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In the late 1930s, Betty Comden, Adolph Green, and Judy Holliday made up three fifths of a cabaret quintet called The Revuers that wrote and performed satirical songs and sketches at such Manhattan boites as the Village Vanguard, the Blue Angel, and the Rainbow Room.

Not many years later, Comden and Green made their first splash on Broadway by writing and appearing in On the Town, while Judy Holliday became a star when she replaced Jean Arthur during the tryout of the hit Broadway comedy Born Yesterday 1946. Comden and Green continued to turn out material for Broadway and Hollywood, while Holliday became a movie star, winning an Oscar over Bette Davis in All About Eve and Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard for the film version of Born Yesterday, and going on to star in the films The Marrying Kind, It Should Happen to You, and The Solid Gold Cadillac.

When Holliday chose to return to Broadway, she called upon old friends Comden and Green to supply the vehicle. In addition to what everyone now knew about Holliday --that she was an irresistible comic actress-- Comden and Green were aware from their Revuers days that Holliday also had an attractive way with a song. What the team came up with was Bells Are Ringing, an original musical about a telephone-answering-service operator who meddles in the lives of her clients and falls for one of them, sight unseen. For the music, Comden and Green called upon Jule Styne, with whom they had written the Broadway revue Two on the Aisle and additional songs for Mary Martin's Peter Pan. Styne also had to his credit High Button Shoes, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and Hazel Flagg.

Comden and Green specifically tailored everything in Bells Are Ringing to Holliday's particular skills and style. Like On the Town and Wonderful Town, Bells Are Ringing was a Comden and Green love letter to Manhattan, with musical numbers set on the subway and in Central Park. A blue-chip show in all departments, Bells was directed by Jerome Robbins, with choreography by Robbins and Bob Fosse, an embarrassment of riches considering that Bells wasn't even much of a dance show.

As it turned out, Holliday's first Broadway musical was a smash from the moment it opened at the Shubert Theatre in late 1956, even producing a pair of hit-parade items, "Just in Time" and "The Party's Over." But it was a show that depended heavily on its star, who played the role of lovable Ella Peterson throughout the 924-perfomance Broadway run and the 1959 national tour. Holliday managed to take the musical-actress Tony over Julie Andrews' Eliza Doolittle, and Holliday's leading man, Sydney Chaplin, won a featured Tony.

True, other stars attempted Ella. Janet Blair headed the London company, but it lasted only 202 showings. Betty Garrett filled in on Broadway during Holliday's vacation. And everyone from Martha Raye to Betty White to Florence Henderson would eventually try on Bells in stock. But the show belonged to Holliday, as was sharply demonstrated by the flop 2001 Broadway revival that starred a game, able, but less than irresistible Faith Prince.

Like just about all hit Broadway musicals of the time, Hollywood picked up Bells Are Ringing, with MGM shelling out $400,000 for the film rights, and hiring Comden and Green to fashion a screenplay from their stage script. The film would be produced for MGM by Arthur Freed, with Vincente Minnelli Gigi, The Band Wagon, Brigadoon, Meet Me in St. Louis the director.

The film dropped a number of the stage songs "On My Own," "Hello, Hello There," "Long Before I Knew You," "Salzburg", while one of Holliday's big comic spots, "Is It a Crime?," was shot but deleted. But the film added new songs for its leading man, singing star Dean Martin, in "Do It Yourself" replacing "On My Own" and "My Guiding Star," the latter also filmed but cut. Also featured in the film was "Better Than a Dream," a song that had been added to the stage version about a year into its run.

Along with Holliday, the CinemaScope film retained the services of Broadway cast members Jean Stapleton the owner of the answering service, Bernie West a musical dentist, and Dort Clark a police inspector. Hal Linden, who had replaced Chaplin during the Broadway run, made a cameo appearance in the film, leading the nightclub number "The Midas Touch." Some sequences were shot on location in Manhattan.

Freed was determined to make the material comfortable on screen. He wrote to Comden and Green, "We don't want to make the mistakes that were made with The Pajama Game and Damn Yankees, which did not feel like motion pictures."

According to Hugh Fordin's invaluable book on the Freed unit at MGM, Holliday was insecure and unhappy throughout the shoot, believing herself to be too fat, and also dissatisfied with the screenplay, which she found insufficiently cinematic. An inkling of her displeasure can be discerned in comments she made to Cosmopolitan magazine during the filming: "I'm a perfectionist. I can't do things over too many times to suit me. I'm afraid our producer, Arthur Freed, and Mr. Minnelli are very easy to please. They don't mind okaying things that strike me as only half right. If anybody knows the values in this play, I do. After living in it for three years, I'm the final authority on what lines ought to get laughs and how to get them."

Bells Are Ringing would be Holliday's last film; she died in 1965, two years after starring in her second Broadway musical, the flop Hot Spot.

In spite of Holliday's misgivings, the 126-minute film, released in June 1960, was a financial success. How cinematic it was is ultimately beside the point: Like Funny Girl and The Music Man, Bells Are Ringing is a movie that's virtually above criticism simply because it preserves one of the top Broadway musical star turns. Instead of worrying about the film's shortcomings which include a rather lazy performance by Martin, one has to be grateful that the picture exists.

For its long-awaited DVD premiere, Warner Home Video has done the film an additional service by providing some fine bonuses. We get the cut numbers "Is It a Crime?" a major number for Holliday and "My Guiding Star" a Martin ballad, along with an alternate take of "The Midas Touch" sequence. There's also an eleven-minute featurette, "Bells Are Ringing": Just in Time, which includes warm recollections from Comden and Green, Hal Linden, and Frank Gorshin, who played Brando-style actor Blake Barton.