The Rat Race

Pete Hammond Jr wants to be a jazz saxophonist and takes the bus from Milwaukee to New York. In the city he meets a taxi dancer, moves in with her, and after a while something starts between them. Garson Kanin adapted his own play, Robert Mulligan directed, Robert Burks photographed it and Elmer Bernstein wrote a bright score leaning on jazz. Produced by William Perlberg and George Seaton for Paramount and shot in Technicolor, it opened in July 1960. Alma Macrorie cut it. What the film is most remembered for is the sharpness of Kanin’s script and the measure in Mulligan’s handling of it. Tony Curtis and Debbie Reynolds have the leads, with Jack Oakie, Kay Medford and Don Rickles in the cast.