Bells Are Ringing Reviews

The last performance of a much-loved star. Judy Holliday reprises her Broadway success in this adaptation of the hit Comden-Green-Jule Styne musical, playing Ella Peterson, who works at Susananswerphone, her cousin's hole-in-the-wall telephone answering service, and gets passionately involved in her clients' lives. Hapless playwright Jeffrey Moss (a miscast Dean Martin) is her love interest. In supporting roles, Jean Stapleton scores in one of her earliest appearances, as do Frank Gorshin in the role of a beatnik who wants to be a serious actor and Eddie Foy, Jr., as a bookie; jazz fans will recognize saxophone great Gerry Mulligan, married to Holliday at the time, as Ella's blind date. Vincente Minnelli's film might have benefited from less emphasis on dialogue and more on the musical numbers ("Just in Time" and "The Party's Over" among them), but Holliday is adorable and efforlessly "real" in one of the best roles of her sadly abbreviated career.