Romance on the High Seas (Michael Curtiz, 1948)
Mad men, women, jealousy, spark, creation, and Oscar Levant sharpened by an (IAL) Diamond.
This fast-paced, fresh, innocent, yet wry, musical is available on streaming—though you’re better off getting a less-pixelated version on disc from the library. Doris Day is radiant.9 The numbers are superb. The writing is sharp and quick.10 The technicolor, costumes, and settings are gorgeous.11 The plot is fun and screwball—the odd moments, dramatic irony of misunderstandings, and side-characters deeply enrich the film.
Like honest-to-goodness Cotton Club legend, Avon Long singing against capitalism; Curtiz knows he has something special here, shooting Long through a gap in bird cages at a street fair. Long jumps on tables as his song makes fun of ugly American-filled cruise ships pouring into towns such as his. As the number ends, we see him through the cages again and he says “I love this shot!” We agree. There is plenty to love in the unpretentious reflexivity of this incredibly playful film.12
As in classic screwballers, social commentary against the rich is casual, amusing, and acid: the nightclub owner referring to Janis Paige’s wife and SJ Sakall’s Uncle Laszlo as “tax evaders” when they attend Day’s show to hire her as her replacement on an anniversary cruise, so she can stay behind and catch her husband cheating on her (that is the film’s plot, btw).
The versatile Michael Curtiz did the directing honors, but Busby Berkely’s swooping flourishes spice up the scenery during the subtly intricate musical numbers. The plot is frothy proto-fifties. Beginning with the marriage of Mr. Michael and Mrs. Elvira Kent (Janis Paige and Don Defore), they each have very obviously wandering eyes and the attendant projectional jealousy in close-up, even at their own wedding.
Doris Day’s Georgia Garrett is a scrappy nightclub singer who loves to visit and pretend, but cannot afford the travel agency Elvira uses. Mike is too busy working for The Miracle Drug Company to accompany Elvira on any of their anniversary trips.13 Early on, each sees the other looking like they are making out with other people due to some very clever POV shots and evocative music by Ray Heindorf (who got an Oscar nod for it) that colors our emotions as we are made to feel their jealousy in full audiovisual complement.
The film is bursting with a screwball comedy’s full set of characters who provide the heart and soul of Romance and could carry the film themselves. SJ Sakall’s wise, older “uncle” serves counsel to both husband and wife.14 Oscar Levant’s wryly cynical pianist/bandleader/underachiever Oscar, provides atonic balance to Day’s safe, yet not yet corny, love-at-first-sight crystal-clean appeal.15
In the first of many phenomenal Sammy Cahn/Jule Styne tunes, when Day sings of being “in love, in love, in love…” Levant’s pianist gets a close-up to intone “yep, in love.” Perennial arrogant jackass Jack Carson plays private eye Peter Virgil hired to shadow Mike’s wife on their anniversary cruise.16
An early gag highlights the universality of infidelity and its consequences. As Mike interviews Peter to trail his wife on the cruise ship, the dick takes two calls, one from a man whose wife was cheating on him. The call ends when the man faints. The next call is simply a gunshot from the other end, which Peter claims is another case, showing both the depth and breadth of this problem and engaging our hearts and minds with this clever synecdoche.
Musical integration harmonizes Romance in High C (its working title.) This is when the world of the film incorporates all musical elements, rather than simply leading up to a show. Peter and Georgia enter a restaurant and we hear a Latin coloring of "It’s Magic." With the full benefit of history, we know this will become Day’s first truly legendary song. Her down-to-earth singer bonds with the band and ends up with the lyric sheet. As she sings it, and Curtiz’s camera floats around her like a drunken bumblebee after a run-in with cupid, Virgil converses with her as she sings the lines: “that song really does something to me.” She replies in chorus “It’s magic.” By the scene’s sweet dissolve, due to her singing, she has made Virgil fall in love with her.
The magic of the musical form is this amazing narrative compression: a full film's love story squished into one gorgeous song.17 And the dramatic irony cascades and builds to where at the end, Mike finds Oscar in his wife’s bed, alone. Elvira has a bad voice.18 Georgia can’t stop herself from singing at every opportunity, one of the many“magic” things about this film.
Since she sings so much throughout the film and in disguise as a well-known New York society lady, she’s hired and featured as a singer on a Rio nightclub stage (an opportunity Georgia has struggled all her life to achieve—yet another critique of the advantage wealth brings). The finale takes place here, with Busby Berkely’s camera swooping and diving around the incredibly glamorous ship’s club.
