My Christmas treat: My Sister Eileen

Thats the 1955 Columbia version, not the 1942 original with Roz Russell, who also played it on Broadway as the show WONDERFUL TOWN, with a score by Leonard Bernstein and book by Comden and Green. This 1955 film though has a different score by Jule Style (GYPSY, FUNNY GIRL) and Leo Robin, and has choreography by young Bob Fosse who also plays the guy working in the diner smitten with Janet Leigh (Eileen). That other great dancer Tommy Rall plays the other brasher guy, also with the hots for Eileen, while Betty Garrett is the older sister, Betty of course was Brunhilde Esterhazy in ON THE TOWN. The material is based on Ruth McKenney's "New Yorker" stories about her pretty sister Eileen.

This MY SISTER EILEEN is another great 'New York in the Fifties' movie, with that Cinemascope screen unfolding a vibrant city as the Sherwood sisters - Ruth and Eileen - arrive from Ohio and rent that basement from Kurt Kasznar, with Dick York as the other tenant who keeps an eye on them. Ruth is a writer and tries to sell her stories to publisher Jack Lemmon - good here in one of his early roles - while Janet has to fight off the guys as she looks for work.

Director Richard Quine is a dab hand at using the widescreen (as was Anthony Mann, Nicholas Ray) even in that tiny basement apartment. Quine was a rising star at Columbia, and had just done that studio-bound SO THIS IS PARIS that year, where Janet's husband Tony Curtis learns to sing and dance, and wasn't too bad - review at Curtis label). Quine went on to those Kim Novak films and various comedies like PARIS WHEN IT SIZZLES and SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL before his suicide in 1989, aged 68, by gunshot).

Back to EILEEN - it is a treat from start to finish, Janet is adorable as usual, and Betty knows how to wring a laugh out of a line. Bob and Tommy (one of the SEVEN BROTHERS and ideal in KISS ME KATE, as was Fosse and Bobby Van, with Ann Miller) dance up a storm, Fosse was 28 at the time. The delirious climax includes a line of conga-dancing Portuguese sailors dressed in white. MY SISTER EILEEN often got overlooked among all those great '50s musicals, but thankfully is now restored on dvd to delight us all over again. 

Lucy Schmeeler: "She's a grand girl"!

Let's end the year by picking up some sailors, going on the town and celebrating a great comic talent. Happy New Year !

Lucy Schmeeler (Alice Pearce) is the super-plain room-mate of Brunhilde Esterhazy (Betty Garrett) in the 1949 MGM musical ON THE TOWN, a perennial favourite I can enjoy anytime. I do not know Leonard Bernstein's original but it seems some of the songs were junked for the movie (but doesn't that always happen, as in FUNNY GIRL or CABARET?).

We enjoy following our 3 sailors on shore leave in late 40s New York, and the real locations help. Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Jules Munchin zoom around the city and the underground train system, Gabe (Gene) sees and falls for "Miss Turnstiles" (a monthly pin-up) whom he imagines is a celebrity, while she (Vera-Ellen at her loveliest) turns out to be from the same small town as his! Jules gets entangled with ritzy Ann Miller who has a thing about "Prehistoric men" and Jules' face fits just right, as they cause havoc at the museum and the dinosaur (or Dinah Shore!) collapses! Frank teams up with taxi driver Brunhilde - Betty Garrett who woos him back to "my place" - where Lucy Schmeeler ["she's a grand girl" says Betty with vitriolic sweetness...] is staying in with a cold. Betty finally gets to her leave so she can get close to Frank. They are supposed to be looking for the elusive Miss Turnstiles, but Gabe finds her at the rehearsal halls and they do that lovely dance to "Main Street" ....

Later they all team up at the top of the Empire State Building and head off "On The Town", this sequence is bliss as they visit one crowded nightclub after another where the revue girls always sing "thats all there is folks, and goodnight to you, we hope your enjoyed our .... revue" as the last girl always shoves her rear end in their faces... Miss Turnstiles has to flee though to her late night job as a coochie dancer at Coney Island, after Gabe gets stuck with Lucy Schmeeler who joins them for a riot of a number and some other sailors from the ship mistake her for Gabe's girl, so they will have a lot to tell the other guys back on the boat ... Gabe takes Lucy home and has to let her down gently as he is in love with Vera --- poor Lucy is back to her laundry lists and won't wash for a week after Gabe kisses her! Her plain character is being patronised of course but its part of the fun here.

Things work out ok at Coney Island and the 3 girls see off the 3 gobs back on their boat, as another flock of sailors disembark to explore "New York New York its a wonderful town"!. That's it in a nutshell, but it is so infectious and a sheer delight from start to finish [screenplay by Comden & Green] - a key musical then with Kelly and Stanley Donen co-directing, paving the way for all those 50s musicals ... including SINGING IN THE RAIN and IT'S ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER (see post at musicals label) where their partnership broke up!

Alice Pearce's Lucy is a scream - Alice was a terrific comedienne, she was also Olga the "Jungle Red" manicurist spreading all the gossip in THE OPPOSITE SEX in 1956, [Dolores Gray label], that delicious musical remake of THE WOMEN, which I like so much. She was highly regarded also on tv, appearing in the BEWITCHED series, but she died aged only 48 in 1966. She also played Lucy Schmeeler in the original Broadway production of ON THE TOWN.

That iconic shot of Donen (below) with Kelly & Sinatra ...

Betty Garrett RIP

Another link to the classic musicals has gone with the death of Betty Garrett, who was not that prolific - she and her husband Larry Parks had their hollywood careers curtailed due to those dark ages communist witch hunts of the early '50s]. Betty though continued working (LAVERNE AND SHIRLEY on tv, and on Broadway, in FOLLIES and others. She lived though to be 91 - sometimes that is the best revenge. (Betty was actually, though a redhead, rather similar in style to Celeste Holm - who is also still with us in her 90s).

There are though two movies featuring Betty that I absolutely love: ON THE TOWN of course where she is sensational as Brunhilde Esterhazy (or Hildy) the driver of the yellow cab which the sailors drive around in looking for Miss Turnstiles, while Hildy tries to get Sinatra "back to her place" (where of course Alice Pearce as Lucy Schmeeler is waiting - as Gaby (Gene Kelly) finds out .... add in Ann Miller and Vera Ellen and those dancing showgirls and it is as delirious now as back in 1949. Betty is terrific here, as of course she is in the 1955 Richard Quine Columbia musical MY SISTER EILEEN - the latest version (then) of the Sherwood sisters arriving in New York from Ohio - Betty wants to be a writer and gets involved with young Jack Lemmon, while Janet Leigh (Eileen) has Bob Fosse and Tommy Rall - the two best male dancers ever (apart from Fred and Gene) fighting over her - and they certainly dance up a storm here. It is certainly one to re-watch now.