Frankie Month

It's Frank Sinatra month on Turner Classic Movies and ya know I love Frankie, so I'm going to try and watch as many movies as I have time to fit in. Last week I watched Higher and Higher (1943), an early Sinatra film that I used to watch fairly regularly, but haven't seen in a number of years.

Here's my plot summary and review: - - romantic comedy/musical about a household of servants who love to break out in song as they work understairs to serve a man named Drake who is about to have his New York mansion foreclosed because of debt. So - the staff (unpaid for the last 7 months, but still willing to work for this guy, by the way) joins forces to form a "corporation" to try and get money to save the property - their method is to have the attractive scullery maid (Michele Morgan) try to hook a wealthy man to marry by posing as Drake's deputante daughter, just back from Switzerland (which I guess explains her accent). She's pretty inept at playing up the deputante - she just seems to love being a maid too much, it seems, as she keeps getting caught dusting things and washing the front steps - stuff like that. A man is found quickly for her - one Sir Victor Fitzroy Victor - problem is, she's madly in love with the household valet (Jack Haley) who seems oblivious to her passion despite her constant not-so-subtle mooning around and gazing into his eyes, etc. So how does Frankie fit into all this, you may ask - well, he plays himself as a neighbor (and *what* a nice neighbor to have - ooh la la!) who lives in the next-door house and has befriended the scullery maid by waving at each other from opposite windows.

Okay, so this film is fun, light entertainment boosted up to the hilt by a very young and handsome Sinatra crooning his heart out throughout the film (according to my dad, as my Aunt Billie used to say in the day "When Frankie sings, *all* the girls swoon!"). Most of the songs are not super catchy, but with star turns by the likes of Sinatra, not to mention Jack Haley, Dooley Wilson, and a really young "Velvet Fog", Mel Torme, everything is very enjoyable to watch. One number that I've always remembered to this day is when the teenybopper maid (Marcy McGuire) sings "I Saw You First" with Sinatra ("Ooh Frankie"). A silly, but quite a fun romp. rating: 7/10