New York Town

Given that Preston Sturges was an uncredited writer and director on this film it has to be said that this film is a great disappointment.Clearly given the cast Paramount must have been looking on this film as one of their A pictures.The story is rather threadbare and the whole sorry mess rarely if ever manages to raise a laugh.Most books seem to show this film as running 94 minutes but the copy i viewed thankfully only ran 78 minutes.I doubt that the missing 16 minutes would have made any difference.The fact that so few people seem to have voted for this makes me feel that its poor reputation must preceed it.Funny how ill served was Mary Martin by the film vehicles that she chose to star in.A great talent wasted by the cinema.

What "New York Town" needed was a screenplay with some witty, snappy and funny dialog. The plot for this film would be okay, with a screenplay to give it some life. As is, though, it's little more than a story about a couple of guys sharing an apartment as they scrape by in New York City, and then inviting a lonely single gal without work to share their place. Along with these are some other regular street folks - one a WW I war veteran with no legs who gets around on a platform with rollers and who peddles pencils. Lynn Overman does a good job as Sam in that role. Movie buffs will remember seeing Eddie Murphy faking it as a handicapped veteran on such a device in "Trading Places" of 1983.

But there's so little that's funny in this film, and the mild romance is long in blooming, so that it's just a slow go-nowhere film. Paramount might better have put more into it as a social drama - or spice it up with some real comedy. I know - Preston Sturges was supposed to have worked on it in some capacity and is an uncredited writer. But, still there's little of note in the screenplay. This film is surprising in that the studio may have been hoping or thinking of something else. Why else would it take 10 months to hit theaters after filming concluded?

It could be that the studio had reservations about releasing it at all - mainly because MacMurray by then had made some very good films, including comedies, and this one was well beneath his other films. And, Mary Martin was already known from films and Broadway; and the supporting cast of Akim Tamiroff, Eric Blore, Lynne Overman, Cecil Kellaway and some others had all been in some very fine comedies before this.

It's too bad that Paramount didn't rethink the film and turn it over to Sturges and/or some other writers to put some zippy comedy into the dialog.

Here are samples of what passes for comedy in this film.

Sam, "I start out this morning with a gross of pencils. I've got 12 dozen left. I'm holdin' me own. Whadda they want for 10 cents - typewriters?"

Victor Ballard (Fred MacMurray), "He's got a very suspicious face. Reminds me of the guy in the paper that killed his wife with an ax."

:Mary Martin has been struggling to make a go of it in New York when she meets street photographer Fred MacMurray. She's broke, so she moves into an apartment with MacMurray and refugee Akim Tamiroff. As they explore the eccentric delights of Manhattan, they fall in love, but MacMurray wants ot be a success. He thinks a wife would hold him back. He takes it into his head that Miss Martin should marry one of the many rich men the island is populated with, and settle a pleasant looking old geek. But when Miss Martin shows up with a portrait and the intent to scope him out, he's on his third honeymoon, and his son, Robert Preston is there. She instructs him in how to throw horse shoes, and the two hit it off. But as Preston and Miss Martin do better, MacMurray turns grouchy and suspicous.

Preston Sturges had an uncredited hand in this adaptation of a Joe Swerling story. However despite a pleasing number of eccentrics like Lynne Overman, Eric Blore as Preston's butler, and Cecil Kellaway as a drunken man hosting a party MacMurray and Miss Martin crash, it doesn't work. Charles Vidor's direction has the two leads quarreling unpleasantly, and the pace doesn't offer enough time for the physical gags. It's not a misfire, but it doesn't sparkle.