Here is the lineup for the 1949 film,

East Side, West Side:  Dir:  Mervyn LeRoy.  Starring:  Barbara Stanwyck, James Mason, Syd Charisse, Van Heflin, Ava Gardner, William Frawley, William Conrad (?!), and Nancy Davis.

From the one great scene in the film.

How can you screw this up, right?

Easy.  The script sucks.  They played to the lowest common denominator whilst "attempting" to make a sophisticated Manhattan bourgeois infidelity story.  Hell, it had so much star power, it might have played then.

It do not play now.

Still, there is one great moment in it.  Ava Gardner, supine on a couch, seducing a very married James Mason, purring about how "cheap she is" and that that is exactly what he loves about her.

We get to see Ms Charisse dance for about two seconds, and we never see her legs, at all.

Humbug.