HIGH SOCIETY (MGM, 1956) Warner Home Video
An irrefutable ‘blue chip’
musical from MGM's 50’s pastiche to all things done in good taste, Sol Siegel’s
VistaVision production of High Society (1956) sparkles with the witty
sophistication of Cole Porter’s ‘swell-egent’ tunes and the immeasurable
gifts of headliners, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and, in this – her farewell to
pictures, the luminous Grace Kelly – a triumvirate, ably assisted by the
swingin’ jazz styling of Louis Armstrong. High Society brims with oodles
of chic good taste. Porter’s more lilting melodies – included the top-selling
hit parade romantic ballad ‘True Love’ – delicately counterbalance his razor-sharp and barb-laden pop tunes better inform both character and story, but also excel at making his glib social
commentary on the idle rich. In a word,
he is ‘sensational’…that’s all! And High Society is a darling of
a rom/com cocktail, going down like well-aged Cabernet while leaving behind the
ticklish memory of its bubbles. It is a movie, only to have been made – or rather,
remade – in the fabulous fifties, a glorious reconstitution of Philip Barry’s
sensational Broadway hit, The Philadelphia Story, first to appear on the screen in its non-musical form at MGM in 1940, starring the
indomitable Katherine Hepburn. Barry’s badinage never gets sidelined in this
musical remake, perhaps because Porter implicitly acknowledges the monumental contributions in this wordsmith’s dialogue. Thus, Porter takes his cue from the as erudite Barry, evolving a richly rewarding melange that effectively takes us to places only music can.
Grace Kelly as the wounded socialite, Tracy Samantha Lord in High Society is less vinegary than Hepburn’s pert protagonist, but just as audacious, even warbling a few bars of Porter’s aforementioned ‘True Love’ with
costar, Bing Crosby before moving on to even ‘higher’ society as Princess Grace
of Monaco. And Kelly has sex appeal – a quality Hepburn, even in her prime,
arguably lacked. Too bad for the men in Tracy’s life – ex-husband C.K.
Dexter-Haven (Crosby), tabloid journalist, Mike ‘Macaulay’ Connor (Frank
Sinatra) and fiancée, George Kittredge (John Lund) she wears a chip on her
shoulder overshadowing the heart on her sleeve. “You have a fine mind and a
body that does what you tell it to do,” Tracy’s disenfranchised father,
Seth (Sidney Blackmere) coolly explains at one point, “You have everything
you need except the one essential – an understanding heart. Without it you
might just as well be made of bronze.”
Later, Crosby’s C.K. Dexterhaven suggests Tracy will make a second
unhappy marriage of her pending union to Kittredge unless she can let her tiara
slip just a bit. He has high hopes for her to become a wonderful woman. “Thanks,”
she sarcastically replies, “I haven’t the same high hopes for you,” to
which Crosby even more glibly replies, “Oh, I don’t want to become a
wonderful woman!” If any aspect of High
Society has dated today, it is ironically, the elements that Porter and
screenwriter, John Patrick have retained from Barry’s original work, the
movie’s take on female virtue and vanity, a tad strained – what, with repeat
references to high priests bowing to their virgin goddesses. George tells
Tracy, after they are married, he wants to place her on a pedestal where he can
be permitted to worship. “But I don’t want to be worshiped,” Tracy
tenderly pleads, “I want to be loved.” “That goes without saying,” George
casually explains. But does it? At the crux of Philip Barry’s original
masterwork, there always remained a distance between Tracy Lord and the world
surrounding her – the original misfit, as it were – reaching for something
never to be hers while tossing happiness and her first marriage away with both
hands. Ah yes, Tracy “…needs trouble to mature,” as Dexter slyly conveys
to George while Mike and his photog’ gal pal, Elizabeth Embry (Celeste Holm)
curiously look on. “I’m afraid she can’t count on me for that,” is
George’s brittle reply. But now, Dexter plies just a tad more sarcasm as he
insists, “That’s a pity…because I gave her plenty.”
