On the Town is a 1949
musical film with music by
Leonard Bernstein and
Roger Edens and book and
lyrics by
Betty Comden and
Adolph Green. It is an adaptation of the
Broadway stage
musical of the same name produced in 1944 (which itself is an adaptation of the
Jerome Robbins ballet entitled
Fancy Free which was also produced in 1944), although many changes in script and score were made from the original stage version; for instance, most of Bernstein's music was dropped in favor of new songs by Edens, who disliked the majority of the Bernstein score, for being too complex and too operatic. This caused Bernstein to boycott the film.