Higher and Higher (1943)

I love this movie...

This movie is awesome. If you love romance and musicals, you should add this to your AMC movie collection. September 8, 2008

Sinatra's first film is a gem...

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. June 13, 2008

The Whelan Touch

If this weren't Frank Sinatra's first film it might better be remembered as another sprarkler from the Hollywood pro Tim Whelan, who made dozens of great films in the 1930s and 1940s. He started out in Indiana, then in Hollywood worked as Harold Lloyd's gofer on several of the comedian's silent films. His great learning curve came after his relocation to the UK in the early 1930s, where his expertise with sound film was desperately needed by a foundering British film industry. In short time he was one of the most sought after men working behind the camera.

Whelan directed the stunning version of George Eliot's THE MILL ON THE FLOSS, with Geraldine Fitzgerald and James Mason as the doomed brother and sister, long before either went to Hollywood. He worked with Olivier on several movies, including Q PLANES and THE DIVORCE OF LADY X with Merle Oberon, and gave us Vivien Leigh, Charles Laughton and Rex Harrison in THE STREETS OF LONDON, and many more. He is even co-credited for the work he did on THE THIEF OF BAGDAD, though today most of us consider it a Michael Powell film. Indeed, it has been Whelan's fate to stand totally in the shadow of such directors as Hitchcock, Powell, Anthony Asquith and a host of others, yet his slate of British films is second to none. Perhaps one of the reasons for his relative obscurity is his refusal to be pigeonholed. He could direct comedy, drama, thrillers, "action," melodrama, so-called "women's pictures," and the outright farce. In the USA he only broadened his reach, extending his oeuvre to musicals, although RKO's paltry budgets sometimes hampered his good efforts. Still, there is gold in them there hills, and maybe one of these days we will get a complete Whelan retrospective. He made many fascinating films (why, even his misfires are worth watching), and if HIGHER AND HIGHER isn't the best, it has some wonderful character work and some smooth transitions between different planes of farce. Like Mitchell Leisen, Whelan was an expert at combining otherwise irreconciliable elements; in any other movie Sinatra might have been an excrescence shoehorned in at the insistence the boys at the front office. Here he's perfectly blended in, like vermouth in a Martini, the whole concoction perfectly smooth.

It is sort of odd the way Sinatra is married off to Della Street. Made for each other? I don't think so, but it adds to the film's goofy charm. October 25, 2005

Should Be on DVD!

Higher and Higher is an enjoyable lightweight comedy/musical from 1944 and stars Michele Morgan as a scullery maid who becase their once wealthy boss is now broke the other servants hatch a plan to pass her off as his wealthy debutante daughter and get her married to a wealthy husband but she is in love with someone else, a fellow servant but he doesn't know she's in love with him and he is the main person who is making her pretend to be someone she isn't.! The movie also stars Jack Haley who played the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz and Frank Sinatra in what I think is either his first or one of his first movies and he is playing a crooner. He is basically playing himself as his character is also named Frank Sinatra. This is a good movie and I would like to see it put on DVD! August 23, 2005

Classic News on this Review

When you come across something that has caught your eye you don't forget it easily. This classic, "Higher and Higher", caught my eye about 6 years ago, when my mother was introducing her children to a higher plain of movies. Classic Movies! Ah, just let the Words roll off your tounge. The movie will have you in stiches from beginning to end, and asking for more. Romance, comedy, and a mysterious twist at the end, that keeps comming at you minute after minute. Character acting, of course is flawless. The comradery between the actors and actresses seemed to be weaved together like a tightly nit throw blanket designed to comfort and keep you warm in any situation. So, as you rent this Comedic video remember that it will take you Higher and Higher. April 28, 2000

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