At the crux of Tracy’s gnawing
uncertainty – never to find happiness through marriage - is her own haunted
misunderstanding about what has happened to her mother – Seth, having strayed
from the family with a chorus girl. Will a similar fate undoubtedly befall her? To prevent what she has already mis-perceived as
the inevitable, Tracy sets up emotional barriers. Ironically, these
serve the exact opposite purpose, leading to Tracy’s bitter dissatisfaction
with Dexter who, in the interim, has become the ‘distinguished’ composer
of ‘Choo-Choo Mama’ – a flashy jukebox favorite. Tracy's first marriage began
in elopement. Perhaps, this was its own precursor to an annulment. And George is
no Dexter. Nor does he aspire to Dexter’s class. It’s probably just as well.
For High Society is rather heavy on its class distinctions – more
fittingly at home in the British than American milieu, though strangely, not
altogether out of place amidst the moneyed playgrounds of Rhode Island.
Presumably, Dexter is of Tracy’s ilk while George represents the rising
proletariat, and Mike, the snappy-as-hell bottom feeder, bringing up the rear.
The men in High Society are
pawns, rather bloodless, even as they profess to have embers smoldering just
beneath the surface of their starched white tuxedo shirts. George is too old
for Tracy – both in years, and, in his mindset, and rather effete – someone
more interested in the public presentation of his wife to this sycophantic
collection of fair-weather friends than his own private exploration of every
crevice on her body behind closed doors. Even Crosby’s C.K. Dexter-Haven is
prone to bouts of the same ‘worship’ George has promised Tracy after
they are wed; having written a musical ode to her grace: ‘I Love You,
Samantha’, first vamped in the absurdly lavish foyer of his adjacent
mansion (actually, the oft reused and ever-so-slightly redressed Versailles
‘throne room’ set from MGM’s Marie Antoinette 1938). Only when Sinatra sings two of the movie’s
most delicious ballads, ‘Mind If I Make Love To You?’ and ‘You’re
Sensational’ does the screen crackle with a sort of sinful, earthy ‘take
me, I’m yours’ quality that escapes – or rather ignores entirely – the
platitudes of Crosby’s more refined exaltation.
Crosby sings ‘Little One’ – to Tracy’s prepubescent sister,
Caroline (Lydia Reed) who utterly adores him; a queer moment in the movie, perhaps
unintentionally fraught with a whiff of unsettling ‘romance’, while Crosby’s
supreme declaration to Tracy – ‘True Love’ – remains but a memory
rekindled for the audience in Tracy’s own mind as the one-time happy newlyweds
sail aboard Dexter’s yacht on their honeymoon.
Ah me – bliss.
Yet, High Society takes
Barry’s original play and does something quite wonderful to it; miraculously
retaining just enough of the playwright’s wit, seamlessly wed to Cole Porter’s
adroit sense of self-deprecating humor about the haves and the have nots.
Relocating the story to Newport Rhode Island, to capitalize on a local jazz
festival (after an initial film project proposed by producer, Arthur Freed
meant to focus on the festival itself fell through) and installing one of the
greatest of all jazz musicians – Louis Armstrong, playing himself - as the
movie’s éminence grise, intermittently to interrupt the story with his own
moralizing and commentary, is a stroke of genius. Armstrong not only bookends
this triumvirate of Tracy, Dexter and Mike with his own tongue-in-cheek running
commentary about the quagmire of their feuding and fusing love – the story’s
central theme, with George as, ostensibly, its ‘fifth wheel’ - but he also is
given some plum opportunities to do what ‘ole Satchmo’ did best; play his
trumpet and warble a tune or two in his trademarked gravely-textured voice as
only Armstrong can. We love Louis Armstrong – a beloved among the pantheon of
great musical artists, slyly to offer sober comments like “Right song…but
the wrong girl!” or “Good for the head…nothing for the heart!”
The arbitrator of good taste herein
remains MGM: the studio with more stars than there were in heaven. The
production values on High Society are piece work at best, stitched from
the lavishly appointed entrails and hand-me-downs constructed for other movies.
