It Happened in Brooklyn

1947 "IT ALL TAKES PLACE IN THAT FASCINATING WONDERLAND OF THE FAR EAST...BROOKLYN!"
6.5| 1h45m| NR| en
Details

Danny has been in the army for 4 years, yet all he thinks about is Brooklyn and how great it is. When he returns after the war, he soon finds that Brooklyn is not so nice after all. He is able to share a place with Nick, the janitor of his old High School, and get a job as a singer in a music store. He also meets Leo, a talented pianist and his teacher Anne, whose dream is to singing Opera. When Jamie arrives from England, Danny tries to show him the Brooklyn experience and help him compose modern swing music. Together, these four also try to help Leo get the Brooklyn Music scholarship.

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Karry Best movie of this year hands down!
Alicia I love this movie so much
Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.
Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.
kapelusznik18 ***SPOILERS**** Frank Sinatra is returning from the wars Pvt. Danny Miller who's suffering from shyness as well as stage fright that had made him into an oddball to everyone, especially the opposite sex, who meets him. It's in fact the US Army nurse Gloria Grahame, who in the end of the film turned out to be his secret love, treating him for a imaginary case of the mumps who give him the push or kick in the butt that he needs to get on the ball and, as they said in the 1960's, do his own thing that finally straightens him out. And in that way there's also the janitor at his high school back in Brooklyn Nick Lombarbi, played by the famous Snnazola himself Jimmy Durante, whom Danny moves in with and is encouraged by Nick to become a teenage heartthrob and singing sensation. And later have Danny help his friends also overcome their shyness and insecurities as well.Sinatra is at his best playing at first against type, afraid of girls and unable or unwilling to belt out a song, gets down to business when he meets up with Nick Lombardi who gives him the confidence that he so desperately needs. It's both music teacher Anne Fielding, Kathryn Grayson, and next in line to become the Duke of Dunstable Jamie Shellgrove, Peter Lawford, with both Nick as well as a now full of confidence in himself Danny turn around for the better as well. There's also young 16 year old pianist Leo Kardos, Billy Roy, who's stuck in working for the rest of his life as a counter-boy at his moms's, Tamara Shayne, candy store that the three, Danny Anne & Jamie, get to receive a 5 year scholarship to the prestigious "Brooklyn Academy of Music" or "Music Form" in the movie that turns out to be a one way ticket for him to Carnegie Hall.Great music including Frank Sanitra in a duet with Kathryn Grayson singing "Don Giovanni" as well as Frankie singing, while walking across it, the hometown song "Brooklyn Bridge" with the by far best song in the movie done by non other then the shy and introverted Jami Shellgrove. With Jamie playing the piano as well as singing and dancing, to the hysterical screams of a gang of wild eyed teenage girls at the local record store, "Time after Time" that in fact Danny wrote the lyrics for.
tavm Before they became members of The Rat Pack, Frank Sinatra and Peter Lawford were both M-G-M contract players taking any picture offered them. So it was that one of their early teamings was in the studio's black-and-white musical entry, It Happened in Brooklyn. The other stars are Kathryn Grayson and the ever scene-stealing Jimmy Durante. The thin plots concern show biz aspirants in a romantic triangle helping an aspiring piano prodigy one age-17-shy of the requirement for a scholarship. That's pretty much it in a nutshell but despite that the acting performances, which includes another player from my favorite movie It's a Wonderful Life-Gloria Grahame-who plays an army nurse from Frankie's New York State hometown, are passably witty especially Durante who's hilarious whenever he starts talking in a falsetto. Among the nice original songs written by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne was one called "Time After Time" which was nicely song by Sinatra and Grayson in separate segments. Grayson also has a beautiful fantasy sequence from the opera "Lakme" and Lawford warbles an entertaining swing number in front of a bunch of teenagers. Sinatra and Grayson also share an Italian opera number. The highlight, however, was Durante and Sinatra's duet on "The Song's Gotta Come From the Heart" with The Voice during his Schnozzola impression at the end. While the movie seemed a little longish at 103 minutes, I quite enjoyed It Happened in Brooklyn and the way things ended up. P.S. The "Time After Time" song here is definitely not the same as the one later sung by Cyndi Lauper in the '80s!
bkoganbing 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.
sdiner82 Most MGM musicals of the late 1940s were lavish, Technicolored extravaganzas, which is why this modest, low-keyed, filmed in glorious black-and-white effort has always been overlooked. A pity, because it's one of the most endearing, enduring musicals of all time. Firstly, it has a plot--a bittersweet Isobel Lennart screenplay about an ex-soldier (Frank Sinatra) returning from WWII to his beloved Brooklyn, and realizing it is not the same as he remembered it. Secondly, that dream cast working together in perfect dramatic and vocal harmony--Sinatra (never more likeable and sweet-natured); Kathryn Grayson (whose charming down-to-earth sincerity truly makes the screen glow); Peter Lawford (has anyone ever given this actor the credit for the class and gentlemanly warmth he brought to every film he was in?), and, of course, the immortal Jimmy Durante (bolstering all of his co-stars with his brilliant comedic and dramatic talents). And thirdly, an immortal Jule Styne score to die for. "Time After Time" ranks as one of the most poignant, melodic ballads ever composed. Many artistic greats have recorded it, but no one has ever interpreted it with the wistful perfection of Grayson and Sinatra. Add Sinatra's "The Brooklyn Bridge" and "It's the Same Old Dream". Lawford's delightful jive turn "Whose Baby Are You?" And the rousing Sinatra/Durante showstopper "The Song's Gotta Come from the Heart" (excerpted in "That's Entertainment II"). "It Happened in Brooklyn" is a wistful, rueful, enchanting musical the likes of which MGM (nor any other studio) ever made nor even attempted. A buried treasure occasionally unearthed by TCM! See it, tape it, and savor one of the most loving and lovely movie-musicals ever made!