“I wanna take in the beauties of New York.”
“And I wanna take ‘em out.”

Granted twenty-four hours’ shore leave in New York City, three Navy sailors, played by Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Jules Munshin, set out in search of some casual sex—er, I mean, love. Sure, they want to sightsee and hit the clubs and whatnot, but they want to do it with dates dangling on their arms.

The central gag of On the Town is that the ladies of the Big Apple are as eager for a quick romance as the sailors. So while Gabey (Kelly) spends his precious hours frantically searching for Ivy Smith (Vera-Ellen)—a small town girl he mistakes for a celebrity because she’s won the monthly “Miss Turnstiles” competition and thus had her face plastered all over the subway system—his pals find themselves overwhelmed by advances from an assertive cab driver (Betty Garrett) and an amorous anthropologist (Ann Miller). As these new lovers knock over exhibits of dinosaur skeletons, scale the Empire State Building, tour the famous city’s culturally diverse nightclubs, and converse in innuendo—spinning, jumping, tap-dancing, and singing all the way—the local girls aid in Gabey’s earnest pursuit of Ivy, ensuring that she’s treated like a high society star up until a wild police chase exposes her moonlight occupation as a burlesque dancer.

Adapted from a war-time musical by first-time film directors Kelly and Stanley Donen, On the Town is enlivened by hard-won location shoots, a colorful wardrobe and set design, a rapid pace, a witty script (Adolph Green, Betty Comden), athletic dance maneuvers performed in unbroken sequences, and the good charm of its principal and supporting cast (Florence Bates and Alice Pearce are delightful as a dance instructor and nasally-congested roommate, respectively). If the musical numbers, split between Leonard Berstein’s originals and new material from Roger Edens, occasionally feel unintegrated or underpowered (they favor comedic schtick over pizzazz, and funny voices over good ones), well, then you should simply stop comparing On the Town to Singin’ in the Rain, even though the third act’s symbolic ballet plot redux feels like a dry run for the later film’s fantasy sequence.

The two young filmmakers were still a few years away from the platonic ideal of the fully integrated dramatic musical, but On the Town is a delightful step in that direction.