As the bus pulls up to the exterior of Dexter’s manor, we are shown a slightly
altered matted painting of the same approach used in another Grace Kelly
vehicle, The Swan (1956). With
the exception of a very bumpy overhead helicopter tracking shot sailing at
great heights over the actual moneyed playgrounds of Newport – and a few
rear-projection inserts thereafter – High Society takes place almost
exclusively on MGM’s fabled back lot. Knowing this does not derail the mood of
the piece, because the studio has skillfully created a fictional facsimile to
stand in for the truth. It’s all cardboard and plywood, but it looks ravishing
for the most part; borrowing props from just about every movie the studio ever
made and using the same parquet flooring and ornate wainscoting created for the
aforementioned Marie Antoinette and seen in countless MGM movies
thereafter to suggest the bygone aristocratic wealth of the robber baron
generation. High Society attains
a sort of enforced greatness not so much because it reaches for, or ever
attains verisimilitude, but because these characters and the actors who inhabit
them for just an hour or two seem to perfectly fit within the artifice. One
could no more imagine Sinatra at home inside an actual austere and dark
mahogany-paneled Newport study than he might appear comfortable in tie-dyed
khakis and a kaftan. Yet, he falls right
into line in Uncle Willie’s (Louis Calhern) impossibly gargantuan library that
converts into a private bar with a tug at the ‘Harvard classics’, warbling
another vintage Cole Porter melody with Crosby’s assist; the playfully
combative ‘Did You Evah?’ In
actuality, the song was a toss-away from Porter’s score to another show: Du
Barry Was A Lady, herein resurrected as sublime and utterly farcical
double-entendre. When Crosby and Sinatra musically spar it is of the highest
order, swapping lines like: “Have you heard about dear Blanche – got run
down by an avalanche” or “Have you heard that Mimsy Starr…got pinched in
the As-tor bar?” What a swell party this is, indeed.
And bringing up the rear, as she so
often did in the movies, is the marvelous Celeste Holm; her Liz Embry, readily
acknowledged as being ‘quite a girl’ by more than one man in her midst, even
though she is never anyone’s first choice for love’s romantic kiss. Holm is a
talent apart from most supporting players, and one who barely graced MGM’s
formidable roster. In point of fact, she was a 2oth Century-Fox contract player
first, before becoming a free agent. When she engages Sinatra in the duet, ‘Who
Wants to Be A Millionaire?’ she is every bit his musical/comedic equal –
knowing exactly where to place her emphasis to compliment his own. When, as the
screenplay implies though never quite shows, she is rather heartily pinched on
the bottom by Uncle Willie in a turn around the dance floor, Holm’s double-take
reaction of indignation suggest a wound more deeply felt, even as she fluffs it
off as mere overtures made by a middle-aged man who will one day ‘grow up’ to
be a juvenile delinquent. Later, when
Crosby’s Dexter inquires why she has failed to land Mike Connor as a potential
mate – clearly, the only man for her – Holm’s astute and world-weary hopeful
explains she does not want to get in Mike’s way; acknowledging that in keeping
her distance, she may lose the only man she has ever loved. The role of
Elizabeth Embry was originally played in The Philadelphia Story by Ruth
Hussey, an actress much closer in age to James Stewart’s Mike Connor. In reinventing the role for Holm – who was,
in fact, only two years older than Sinatra, though looking at least six to ten
years his senior – High Society introduces a curious level of romantic
uncertainty into its mix; never convincingly resolved in the final few moments
at Tracy’s wedding when Liz resolves to snatch up Mike before somebody else
does.
