It Happened in Brooklyn (1947)

Undescribable Perfection

Excellent adaptation.

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

This is not a great movie, but if you like its cast of singing stars – Frank Sinatra, Kathryn Grayson (without Technicolor), Peter Lawford and Jimmy Durante – you'll enjoy it anyway (and as a bonus there's Gloria Grahame!). It was directed by Richard Whorf and scripted by Isobel Lennart (one of the four Sinatra films that she wrote) from a story by John McGowan.Sinatra plays a Brooklyn born soldier that returns home to find that he hadn't changed as much as he'd thought he had. He believed himself to be more confident. But he's influenced by Durante, his old high school's janitor, who takes him under his wing and encourages a would-be romantic relationship with the music teacher come opera singer Grayson.Sinatra's character discovers that he's happy helping others with their dreams. Lawford plays a shy fellow that Sinatra had met in England (during which Grahame plays a nurse, also from Brooklyn) just before his discharge from the Army. He's sent to Brooklyn to satisfy his Duke (Aubrey Mather) grandfather, who'd hoped that Sinatra could give him confidence.Lawford and Grayson make a better match. Everyone is hitting on all cylinders when they help a young pianist (uncredited Billy Roy, whose compositions are performed off stage by 17 year old André Previn, also uncredited) that wants to earn a scholarship.

During the forties it seemed that MGM in particular had something of an obsession about offering classical and popular music in one package so that Jose Iturbi was almost as at home on the lot as Arthur Freed. This is yet another example and re-teams Sinatra and Kathryn Grayson who had already blended their respective genres in Anchors Aweigh some three years earlier. Adding Durante to the mix does no harm at all in fact the only jarring note is Peter Lawford who could neither sing, dance or act but didn't let that stop him from masquerading as competent at all three. The plot is as light as Isobel Lennart could get away with and still sound half credible and is merely a hook on which to hang some tasty Jule Styne-Sammy Cahn numbers including the Kern-like ballad Time After Time. Apart from Step Lively, made at RKO, this is arguably Sinatra's best musical from the forties - and YES I KNOW On The Town was released in the same decade. Sue me.

Wonderful film with a stellar cast.Frank Sinatra and Peter Lawford shine as two quiet buddies who return to Brooklyn after World War 11 service in England. Actually, it's a first trip to Brooklyn.The film is so endearing due to its themes of clinging to your aspirations. Sinatra finds Kathryn Grayson and falls in love, but when she introduces Lawford to him, you know the rest.Jimmy Durante plays a rather subdued custodian in a school where Grayson teaches music. She is down as she wants an operatic career.The film is lifting when she and the 3 guys all join forces to make sure that a poorly financed student, who is brilliant at the piano, can continue his musical education after college. In Hollywood tradition, they succeed. Tamara Shayne shows her usual earthy appealing as the boy's mother.Sinatra belts out Time After Time and Grayson's operatic scene is memorable.This film is definitely heartwarming and a joy to watch.

As it happens this writer made his earthly debut in 1947 in Brooklyn, so I have a soft spot for this film.Considering that this was all done in Hollywood, the film does have a nostalgic glow to it as it recaptures Brooklyn of 1947. Interspersed throughout the film are references to Brooklyn places and streets that a native would immediately know. There is a scene towards the beginning of the film when Frank Sinatra first meets Kathryn Grayson and she gives the newly discharged soldier a lift to the armory and in the background they pass shots of rows and rows of brownstone houses. Looks just like Park Slope on the way to the armory located there.Sinatra has his personal songwriting team of Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn come up with a good selection of tunes for him. Time After Time was the biggest hit out of this film and that song is also repeated in good style by Kathryn Grayson. He does I Believe with Jimmy Durante and young Bobby Long who sings and dances up a storm in number done at a school gymnasium. It's a philosophical song in the style that Sinatra's rival Bing Crosby normally would have sung. He also sings a song Brooklyn Bridge, dedicated to same, on the footpath across. The footpath is deserted which is impossible. And there's another ballad entitled It's the Same Old Dream.Jimmy Durante is the kindly school custodian who takes Sinatra in. I found this part of the picture sad. Durante has an apartment right on the public school premises and Sinatra moves in with him because he has no family at all. I guess he loved Brooklyn a lot because normally someone with no family and recently discharged from the service would have had the world to choose from in where to settle. Durante and Sinatra have a great old time with The Song Gotta Come From the Heart.They did love sopranos over at the Lion studio. In addition to Grayson at one time they had Jeanette MacDonald, Ann Blyth, and Jane Powell all at the same time. Grayson had a porcelain delicacy to her and her voice that was magnetic, never more so here. She sings the Bell Song from Lakme and makes it memorable. Sinatra shows some guts here also as he and Grayson tackle La Ci Darem la Mano from Don Giovanni. Grayson and Mozart took it easy on Frank. Grayson did three films with Sinatra and in only one did she wind up with him.Peter Lawford plays the shy gentlemanly scion of an aristocratic family who Sinatra befriends while in England. This was years before the Rat Pack was started and before Lawford married into the Kennedy clan. The role was no stretch for Lawford since that's what he was in real life. I wonder if Peter Lawford would still be here and have a career if the Kennedys and Sinatra had never entered his life.And there were only minimal references to the Dodgers for a film about Brooklyn in a year they won the pennant.