 on its initial release, a testimony to the popularity of movie musicals at the time.

During the shooting, producer Arthur Freed sent a memo to directors Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly.

It read, in part, "I just ran the musical numbers of 'On the Town' and they were the greatest and most inspiring works I have seen since I have been making moving pictures."

Gene Kelly later revealed in a BBC interview his own abiding fondness for the movie.

He said, "The people who brought 'On the Town' to life had made better pictures than that but that was the apex of our talent.

That was it."

Please join us again next time for another Saturday Night at the Movies.

I'm Glenn Holland.

Goodnight.