Bells Are Ringing

Bells Are Ringing (1960)

The screen is singing M.G.M. is bringing Broadway's Bell-Ringer of a Musical to the World!

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.

Date of release
1960-06-23
TMDB
6.5 / 10 (59)
Runtime
2h 6m
Genres
Comedy, Romance
Director
Vincente Minnelli

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Awards: 0 · Nominations: 1

Bells Are Ringing is a 1960 American romantic comedy-musical film directed by Vincente Minnelli and starring Judy Holliday and Dean Martin. Based on the successful 1956 Broadway production of the same name by Betty Comden, Adolph Green and Jule Styne, the film focuses on Ella Peterson, based on the life of Mary Printz, who works in the basement office of a telephone answering service.

Production

Judy Holliday and Jean Stapleton reprised their stage roles for the film. Jazz musician Gerry Mulligan, Holliday's real-life ex-lover, plays her disastrous blind date in a cameo role. Bells Are Ringing was Holliday's final film.

Hal Linden appears, uncredited, in his first film appearance, singing 'The Midas Touch' in the nightclub act, wearing a gold lame suit. A friend of Holliday, he portrayed Jeff Moss with her in the Broadway play in 1958-1959.

Bells Are Ringing was also the final musical produced by the MGM "Freed Unit" headed by producer Arthur Freed, which had been responsible for many of the studio's greatest successes, including Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), Easter Parade (1948), On the Town (1949), An American in Paris (1951), Singin' in the Rain (1952) and Gigi (1958). The film marked the 13th and final collaboration between Freed and director Vincente Minnelli.

Several songs from the Broadway production were dropped or replaced, including "Salzburg", "Hello, Hello There", "On My Own" (replaced by "Do It Yourself"), "Long Before I Knew You" (replaced by "Better Than a Dream"), "Mu Cha Cha" (filmed but shortened) and "Is it a Crime?" (filmed, but cut before release). A new song for Dean Martin, "My Guiding Star", was also filmed but cut.

The row house used for exteriors stood at 215 East 68th Street, Manhattan, and had once been the residence of author Stephen Vincent Benet. It was a holdout from a row and was torn down in the early 1960s.

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