It Happened in Brooklyn

It happened to Frank Sinatra and Kathryn Grayson, reunited after Anchors Aweigh (and again in the following year's The Kissing Bandit, to lesser success) in as lightweight a piece of fluff as you're ever likely to see. The great Jimmy Durante virtually stops the show in a fabulous duet with Sinatra called The Song's Gotta Come from the Heart ("Don't work cheap!" enjoins the Schnozzle), and Grayson stops the movie in slightly different manner with a chunk from Delibes's opera Lakmé. Frankie gets to introduce an all-time classic, Sammy Cahn's Time after Time, and his buddy Peter Lawford knocks off a sweet swing version of Whose Baby Are You?. The piano work is that of a very young André Previn, and Gloria Grahame's in there, too. All that was really needed was a decent director and Technicolor, but MGM was on one of its economy drives. As it is, it's just a jolly little musical movie.