ROMANCE ON THE HIGH SEAS: Blu-ray (Warner Bros. 1948) Warner Archive

An uber-delicious bon-bon of tune-filled Technicolor magic awaits with winsome Doris Day, and the all, but sadly forgotten, Janis Paige – as a ravishing pair of beauties in director, Michael Curtiz’s plush and playful, Romance on the High Seas (1948). Viewing the picture today is to be magically teleported to another epoch entirely in the evolution of movie musicals and the rising mecca of that mythical unicorn of Hollywood yore and lore. It is virtually impossible to leave this movie without cracking a smile, and boy – could the world at large certainly use a good reason to ‘get happy’ right about now! The joys to be had go well beyond the technical proficiency of the actors and crew behind the camera, all of their creative pistons firing with spell-binding precision. It is the gloss here that matters – and also, the movie’s ability to launch us into a stratosphere so completely removed from our reality – then or now – that to suggest such a time was once possible – if only at the movies – is to possess even more discriminate faith in four-leaf clovers, the tooth fairy, benevolent good fairies, and, aliens from another planet. Romance on the High Seas is a dreamlike vision of loveliness. It lulls us with its charm, but continues to thoroughly impress us with its professionalism. And anyone who suggests musicals are just a lot of hooey with a few breezy tunes factored in, are really missing the point – as well as the need – to have our voices raised, not in protest, but in song, and, in defense of a world increasingly nearer to spinning right off its axis.

Only a scant few years before, Day, born Doris Mary Anne Kappelhoff on April 3, 1922, in Cincinnati, Ohio, was the darling of the big band sect. But actually, Day’s singing career began on an even more inauspicious note; merely, something to pass the time while she recovered from an automobile accident, listening to the radio and warbling alongside the likes of Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Tommy Dorsey, and Glenn Miller. Impressed by her innate abilities, singing coach, Grace Raine invested a considerable amount of time and energies to hone Day’s skills and develop her range. While still ‘in training’, Day became a regular vocalist on Carlin’s Carnival, a radio program that brought her to the attention of promoter, Barney Rapp, who encouraged her name change after admiring her rendition of the song, ‘Day After Day’. Soon, the young singer was headlining with bandleaders, Jimmy James, Bob Crosby and Les Brown. And thus, a new ‘Day’ dawned, Day entering Hollywood lore – and, by extension, our hearts – when songwriter, Jules Styne and his partner, Sammy Cahn heard her sing ‘Embraceable You’ on the radio. On their recommendation, Jack Warner agreed to allow her an audition for Curtiz who, almost immediately could not believe his ears and cast her in Romance on the High Seas.

If Doris Day typified the winsome, fresh-faced and virgin-esque wholesomeness of the all-American girl, the route by which Janis Paige marked her turn as the fiery red-head, proved somewhat as unique. And Paige, who at age-97 presently, is still very much as vivacious as ever, proved she had as much – if not more – star power to peddle; if only sporadically utilized inside Hollywood’s dream factories throughout her lengthy career. Hailing from Tacoma, Washington, Paige began singing at the age of five in local amateur shows. She was also popular at the Hollywood Canteen during WWII where she was spotted by a Warner Bros. talent scout. Her co-starring status in Romance on the High Seas ought to have solidified her reputation and star quality for bigger and brighter movies yet to come. Alas, the studio badly mangled her future on forgettable programmers. By 1951, Paige departed the picture-making biz for Broadway where she scored a mega-hit in 1951’s Remains to Be Seen, alongside Jackie Cooper. In 1954, Paige knocked another one out of the park with The Pajama Game. And although she was overlooked for the movie version, Paige did return to the screen in 1957, as the sultry, but daft aquatic film star, opposite Fred Astaire in Silk Stockings. She was also reunited with Day for 1960’s Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, and continued to appear in movies as diverse as the featherweight comedy, Bachelor in Paradise (1961) and intense melodrama, The Caretakers (1963).

