Higher and Higher
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Movie Reviews of Higher and Higher
Movie Review: Higher & Higher
Summary: 5 Stars
Really a good film for a RKO release, this also has a All Star Cast:
Frank Sinatra, Jack Haley, Victor Borge, a very young Mel Torme, Mary Wikes, and more. Very entertaining, and a sweet love story. Very New Yorker Theme movie..
Movie Review: I love this movie...
Summary: 5 Stars
This movie is awesome. If you love romance and musicals, you should add this to your AMC movie collection.Movie Review: Sinatra's first film is a gem...
Summary: 4 Stars
I absolutely love this movie. Sinatra is too sweet and too flippin' adorable for words! It's hilarious watching him play himself in a film, where only one or two other characters recognize that he's not just another "singing hack." The songs are classics - "I Couldn't Sleep a Wink Last Night," "The Music Stopped," "I Saw You First," and "Lovely Way to Spend an Evening" are all top-notch examples of Sinatra's early singing style - lush orchestrations and an irresistibly romantic delivery. While this is definitely not the best musical ever filmed, it's one of my favorites from RKO. It's filled with a slew of well-known actors, among them Mary Wickes (always hilarious) and a very young Mel Torme. My favorite actor sightings in the cast have to be a young Barbara Hale (a.k.a. Della Street on the Perry Mason show) and Victor Borge of all people (he was actually kind of dashing back in the day!). Frank really doesn't get a chance to stretch his acting chops in this movie (his first starring role), but his singing more than compensates for any lack in the acting experience department. The movie provides great documentation of how and why Sinatra made bobbysoxers swoon in the 1940s. My one quip with the storyline (*spoiler*!) is that Frank is turned down for Jack Haley, a.k.a. THE TIN MAN from The Wizard of Oz (Two-Disc Special Edition). That's absolutely insane! :P The DVD doesn't have chapter selections, but the picture is crisp and clear and sounds great. The film is sweet and funny and a great document of a young Sinatra at work.Movie Review: Not as bad as some say, but it helps to have a fondness for history and archeology
Summary: 3 Stars
For a movie that's just about awful, there are a number of good things which a little knowledge of history, a taste for archeology and the fast forward button can help you with. Higher and Higher tells the story of Mike and Millie, while also shoehorning in Frank. Cyrus Drake (Leon Errol), a rich old coot, has gone bankrupt. His staff, led by his valet, Mike (Jack Haley), get the brainstorm to marry off the beautiful and naïve scullery maid, Millie (Michele Morgan), to a rich man after they introduce her as Drake's daughter at the Butlers' Ball, the prestigious annual coming out affair for debs with rich daddies. Cyrus Drake's coffers will be refilled and the staff will get their back wages. But Millie secretly loves Mike. To get his attention she pretends to like very much the skinny, slightly goofy looking young man who lives across the court, a singer named Frank Sinatra. Be prepared. There's a happy ending, but not before an interminable story and a lot of dud jokes. Jack Haley, so full of insincere sincerity, a product of years on the vaudeville stage, makes a match with the beautiful Michele Morgan that is seriously unbelievable. The comedy mix-ups aren't so much tedious as just unfunny. Now on to the good stuff.