When Elvira Kent is announced, both Day and Paige hit the stage, in a finale as flooring as the one in Singin’ in the Rain (1952). We, in fact, get a wonderful reaction shot of the wooden Defore truly floored: falling into his chair. The mates that fate had to create converge, balloons and confetti float, the camera cranes away, "It’s Magic "repeats…and it so obviously is.
The magic of the musical, even as a sequence self-consciously jammed into an otherwise remarkable film that flirts, moves, and swings like What a Way to Go! is something that should not be lost to time. It has the power to pull an exceedingly thrifty Skelton vehicle out of the dustbin. This same wizardry shows why a dynamite figure like Day could be saved. These are instantly accessible films that play to all ages, having infused the most money, talent, and everything Hollywood could muster into their peak era.
The reflexive backlash to La La Land (2016) indicates we may, as a society, be cynical beyond hope. Thankfully many artifacts remain to refute our darker sides. Until the next piece of transcendental magic hovers above, beckoning to us like Hedwig, in dazzling dress and makeup. Captivating. Tantalizing. Hypnotizing. Till then: sing and dance on with these should-be classics!
9. Doris Day’s screen debut. Kathryn Grayson, Mary Martin, Kathryn Grayson, and Judy Garland passed. Betty Hutton was set to star (Day replaced her, which is why her part is so big), but had to drop out due to an unplanned pregnancy. Day’s earlier screen test had been a thumbs-down for Warner’s. Later, Day sang Embraceable You at a party for Curtiz at songwriters Jules Styne and Sammy Cahn’s urging, was hired on the spot, and after the preview audience loved her, she was raised from fourth billing. Concerned she needed acting classes, Curtiz told her “You have a natural thing that no one should ever disturb. You listen to me, Doris, it’s a very rare thing—do not disturb.” A 25-year-old mother just out of an abusive relationship and about to flee Hollywood for her home of Cincinnati, the response to this film prompted Warners to sign her to a seven-year contract and saved her career.
10. “I’m in love,” says Doris Day’s Georgia to the man smitten with her (but Oscar Levant’s character is of the same station, so we know they won’t end up together.) “Aren’t you being a little forward?” he replies. “Not with you.” “Well that was a short romance,” he wryly sighs. And we quickly move on. This throwaway moment is indicative of the screenplay’s high quality, which was by the Epstein brothers and others. If it wasn’t so frothy and fun, we could call it Casablanca on the High Seas.
11. For more on this, check out The Blonde at the Film’s lovely, yet needlessly denigrating, screengrab-filled review.
12. Long before he breaks the fourth wall here, Avon Long was a featured performer at the legendary club. None other than Lena Horne credits him with yanking her out of the chorus line to a featured spot. He had recently won acclaim in the Broadway production of Porgy and Bess.
13. It’s all very Mad Men (2007-2015), down to Mike’s jealousy-provokingly gorgeous secretary, who matches the painting, but can’t type. It’s hard to say whether Billy Wilder saw this, but the influence on his masterpiece The Apartment (1960) can be felt since I. A. L. Diamond co-wrote Romance on the High Seas. The Apartment was cited as a direct influence on Mad Men.
14. Eric Blore (the amazingly wry British manservant of so many wonderful Astaire-Rogers pictures) even shows up as a doctor when Georgia is pretending to be sick. Though he is only shown for 5 minutes, his performance as a hypochondriac doctor is not wasted. Preston Sturges favorite, Franklin Pangborn, is a gossipy front desk clerk with the great line “Rio is getting more like Paris every day!” Veteran character actor, Grady Sutton enjoys the mounting intrigue each telegram the PI sends back to Mike holds a bit too much, etc.
15. It was from this film that Levant was to later devise his infamous witticism, "I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin!"
16. For more hate on Jack Carson, check out What’s in the Basket’s podcast episode on this movie. They kind of miss the point of the film, but their vitriol toward Carson is very funny.
17. In an earlier scene, Curtiz’s camera captured the radiant innocence of a young, raw, new Day from a bit below as she sang pickup with the cruise ship lounge’s jazz band, The Page Cavanaugh Trio, in a nice cameo. Even Jack Carson (the less-sweet, less-talented Vince Vaughan of his day) has a number. Convinced that Georgia is trying to cheat on her husband with him as well as Oscar, he is compelled to sing “Run, run, run when you see a pretty woman” with a local calypso band that just happens to be led by Calypso legend Lord Invader. Carson does a good job with it, indicating that we can casually appropriate other cultures while still accepting them.
18. In reality, Paige is an excellent singer; the film’s charming trailer incongruously features her and Day in an upswept hairdos singing about the movie.