The third wheel marking Romance on the High Seas for great success is undeniably, Michael Curtiz. The Hungarian-Jew, born Manó Kaminer, had once aspired to be a great actor, and, studied hard to achieve this goal in Budapest. By age-19, Curtiz was traveling with a stock company as a pantomimist who also performed bit parts in Ibsen and Shakespeare. Curtiz’s diversity in these early years was staggering, morphing into Mihály Kertész at the National Hungarian Theater in 1912, as well as becoming a member of the Hungarian fencing team at the Olympic Games in Stockholm. As Kertész, he directed Hungary's first feature film and, by 1918, he was one of that nation’s most influential directors, with 45 movies to his credit. It was Curtiz’ visual flair that most impressed Jack Warner, always on the lookout for new talent. And Curtiz’s expertise would prove immeasurable on Warner’s silent epic, Noah's Ark (1928), aptly nicknamed by the extras who worked on it as ‘Mud, Flood and Blood’ due to its series of on-set mishaps that sent many to the hospital and is rumored to have resulted in at least one death. Regardless, Curtiz was off and running in Hollywood, and Warner quickly nailed down the details of a lengthy contract that gave the fiery Hungarian unprecedented autonomy. Curtiz was universally admired for his full-on investment in each movie he was assigned, the awe-inspiring fluidity of his camera and lightning-fast pace with which he always brought in every project on time and on budget. If Curtiz’s warhorse film-maker’s acumen kept him working at Warner, it was not until 1935’s Captain Blood that he was given to a project in which he could truly show off the breadth of his skills. The winning formula of Curtiz, and co-stars, Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland were repeated one year later with The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), then again, in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, and, Dodge City (both in 1939). Curtiz was also instrumental in ‘discovering’ John Garfield, whom he co-starred in Four Daughters (1938) and would again in The Sea Wolf (1941).

The 1940’s were a particularly fruitful period for Curtiz, though his mega hits leaned further to the dramatic than the musical, with such high-profile hits as The Sea Hawk (1940), Dive Bomber (1941), Casablanca (1942) and Mildred Pierce (1945). But Curtiz was also handed the reins of Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) – that mesmeric and glowing tribute to James M. Cohan, featuring James Cagney’s breakout star turn as a singer/dancer. Curtiz followed this up by the even more impressively mounted and elephantine, war-time musical programmer, Irving Berlin’s This Is the Army (1943). So, the studio’s investment in Curtiz to direct Romance on the High Seas did not exactly come out of left field. Nor did Curtiz consider the musical – with its generally frothy and featherweight plots, subservient to their grand and glorious production numbers – beneath his talents. And thus, all the elements were in play for a rollicking good time in this ‘case of mistaken identities’ musical. Not only did Romance on the High Seas bring Doris Day to international acclaim, it also took home the Best Song Oscar for Day’s memorable rendition of ‘It’s Magic’. The plot of Julius and Philip Epstein's witty screenplay begins in earnest when wealthy socialite, Elvira Kent (Janis Paige) suspects her husband, Michael (Don DeFore) as a no-good two-timing lady’s man. Smart gal…too smart for her own good, in fact. When Michael tells Elvira, he will be unable to accompany her on their planned ocean cruise, Elvira’s storm signals kick into high gear.

Deliciously devious, Elvira decides not to go on the cruise either – taking a room at a nearby hotel to spy on Michael while hiring a near-penniless nightclub chanteuse, Georgia Garrett (Doris Day) to take her place aboard ship. Naturally, the plot goes hopelessly awry – since Michael has also hired private detective, Peter Virgil (Jack Carson) to tail his wife and Peter actually thinks Georgia is Elvira – while falling hopelessly in love with her. Such maudlin tripe might just as easily have become leaden, dull and cliché. Yet, under Curtiz’s direction, and, with delightfully buoyant songs penned by Cahn and Styne, Romance on the High Seas hits mostly high notes. To find Doris Day in excellent voice is hardly startling, though given this was her movie debut, audiences must have been bowled over by her soothing/singing pipes. But to discover her innate abilities to carry off the comedic and dramatic elements with equal - seemingly effortless - aplomb remains a minor revelation. Doris Day was a rarity in Hollywood's golden age. She somehow managed to emerge on the screen as thought fully-formed from the outset – a star of the first magnitude, right from the beginning.

