Warner Archive has released a sparkling Blu-ray upgrade of Vincente Minnelli’s 1960 film Bells Are Ringing, the last musical from prolific MGM producer Arthur Freed.

Minnelli’s first musical since his Oscar win for 1958’s Gigi, the film is a faithful, albeit nicely opened up, transposition of the 1956 Broadway musical that won Judy Holliday a Tony over Julie Andrews in My Fair Lady. Co-starring Dean Martin, it features such instantly hummable songs as “Just in Time,” “Drop That Name,” “The Party’s Over,” and “I’m Going Back (to the Bonjour Tristesse Brassiere Factory).”

This was Holliday’s first film in four years. Sadly, it was also her last. She died just before her 44th birthday five years later.

Bells Are Ringing was part of a Broadway culture in which the most popular shows, both musicals and straight plays, were routinely made into films. On November 29, 1956, the night that Bells Are Ringing opened on Broadway, there were thirteen other plays in their initial Broadway run that would soon be turned into films, most of them highly successful. Two others, though not yet made into movies, would become frequent Broadway revivals. They were the musicals Candide and The Most Happy Fella, which had been made into a film some years before as They Knew What They Wanted.

The thirteen plays that were soon made into films were:

Auntie Mame, for which Rosalind Russell and Peggy Cass recreated their Tony-nominated performances, earning Oscar nominations the second time around in this Oscar-nominated comedy classic, the highest grossing film of 1959, the year after its release.

Damn Yankees, for which Gwen Verdon, Ray Walston, Russ Brown, and Rae Allen recreated their Tony-winning roles with Tab Hunter replacing original star Stephen Douglass in his Tony-nominated role for the 1958 hit film version about baseball and the devil.

The Diary of Anne Frank, for which Joseph Schildkraut repeated his original portrayal of Anne’s father while Mollie Perkins replaced Tony winner Susan Strasberg as Anne and Oscar winner Shelley Winters replaced Dennie Moore in support in the Oscar-nominated film version.

Fanny, for which Oscar nominee Charles Boyer, Golden Globe nominees Maurice Chevalier and Leslie Caron, along with Horst Buchholz, replaced Ezio Pinza, Tony winner Walter Slezak, Florence Henderson, and William Tabbert when this glorious musical was inexplicably filmed as an Oscar-nominated non-musical in 1961.

The Happiest Millionaire, starring Walter Pidgeon with Ruth Matteson as his wife, became the reversal of what happened with Fanny when it was turned into a film musical in 1967 with Fred MacMurray and Pidgeon’s frequent screen wife Greer Garson as MacMurray’s wife.

Inherit the Wind in which Paul Muni and Ed Begley’s Tony award-winning roles were played on screen by Oscar nominee Spencer Tracy and Golden Globe nominee Fredric March in the 1960 film version based on the famed 1920s Scopes Trial.

Li’l Abner earned a Tony for Edie Adams as Daisy Mae, but she was replaced in the 1959 film version by Leslie Parrish, while Peter Palmer and Stubby Kaye got to reprise their roles in this musical version of the popular comic strip.

Long Day’s Journey Into Night earned Tonys for Fredric March and Jason Robards, the only player to reprise his role in the 1962 film version. March was replaced by Ralph Richardson, and his wife, Tony nominee Florence Eldredge, by Katharine Hepburn, the only one of the film’s stars to receive an Oscar nomination.

Middle of the Night provided Edward G. Robinson and Anne Jackson with Tony nominations for their father-daughter roles played on screen in the 1959 film by Fredric March and Lee Grant, while Gena Rowlands was replaced by Kim Novak as the new girl in the father’s life.

My Fair Lady is the only Tony-winning musical to date turned into an Oscar-winning film in which its star (Rex Harrison) also won both awards, while its leading lady (Julie Andrews on stage, Audrey Hepburn on screen) was ignored. Stanley Holloway was nominated for both a Tony and an Oscar in support. Robert Coote was also nominated for a Tony, but Wilfred Hyde-White was not nominated for an Oscar in the same role. Cathleen Nesbitt was not nominated as Harrison’s mother on stage, but Gladys Cooper was nominated for an Oscar in the same role.

No Time for Sergeants earned Andy Griffith a Tony nomination on stage, but not in the film version in which he reprised his role in the service comedy in1958.

Separate Tables earned Margaret Leighton a Tony in the roles played on screen by Deborah Kerr and Rita Hayworth while Eric Portman in the roles later played by David Niven and Burt Lancaster had to settle for a nomination. The situation was reversed in the Oscar-nominated 1958 film for which Niven won an Oscar and Kerr a mere nomination. Wendy Hiller won a supporting actress Oscar for the role that earned Beryl Measor a Tony nomination. Gladys Cooper and Felix Aylmer failed to earn nominations for the roles that earned Phyllis Neilson-Terry and William Podmore Tony nominations.

The Sleeping Prince is the only one of the plays to undergo a title change when it became The Prince and the Showgirl on screen with Marilyn Monroe, Laurence Olivier, and Sybil Thorndike replacing Barbara Bel Geddes, Michael Redgrave, and Cathleen Nesbitt.

When the film version of Bells Are Ringing replaced Pollyanna at Radio City Music Hall, other films playing mid-town Manhattan included The Apartment, Ben-Hur, Hiroshima Mon Amour, and Psycho, none of which were based on recent Broadway plays.

This week’s new releases include Loving and American Pastoral.