In “That’s Entertainment,” the MGM movie musicals retrospective, Liza Minnelli, one of the all-star narration team, says following the film’s homage to her mother Judy Garland, “Thank God for film! It can capture a performance and hold it right there forever. And if anyone says to you, ‘Who was he?’ or, ‘Who was she?’ or, ‘What made them so good?’ I think a piece of film answers that question better than any words I know of.”

I thought about that quote of Liza’s as I re-watched “Bells Are Ringing,” the 1960 movie musical adapted from the hit Broadway show. I had seen it twice before, once when I was a child (and I loved it then without knowing why), again about 20 years ago, and then last night. It made me cry. Not because it’s a sad movie; indeed, like all the old-fashioned movie musicals before Sondheim turned the genre dark, it is a romantic comedy with a happy ending. It made me cry because I fully realized upon this viewing what a luminous, brilliant, unique performer Judy Holliday was. “Bells Are Ringing” was her final screen performance: less than five years later she was dead of breast cancer at 43. Most people don’t know her name or what she looked like. Yet there have been few female performers who were her equal. Today nobody comes close.