Two years before ON THE TOWN...

For 67 years, everyone's raved about the opening sequence of ON THE TOWN (1949), in which Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Jules Munshin perform "New York, New York, It's a Wonderful Town" at various tourist spots in Manhattan, including Rockefeller Center, the Empire State Building and the Brooklyn Bridge, all live on location, no studio shots. Yet two years earlier, Sinatra did a whole song by himself, "The Brooklyn Bridge," on location at the bridge--all live, no studio shots--in IT HAPPENED IN BROOKLYN and no one's said a word about it in 70 years. It's a beautiful sequence in a wonderful, music-filled movie and it needs to be better-known.