The other magnificently underrated talent on tap in this picture is undeniably Jack Carson who, at age 52, left us much too soon in 1963 after a brief battle with stomach cancer. The beefy, 6 ft. 2 in. Canadian-born actor, who inadvertently tripped during his debut stage performance as Hercules, fresh out of high school, and, took half the set with him, was a natural-born comedian, soon headlining small vaudeville theaters everywhere in North America. Beginning in 1938, Carson became a main staple on the radio and was even given his own program in 1943, frequently breaking audience records during its four-year run and drawing some of Hollywood’s biggest stars to appear as guests. However, Carson’s debut in pictures was more than inauspicious. He landed little more than bit parts in such high-profile movies as Stage Door (1937), Vivacious Lady, and, Bringing Up Baby (both 1938) and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). By the mid-1940’s, Carson was being typecast as the heavy in pictures like Mildred Pierce (1945). So, to find him as ‘the love interest’ in Romance on the High Seas was more than a leap of faith on Curtiz’s part, even if 1944’s Make Your Own Bed – in which Carson was given a starring role – had proven he could deftly handle romantic comedy. And although Carson acquits himself quite nicely of the suitable suitor in ‘Romance’ his later career would regress his stature as the second-string baddie in such megawatt movies as 1954’s A Star is Born and 1958’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.  In Romance on the High Seas, Carson proves irresistible as the bumbling detective about to be bitten by the love bug, presumably, for the girl he out to be investigating for his client.

Romance on the High Seas (originally titled, Romance in High ‘C’) was a big hit for all concerned. The picture made Doris Day a star in a role originally conceived for actress, Betty Hutton. Hutton’s pregnancy sent the movie into a tailspin with stalled negotiations between Warner Bros. to borrow either Judy Garland or Jane Powell from MGM. Day, whose personal life was imploding at the time due to a failed marriage, brings some of this emotional baggage to bear on the part, thus, giving her otherwise cardboard cutout character a modicum of emotional depth. The movie also showed off Carson and co-star, Janis Paige to their best effect; Paige, particularly, all glycerin sparkle and bubbly charm. Romance on the High Seas is as notable for the contributions of screenwriter, I.A.L. Diamond (later, to be renowned for his alliance with director, Billy Wilder) herein, only contributing ‘additional dialogue’ for which he received no screen credit. Curtiz's pacing, his staging of the rather lavishly appointed musical offerings is effortless, and, in Technicolor, remains a frothy escapist frolic. The film? Well - it’s magic, of course; although, not everyone agreed. Noted N.Y. Times critic, Bosley Crowther thought Doris Day had ‘no more than a vigorous disposition which hits the screen like a thud’ and considered the movie ‘a scatterbrained comedy of errors’ at best.  Ironically, Texas newspapers were agog in their praise of both the movie and its leading lady; critic, Steve Perkins of the Austin American-Statesman adding, “A new leading lady has popped up out of nowhere and it will probably be a long time before she pops down again!”

When I first discovered Romance on the High Seas was slated for a Warner Archive Blu-ray release, I nearly fell off my chair as few Technicolor baubles are so right for the upgrade. But now, indeed, we have the movie looking positively ravishing in hi-def. Don’t think. Just buy this deep catalog release and help promote the cause of getting more masterpieces from Hollywood’s golden age out there for public consumption. You are going to LOVE the way this one looks.  Color density and saturation is exquisite. This is an eye-popping presentation. Flesh tones that were a tad pasty on the DVD, are now all peaches and cream accurate and stunning. Fine detail abounds in this razor-sharp presentation with bang-on contrast to boot. Truly, no complaints. Time to just smile and celebrate.  The audio is DTS 1.0 mono, but expertly resolved for this presentation. Aside: original audio stems of Day’s recordings for this movie made it possible for a true stereo release of her vocals on a CD released by Rhino Handmade some years ago. It would have been nice to have them remixed into this Blu-ray. But we won’t quibble, when what’s here is so true to 35mm film, and likely, the theatrical debut, that all one can say is ‘many thanks’ to WAC.  What a wonderful effort. What a spectacular movie. A new ‘day’ has arisen. Meet it with sheer joy.

FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)

3.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

4

EXTRAS

1