On the Town

Music

- Presentation of Miss Turnstiles:

ANNOUNCER:
Miss Turnstiles for June!
Every month, some lucky little New York miss is chosen
Miss Turnstiles for the month. She's got to be beautiful,
she's got to be just an average girl, and most important
of all she's got to ride the subway.
There are 5,683 women who ride the subway every day. And
which fortunate lassie will be chosen for the signal honor
this month?
She's beautiful, brilliant, average, a typical New Yorker...

IVY:
Who, me?

ANNOUNCER:
Yes, you! Ivy Smith!

(Ivy is chosen from a crowd of Manhattan girls
and adorned as Miss Turnstiles.)

She's a home-loving girl.
But she loves high society's whirl.
She adores the Army, the Navy as well,
At poetry and polo she's swell.

[The first of On the Town's ballets presents a satiric look at the glamorous reign of Miss Turnstiles. In front of a stage-sized blowup of her poster, we meet Ivy Smith here photographed, interviewed and wooed by the town's most eligible men.]

[Miss Turnstiles Dance]

[Ivy dances a pas de deux with a Home-loving Man, a Playboy, a Soldier, a Sailor and an Athlete - emphasizing her contradictory attributes. Folled by a pas de sept with them all.]

ANNOUNCER:
But of course at the end of each month a new Miss Turnstiles is chosen... and when that happens...

IVY:
Oh, dear!
[Ivy admirers disappear. She reluctantly rejoins the crowd of girls, and they exit.]

Riding into Manhattan on the subway. Gabey and his pals spot the poster announcing this month's Miss Turnstiles, Ivy Smith. Smitten, Gabey steals the poster as a grouchy old lady cries "Vandals!" She locates a cop and they take off after the escaping sailors, becoming the first in a line of pursuers that grows as the trio gets into further trouble.
Gabey is bent on finding Miss Turnstiles, but Chip balks at wasting any more of his precious 24 hours on chasing after Ivy Smith. When Ozzie reminds him that he wouldn't even be in New York if Gabey hadn't rescued them from drowning at sea not long before, the trio decides to look for Ivy, using clues from her personality sketch on the poster. But first, Ozzie and Chip give Gabey pointers in the art of courtship.