Our story opens with some
breathtaking aerial shots of Rhode Island, ever so slightly marred by the
jarring second unit shaky camerawork. From this spectacular vista we regress
into the back of a private bus hurtling toward the estate of C.K. Dexter-Haven,
a much beloved jazz aficionado and patron of the popular arts. Our M.C., Louis
Armstrong warbles the ‘High Society Calypso’ to, as Satchmo puts it “stop
that weddin’ and ‘tout that match”. Armstrong and his band arrive in style
and are shown by Dexter’s butler (Gordon Richards) into the grand foyer where
Dexter, ever amused and delighted to see them again, encourages the boys to
vamp a little in anticipation of their appearance at the local jazz festival
(which we never see). Armstrong’s jazzy riff of ‘I Love You, Samantha’
incurs the ire of Tracy Lord who has been collecting wedding presents in her
family’s solarium on the adjacent property while her mother, Margaret (Margalo
Gillmore) makes an inventory and writes the many ‘thank you’ cards. Younger sister, Caroline is up to some petty
larceny, inserting a silver-framed portrait of Dexter into the collection. When
Tracy sees it, she hits the ceiling. But her wrath is stirred to even greater
heights recognizing the melody wafting over the fence. Charging up the lawn to
Dexter’s house, Tracy confronts her ex-husband with an ultimatum; to ‘go away’
and ‘stay away’ from her wedding. Leaving Dexter to his own accord, Tracy
encounters George back home.
In the meantime, Uncle Willie
telephones the house from the offices of ‘Spy Magazine’; a notorious tabloid
rag, prone to publishing salacious tidbits about the wealthy. In their current
issue is a pending story about Seth Lord’s infidelities that, as Willie
explains, will hit the magazine stands unless Tracy agrees to have a reporter
and photographer cover her pending nuptials. At first appalled by the
suggestion, Tracy reconsiders her options; electing to stage a spectacle that
will ‘stand their hair on end’. Caroline
is employed as a sort of scatterbrained buffer after Elizabeth Embry and Mike
Connor arrive; playing the piano – badly – and wearing a tutu and toe shoes,
she primes the pair for the entrance of Tracy, who thereafter toys with Mike in
particular; suggesting he is much too old to be wasting his time with the
magazine, and then intimating that Liz and he are ‘together’ – sexually
speaking. “It’s the sort of detail you enjoy publishing, isn’t it?”
Tracy goads Mike before moving on – rather hilariously – to critique everything
from his childhood and upbringing to English history. “I’m delighted you
came,” she facetiously concludes, “We have so much cake.” Introduced
to Margaret Lord, Mike and Liz take a few pictures and next inquire when they
will meet Seth – unknowing, as they are of either Seth’s affair, his
estrangement from the family at Tracy’s behest, or the real reason why they
have been assigned to cover Tracy’s wedding. Thus, when Uncle Willie arrives
for lunch, he is immediately passed off as Seth Lord by a very nervous Tracy;
the moment teeming with resignation after the real Seth arrives on an impromptu
whim and is henceforth pawned off on Mike and Liz as Uncle Willie. Sounds confusing, but it’s not – really – and
very funny besides. To further
complicate this luncheon, Dexter makes an appearance and is encouraged by Liz
to pose for photographs with Tracy and George. However, when Liz’s lens
captures a snapshot of Willie, with Liz declaring “To the father of the
bride…we’ll use it to head the article”, Tracy orchestrates a moment to
sabotage the film by breaking the camera.
Sometime later, Liz and Mike take
inventory of the lavish wedding presents. Dexter presents Tracy with a model of
his yacht, the ‘True Love’ as his parting gift to her, affording Tracy the
opportunity to daydream about their past. We see a couple quite unlike the one
about to tie the knot; Dexter, relaxed and Tracy ebullient as she prepares a
sandwich and tomato juice for her groom. The couple serenades one another by concertina
and moonlight; this moment of happiness shattered when George suddenly appears
with a bottle of champagne and two glasses to surprise his fiancée.
