Come On All You Jacks
And Jills-Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby’s “High Society” (1956)-A
Film Review
DVD Review
By Sandy Salmon
High Society, starring
Grace Kelly, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, with Jazzman Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong
and his All-Stars coming up and stealing the show-a few big scenes anyway, music
and lyrics by legendary Tin Pan Alley composer Cole Porter, 1956
It is a little ironic
that I am doing this assignment at the same time as my fellow writer here Sam
Lowell just finished doing a short review of folk troubadour Bob Dylan’s
tribute to Frank Sinatra, In The Shadow
Of The Night from several years back. Ironic in the sense that those of us
who came of age in the 1960s like Sam and me whatever else we may have
disagreed on, no matter whether one took Sam’s hippie path or my more middle
class career we almost universally rebelled against the music of our parents’
generation the Tin Pan Alley-derived stuff that got them through the Great
Depression and World War II. And number one on their hit parade was “the
Chairman of the Boards,” one Frank Sinatra just as Elvis was our growing up rock
and roll hero and for some of us, not me, that folk minute hero Bob Dylan now covering
one Frank Sinatra.
All of this as prelude
to talking about Mr. Sinatra in another of his musical performance films here.
This time not about his Oscar-winning role as a wise-ass Army grunt in
pre-World War II Hawaii in the film adaptation of James Jones’ From Here To Eternity, the madman “max
daddy” junkie fixer man in the film adaptation of Nelson Algren’s The Man With The Golden Arm or the
eerily chilling role of presidential political assassin in Suddenly but as the odd-man out in a love triangle down in Mayfair 1950s
Newport. In the 1950s Jazz Festival times not the old time summer watering hole
of the ultra-rich robber barons who built the massive mansions back in the 19th
century but still quaint and high end Newport before the tourists swarmed in.
Frank definitely gets
his shots at his first career, the singing that in the 1940s made all the bobby-soxers
take off their bobby-socks and who knows what else if you go by the frenzy Elvis
provoked in a later generation here in the musical/drama High Society. Add in a word as
well about the jazz for the Festival being hot as per Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong
or off-stage like Dizzy, Charlie, the Duke who blew away a 1954 crowd of
younger upstart Mayfair swells and almost caused a riot when his max daddy sax
player hit the high white note.
But enough of that Frank
sex stuff, Satchmo blowing big rings around staid Newport or even Mister Cole
Porter from up in Tin Pan Alley land doing his popular music American Songbook
thing because musical, musical comedy if you will although the gags are strictly
from nowhere, or not this is about romance, romances. And that seems about right
if you figure that Grace Kelly is the protagonist who gets all the attention. I
might as well say here in the interest of transparency, or drooling, take your
pick, that for a while now I have been adding this too every Grace Kelly pic
review. After seeing her here, in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window and High Noon
I now understand why Prince Rainer, her husband, not a man given to public
display of emotion had wept openly at her funeral when she passed away in that
awful car accident.
To the film. Here’s how the Mayfair swells go about their
private business in a not so private way since half the world knows what it
knows. Tracy, played by gracious Grace, now happily divorced from low-ball
achiever/mere musician/composer and not classical like Mozart or Bach but jazz
if you can believe that, and not a big time financial operator like her father,
three name C.K. Dexter, played by another crooner from the 1940s Bing Crosby,
is ready to do the deed again with a real self-starter, a guy who worked his
way up the food chain and not some sportsman scion of the wealthy set like old
C.K. (By the way that divorce business not then, or now for that matter, not
well-disposed of by the money set as it confuses wealth transfer and other technical
problems.)
That little fact, that underachiever
and ne’er-do-well part sets the tone for what will be become a “battle of
wills” between Grace and Bing who as you know already to my mind is still
rightly in love with her. Enter Mike Connor, an world wary everyman regular guy
played Frank, not at this moment like in other entry moments in the film ready
to burst into song either alone or with Bing, but as a reporter who is out to
get the low-down on the rich and famous for a sleaze bag publishing outfit. To
get any juicy pics worldly wise Liz, played by Celeste Holms, who is half in
love with Mike but letting him out on a
long leash, tags along for the ride.
Scene set the rest of
the film, interrupted by song and more importantly by savior Satchmo and his
All-Stars doing some great old time jazz to make the heart flutter is a breeze
through. (Please remember Satchmo and his gang and Bing are there for the
Newport Jazz Festival and are merely “crashing” the wedding festivities.) Tracy
and C.K. cat and mouse it while the intended groom is in the dark, clueless and
moreover happy about that fact until the hammer comes down. The happy hammer
coming down at the pre-nuptial wedding digs where Tracy gets blasted and runs
off with… No, not C.K. things are too 1950s chaste for that but with a smitten Mike
(to work partner Liz’ chagrin). That short intoxicated fling over the next
morning the wedding is to be called off once that intended groom takes the high
moral ground and foolishly (oops) doesn’t take Tracy in all his arms and carry
her off. Wait. You cannot disappoint Mayfair swell guests come for a wedding
any more than any other wedding. So Tracy and Mike, no, C.K. retie the knot.
Who knows how long that rematch will last with these two wild kids.
If this all sounds
familiar, sounds like a film review plot that I have done before it is. This is
just a musical remake of the classic version of the story in black and white The Philadelphia Story with Kate
Hepburn, Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart in the respective roles. Cary naturally
in Bing’s place. That’s the go-to film unless like Prince Rainer you need to
see Grace when she was in her prime. And Satchmo in high dungeon.
