While writing about the Film & TV Office yesterday, I wondered whether it was really true that the hip 1956 musical “High Society” was filmed in Newport, as opposed to being set there but filmed in Hollywood.

Steven Feinberg, the office’s executive director, wrote in to tell me that indeed it is. Not only that, he said, but the late state Rep. Paul Crowley‘s father actually let MGM’s crew use his station wagon to secure the camera as they drove down Bellvue Avenue to film the opening sequence.

“High Society” was a remake of “The Philadelphia Story” with Cole Porter supplying the music, and featured an all-star cast including Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly and Louis Armstrong. It’s not the only toe-tapping flick set in 1950s Newport, either; the classic “Jazz on a Summer’s Day” documents the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival.

And Feinberg’s e-mail gives me a good excuse to post the opening sequence he described – dig that Satchmo style: