Janet Leigh commands her close-up as the faux Norma Desmond character in what an elaborate title sequence identifies as “the Jewish Sunset Boulevard.” Tony Curtis finds his inner boy-toy as the Desmond character’s companion and ostensible screenwriter, while Dean Martin defies typecasting as the Italian tenor who croons the title song.
A bandleader, desperate to get his band's instruments out of hock, promises the pawnshop clerk--an aspiring songwriter--that he'll let the band's female singer do the clerk's songs at a local club if he will let the band "borrow" their instruments at night.
Bored with her bourgeois life, the young Maria Variani, daughter of a professor, meets Bruno, who is part of an amateur jazz group, and allows herself to be persuaded to join the band that plays during the radio program "The microphone is yours".