It Happened in Brooklyn

Jobs are scarce. Rooms to rent are scarcer. Times aren’t easy for returning GIs in the years after World War II. But falling in love, that’s easy. It Happened in Brooklyn. And it happens with Frank Sinatra (in a performance critically hailed as the best of his then-young screen career) starring as an ex-soldier and with a lot of humor and Jule Styne/Sammy Cahn songs. “The Song’s Gotta Come from the Heart,” one tune says and, with Sinatra mimicking Jimmy Durante as he socks it over with the affable “Schnozzola,” it has enough heart to envelop all of Flatbush. Kathryn Grayson, Peter Lawford and Gloria Grahame help make the movie magic happen. And most magical of all is Sinatra’s silken delivery of a ballad forever linked with him afterward: “Time After Time”.