Momentarily, Seth and Margaret arrive poolside for a stroll, Seth’s arm loosely
around his wife. It’s as though nothing has happened, and Seth’s liberties
incur Tracy’s wrath. She strikes at him with nail-biting disdain, he returning
the volley with an admonishment of her aloof exterior that Seth regards as a
tragedy for any man unlucky enough to find his daughter attractive enough to
marry. The emotional wounds inflicted by this father/daughter confrontation
cause Tracy to abandon her plans for an afternoon swim and take Mike Connor for
a ride instead – both literally and figuratively. Tracy shows Mike the “high
cost of being rich”; rows of boarded up mansions no longer feasible because
of taxes. She then takes Mike to her Uncle Willie’s fabulous estate, already in
mid-preparations for her co-ed bachelor party. The mood between these two
adversaries warms and they share a drink in Uncle Willie’s study as Mike
confides Tracy ought to be wearing an orchid instead of a chip on her
shoulder. Embarrassed by her obvious
attraction to Mike, Tracy departs to get ready for the party. We return to
Dexter’s home, as Louis Armstrong vamps in the foyer and Dexter warbles his
heartfelt ballad ‘I Love You, Samantha’ with his windows open – the
tune, filling the night air and captivating Tracy as she listens from her own
bedroom window.
At Uncle Willie’s party, Liz and Mike
are informed of the mix up in identities between Seth and Willie and the reason
for their being ‘invited’ to cover the wedding. In reply, Mike gets soused and
Tracy becomes quite inebriated, making a spectacle of herself before George
condescendingly exiles her to a nearby suite to sleep it off. Dexter introduces
Newport to jazz and Louis Armstrong with the infectious and rhythmic ‘Now
You Has Jazz’; then retires to the library where he and Mike continue to
drink and exchange barbs by singing ‘Did You Evah?’ Mike eventually
locates Tracy attempting to escape from her locked room through an open window
and together they run away for a midnight swim. When George finds out, he is
livid. But Dexter takes matters into his own hands, knocking Mike unconscious before
he can explain the incident with any sort of comprehension that would make
sense to either Dexter or George. The next day, Tracy awakens with a severe
hangover to discover her jewelry missing. Dexter, having found her ring,
bracelet and necklace on a patio cushion the night before, now toys with
Tracy’s own understanding of the previous night’s events until his hints stir
musings that frighten and confuse her. George arrives to threaten a delay in
his plans to marry Tracy; his tide of conceit ebbing after Mike confesses that
their ‘so called affair’ consisted of two kisses and a swim that he will
neither deny nor suggest he did not thoroughly enjoy. George reconsiders that with Tracy’s virtue
intact she is still worthy of his affections. But Tracy now reveals how it
would have given her greater pride if he – George - had stood by her, despite
any indiscretions or reservations incurred. Infuriated by this turn of
rejection, George marches off, leaving Tracy to face her wedding guests alone.
Instead, Dexter proposes for a second time and Tracy, realizing she ought never
to have divorced him in the first place, now vows to make him a good wife this
second time around. With some regret, Mike falls back on accepting Liz as his
mate, while Caroline nudges a hung-over Uncle Willie in the ribs, all while
Louis Armstrong serenades the wedding guests with his own inimitable jazzy
rendition of the traditional wedding march – “End of song. End of story.”
High Society was a colossal
hit for MGM, partly due to the publicity hype of the studio, marketing the
picture as the absolute last time audiences would see Grace Kelly on the
screen. Incidentally, the engagement ring given to Kelly by Monaco’s Prince
Rainier makes a guest appearance in this movie; a stunning diamond, Celeste
Holm jokingly suggested needed its own highball. Viewed today, High Society
is vintage MGM movie-making from the mid-50’s, a time of financial entrenchment
and upheaval at the studio. With its founding father, L.B. Mayer already ousted
from power, the implosion of his ‘star-making’ system in steep decline, and the
uncertainties of a dwindling audience and shrinking box office creeping in, High
Society clearly punctuates a more restrained investment of both time and
money on the Hollywood musical – a genre the studio did not invent, though
arguably refined and mined more readily and to greater effect than all the rest
put together. Virtually all of the sets and props are hand-me-downs from other
studio product. That MGM was able to reinvent Philip Barry’s most celebrated
play as a frothy musical is a testament to their creativity and ability to
unite just the right entourage of talents, capable of pulling off the
experiment. Ironically, there is an absence of dancing in High Society -
the songs, lyrically sung, but without any ‘routines’ to follow them. Arguably,
Cole Porter’s lyrics do not need happy feet to express what is already clearly
on the page note for note; adroit cynicism and immeasurable charm, effortlessly
blended together. With the exception of
‘Did You Evah?’, the score is brand new. MGM expands this repertoire
with underpinnings from some of Porter’s most famous ballads like ‘I’ve Got
My Mind On You’ and ‘Rosalie’; all of them superbly orchestrated by
MGM’s in-house conductor, Johnny Green with an assist from Conrad
Salinger. In the final analysis, it’s
one hell of a show with Crosby, Sinatra and Kelly at the pinnacle of their
powers as entertainers. Within a few short years this sort of lavishly mounted
entertainment would seem as bygone as the studio era that had spawned it.
