The Belle of New York

I've suggested in the past my belief that MGM made quite a few "little" movies in the early 1950s that seemed made to turn enough of a profit to finance all those Freed Unit musicals which were clearly the studio's prestige pictures at the time. Recently, however, I saw a Freed Unit musical that was surprisingly modest: The Belle of New York.

The titular belle, played by Vera-Ellen, is named Angela Bonfils. She works for a Salvation Army-like organization at the turn of the previous century (well, from our standard) together with her friend Elsie (Alice Pearce). But even in those modest dresses women -- especially women trying to promote good Christian morality -- wore in those days, all the men can see that Angela is gorgeous.

Cut to the film's other star, Fred Astaire. Although he's much too old for the part, he plays Charlie Hill, a notorious playboy who has a bad and expensive habit of finding chorus girls and falling in love with them before deciding that he'd rather continue being a playboy than getting married. This requires his aunt (Marjorie Main) and her attorney Max (Keenan Wynn) to come up with the money to pay for settlements to the women Charlie is jilting. Needless to say, auntie is none too pleased with any of this.

The rest of the plot is not very difficult to figure out. Charlie is going to see Angela and immediately fall in love with her, but she's going to be rather cool to the idea at first; after all, she's supposed to be an upright Christian. Charlie tries to prove to Angela that he can do honest work in a series of humorous interludes that show he's not suitable for the working-class jobs he thinks constitute honest work. And then she's going to fall in love, but a series of misunderstandings is going to cause the relationship to nearly break up, at least until the film's final reel.

The Belle of New York also has an odd conceit in that true love is proved by being able to dance on air, leading to special effects that don't always work, which is a problem considering that one of the reasons for watching a Fred Astaire movie is for the dancing. The plots are normally secondary to the dance numbers, and that's even more so in the case of The Belle of New York.

So it's easy to see why The Belle of New York was neither a critical nor box office success when it was released back in the early 1950s. However, that's being a bit harsh, since the movie is really harmless enough fluff. It's just that Astaire had already done so much stuff that was so much better.