TCM Wednesday, February 14 at 2 PM
If you haven’t seen Here comes Mr. Jordan (1941), you’re in for a good time. It’s a fantasy/romance starring Robert Montgomery as boxer Joe Pendleton, whose quest for the heavyweight crown is interrupted when the airplane he’s piloting crashes. An over-eager angel, Messenger 7013 (Edward Everett Horton) gathers Joe’s soul before Joe’s body is done with it-seems Joe was fated to survive the crash-but when his body is cremated by his manager Max Corkle (James Gleason) a new one must be found. Here comes Mr. Jordan (Claude Rains), the St. Peter-like manager of the after-life, to set things right.
Keeping the essential Joe alive inside his new body-that of the formerly deceased financier Leo Farnswoth-provides much of the comedy in the film, as Joe’s desire to pursue a boxing career collides with his new reality of corporate corruption, and a wife and her lover/his secretary with murder on their minds.
Despite an Academy Award-winning script from an Academy Award-winning story, this is a film which could have been excessively hokey. But Alexander Hill’s sharp direction and some great performances make it a thoroughly enjoyable ride. Montgomery’s amiable but slightly wise-ass attitude is very appealing, and plays great against Hortons’s huffy fastidiousness and Gleason’s vinegary gruff. Gleason received an Oscar nomination for supporting actor, as did Montgomery for best actor. And let’s not forget Donald MacBride as the slow-burning police inspector
In addition to the writing awards and acting nominations, Here Comes Mr. Jordan received three other nominations: for best picture, Hall for best director, and Joseph Walker for black-and-white cinematography (until 1967, separate awards were given for black-and-white and color cinematography).
Here Comes Mr. Jordan was followed up in 1947 by Down to Earth, a sequel of sorts with a dime-store Claude Rains named Roland Culver as Mr. Jordan and Rita Hayworth as the goddess Terpsichore coming down to earth. Skip it.
The original was re-made in 1978 as Heaven Can Wait, (the title of the stage play on which it was based, and no relation to the 1943 Gene Tierney-Don Ameche vehicle). This time around, Warren Beatty’s Joe Pendleton is a professional quarterback. It was remade again in 2001, as Down to Earth (possibly the only time a film has had a sequel and a re-make with the same title). There’s a twist here. In the first two Here Comes Mr. Jordan‘s, the viewer sees only Joe Pendleton. It’s understood that to the world he now inhabits, he looks and sounds like Leo Farnsworth. In Down to Earth, we see not only Chris Rock’s character Lance Barton, but also at times his new “overcoat.” It makes for hilarity when the mind of Lance performs Chris Rock-like comedy before an African-American audience as the rich, pudgy middle-aged white guy whose body he now inhabits.
Another film really worth a look is Crossfire (1947) TCM Sunday, February 18 7:45 AM. 1947 is the year Gentleman’s Agreement “ripped the lid off the scandal of ant-semitism” or something like that. Crossfire is a decidedly ungentlemanly look at the less polite side of anti-semitism: the investigation of a hate murder. It’s a taut, claustrophobic film noir which pulls no punches
This film is rated 3 Bobs. It stars Robert Young, Robert Ryan and Robert Mitchum.
Great flick!