Antsy Cabby in ‘On the Town

Betty Garrett, the brassy comic actress who played Frank Sinatra’s ardent, taxi-driving pursuer in the movie “On the Town,” Archie Bunker’s liberal foil of a neighbor in “All in the Family” and a sardonic landlady in “Laverne & Shirley,” died on Saturday in Los Angeles. She was 91.

In “On the Town” (1949), she played a love-struck cabby, Brunhilde Esterhazy, who chases after an overwhelmed sailor (Sinatra), one of three sailors on a wartime leave in New York. (Gene Kelly and Jules Munshin were the other two.) While Sinatra is trapped in her cab hoping to see sights like Luchow’s restaurant and Radio City Music Hall, she pesters him in song to “Come Up to My Place.” Earlier that year she played a lovestruck fan who swoons for Sinatra — wearing a baseball uniform instead of Navy whites — in “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” the story of a team in the sport’s younger days that is surprised when its new owner is a woman (Esther Williams). While one of the movie’s most memorable songs was “O’Brien to Ryan to Goldberg,” again with Kelly and Munshin joining Sinatra, Ms. Garrett had a lively turn in “It’s Fate, Baby, It’s Fate.”