Today, High Society retains its luster as an escapist movie musical. For
all of the aforementioned reasons, they don’t come much finer than this.
Without reserve, they sure as hell do not ‘make ‘em like they used to!’
High Society is one of those
movies that perennially finds a top spot on my ‘pretty please’
reviewers' list of movies still awaiting their hi-def debut. We have passed the
‘more than a half a century’ anniversary mark and still no High Society
on Blu-ray. Evidently, this VistaVision production needs quite a lot of work to
spiffy it up for hi-def – ironically so, since VistaVision was considered the
apex of ‘motion picture hi-fidelity’ back in the day. If only the same could be
said of Warner Home Video’s current DVD transfer. It is high time the Warner
Archive remastered High Society for Blu-ray; not the least to show off
cinematographer, Paul Vogel’s sparkling visuals in VistaVision. Time and money
need to be spent – yes. So, let’s spend it before it is too late. When the DVD
was released back in 1999, much was made of the fact Warner had ‘restored’ the
original silver lettering to the picture’s main titles. Even before this, Scott
McQueen had made the painstaking effort to remaster the movie’s audio tracks,
all of the songs recorded in full-channel stereo, but only ever featured in
mono in theaters, to a gorgeous 5.1 track for High Society’s LaserDisc
release. So now, the rest of the movie’s
visuals need to be addressed with similar care.
The exceptionally grainy aerial
shots of Newport, heavily speckled in dirt and scratches lead into a lot of
color-faded rear-projection plates that oft appear to be tinted in sepia.
Colors thereafter waver, flesh tones looking 'piggy pink' or rather garishly
orange. There is also a considerable amount of gate weave in the left side of
the frame, creating some rather depressingly obvious instability for long
stretches during the middle third of the story. Virtually every second unit
shot is riddled in a heavy patina of highly digitized film grain. What a
travesty! High Society on DVD
never comes close to replicating the resplendent textures and clarity of
vintage VistaVision. The audio too lacks the oomph of the LaserDisc, due to
DVD’s limited compression. Although sourced from the same restoration work done
much earlier by Scott McQueen for the out-of-print MGM/UA laserdisc the results
do not bear out McQueen's hard won efforts. Vintage VistaVision only allowed
for mono tracks or Perspecta-Stereo; a faux stereophonic effect created from
directionalized mono audio ‘stems.’
Finally, Warner Home Video affords us only a clumsily slapped together
‘retrospective’, hosted by the late Celeste Holm, who mostly glosses over
personal impressions and shares some threadbare facts that anyone with a
computer and IMDB could look up for themselves. Two more short subjects and High
Society’s badly worn theatrical trailer round out the extras. Bottom line:
we need High Society in hi-def. Given the studio’s exquisite work on
Hitchcock’s VistaVision production of North By Northwest – the only
other MGM movie to be photographed in VistaVision – one can only image how good
High Society might look, given similar consideration. Bottom line: a new Blu for 2023 – pretty
please.
FILM RATING (out
of 5 – 5 being the best)
4.5
VIDEO/AUDIO
2
EXTRAS
2
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