Hitting a New High (1937)

For a brief while, I thought the MGM lion had strayed onto set and was going to shorten this feature for us, but he merely yawned and went back to sleep. Now that is quite an accomplishment as for much of this film we are treated to the pizzicato dulcets of aspiring opera singer “Suzette” (Lily Ponsj. Luckily for her, she is “discovered” by the very aptly named theatrical agent “Corny” (Jack Oakie) who is so determined to get her onto the stage that he dons his khaki and heads to the perilous depths of the African jungle - which, to be fair, does actually look more like a jungle than a few potted plants on a sound stage. Why? Well he and his nice but dim pal “Lucius” (Edward Everett Horton) conclude that Joe Public might be more engaged with their star if they gave her a foundling provenance akin to “Tarzan”. When she hits the big stage, she goes down a storm but will she stick with her old team, or follow the new path offered by the dashing “Andreas” (Eduardo Ciannelli) who does actually know his Saint-Saëns from his Shostakovich. There is no doubt that Miss Pons can hold a tune. Even with the limited audio recording equipment available here she still hits her high notes with a crisp precision that well earns her the “bird” nickname. The rest of this is a bit of a mess, though, with Horton, Oakie and the underused Eric Blore either hamming it up or underplaying their weakly written and over-scripted scripted roles altogether. Luckily, there are quite a few musical interludes to sustain it and it actually illustrates just how far the talkies had come with some competent lip-synching and orchestrations. It isn’t a film that you will need to watch twice, but given the plot is fairly hopeless, it could be a lot worse.