Higher and Higher was based on a 1940 Rodgers and Hart Broadway flop. It had a terrible book but some wonderful R&H songs. As is Hollywood's way, when the studio bought the rights they dumped the songs and kept the book. However, with Sinatra making his first starring appearance, they were smart enough to hire Jimmy McHugh (music) and Harold Donaldson (lyrics) to write all new songs. (A bit from one R&H song is used, "Disgustingly Rich.") McHugh and Donaldson came up with some proficient but unremarkable comedy songs, but they hit home runs for the three Sinatra ballads..."I Couldn't Sleep a Wink Last Night," "This Is a Lovely Way to Spend an Evening" and my favorite,
The music stopped
But we were still dancing
Which goes to show
That music has charms
The lights were low
So we went on dancing
I felt the glow of you in my arms
The cast of Higher and Higher is almost worth renting the movie for. They are a group of some excellent comic actors and performers. They have little good material to work with, but if you're familiar with them you'll enjoy them. Among the rich coot's staff, we're talking Leon Errol, the coot; Mary Wickes, the social secretary; Mel Torme, only 18 and in his first movie, general helper; the wonderful Paul and Grace Hartman, who only have a couple of bits, butler and maid; Dooley Wilson, chauffeur; Marcy McGuire, maid; and Ivy Scott, cook. Victor Borge in his first American movie appears as Sir Victor Fitzroy Victor, a possible match for Millie. Perhaps he wrote his own stuff, but he has some brief but funny lines that already nail his successful stage persona.
Frank Sinatra hasn't learned to do much acting yet, but he doesn't embarrass himself. He comes across as a nice young guy with none of the ring-a-ding-ding awfulness of his middle years. When he croons those three hits McHugh and Donaldson wrote for him, you almost hear the thonk plop flop of bobbie soxers fainting in the theater aisles.
As for archeology, if you are inspired to track down the clever and memorable score Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart wrote for the stage show, you'll need to dig. Since the score didn't have a big hit, unusual in an R&H musical, and the show flopped, the songs were largely forgotten. One, "It Never Entered My Mind," managed to find a life with saloon singers who knew quality. Two or three more would occasionally pop up here and there in albums. To hear the rest, you need to search out the CD Ben Bagley's Rodgers and Hart Revisited, Vol. 1. It features eight songs from the score. Ben Bagley's CD Rodgers and Hart Revisited, Vol. 3 has three more. The songs are clever and smart, as with...
Ev'ry Sunday afternoon and Thursday night,
We'll be free as birds in flight.
If on Sunday afternoon we ever fight
We'll make up on Thursday night.
Leave the dishes,
Dry your hands.
Change your wishes
To commands.
Ev'ry Sunday afternoon we'll be polite,
But we'll make love on Thursday night.
Only Hart could have come up with that funny juxtaposition in the bridge between a bit of household work and love, and with Rodgers' sweet melody.
And finally, it will be a good thing if you give Michele Morgan a second chance. She was a memorable star in France but never quite made it in the United States. However, one of her best American films is that surreal and vicious Cornell Woolrich noir, The Chase. It more than makes up for her appearance in Higher and Higher. She is superb in Carol Reed's and Graham Greene's The Fallen Idol - Criterion Collection.
Movie Review: A JIGSAW PUZZLE IS NOT A MOVIE
Summary: 1 Stars
Mr KILLIAN is quite right about TIM WHELAN. I wouldn't blame RKO for the failure of that movie who had enough money for a cheap screenplay(Jay Dratler and Ray Spence) RKO had paid 15000 dollars for the rights of the Rodgers and Hart musical, a flop in 1940. Only one song was kept and Adamson-Mc Hugh were paid for four new songs. No question about money there. Whelan was also producer on that one. The cinematography by Robert de Grasse was good, as usual.
But Leon Errol does his Leon Errol thing. Victor Borge plays the piano, as Borge is expected to do. Haley plays Haley. Sinatra plays himself, so there is no character in the movie. He looks over made up and very tired, and just sings not so good songs. Our own Michèle Morgan looks old and not attractive. The Edward Stevenson gowns even look without style.
Only Marcy Mc Guire, as a servant chasing Sinatra is her usual dynamic self.
It is really too bad as the beginning looks promising: a song around the kitchen table by all the servants, and the same for another song in the dining hall. Then everything and everybody falls asleep.
The DVD transfer is very good, as all the Sinatra transfers in the box (the best being IT HAPPENED IN BROOKLYN) The DVDs are inexpensive and there is no chapters list in the box, which is now usual. Unfortunately there is no list either on the DVD, which is a bad move for a musical.