This movie really was not a success, but give the studio credit for throwing a lot of talent at it. The movie was, if we are to believe IMDb, Stanley Kramer's first production. He and writer Carl Foreman collaborated on two more movies in the next three years: Champion, and High Noon. Kramer went on to produce many thoughtful movies (too many to list here) and Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Director Richard Fleischer also had a long career after So This Is New York, up to and including Conan the Barbarian.
Morgan had a reputation of, for a comedian, being an intellectual. He wrote for and became friends with Fred Allen. When his success on radio brought him to Hollywood's attention, his fellow New Yorker, Stanley Kramer, and he came up with a Ring Lardner tale called the Big Town. The choice was almost inevitable: Lardner's cynicism outmatched Morgan's. With Morgan being little known outside New York, they loaded the cast with familiar faces, not necessarily big stars, but familiar faces: Jerome Cowan, who was in every other Warner Brothers movie of the early 40s ( e.g., Miles Archer in the Maltese Falcon), Rudy Vallee, Hugh Herbert, and Leo Gorcey (perhaps a Carl Foreman connection here: Foreman wrote two Bowery Boys scripts a few years earlier). The ladies, Virginia Grey and Dona Drake, were glamorous. The score was by Dmitri Tiomkin, but I honestly can't remember a note he wrote. He did a more memorable score when he rejoined Kramer and Foreman on High Noon.
The weak link, I regret to say, was Henry. Aside from the witty voice-overs, he mostly sat and looked glum while the others acted rings around him. Even Arnold Stang, the stooge from Henry's radio show, stole their one brief scene together. And, there was zero chemistry between Henry and his wife played by Virginia Grey. Henry Morgan fans will be willing to overlook his shortcomings as a screen actor because this is his only comedy movie role. The rest of the world won't, and there are more of them than there are of us.
