Gordon Jenkins' Manhattan Tower is a musical milestone in several respects. It is a unique blend of elements, part pop orchestral, almost classical suite, and part radio-styled narrative, part musical, and part operetta. It began life in 1946 as a four-part suite on a 78 rpm set of Decca Records, featuring a small cast headed by actor
Elliott Lewis. This modestly ambitious set took hold in the hearts of New Yorkers and earned
Jenkins the Key to the City in 1950, presented to him after a semi-staged version of Manhattan Tower appeared on Talk of the Town, an early version of
Ed Sullivan's televised weekly variety show. Manhattan Tower, with its implication of romance and its lush and tasteful evocation of a kind of idealized city life in New York, won
Jenkins many friends and its unusual dramatic and musical format.