Director: Alexander Hall
If Heaven Can Wait and A Matter of Life and Death are the two seminal existential dramas set in the afterlife, Here Comes Mr. Jordan is their charming, too readily dismissed predecessor. Robert Montgomery plays an obnoxious prizefighter who is presumptuously extracted from the scene of his death by a heavenly messenger (Edward Everett Horton). In order to “make good” for the afterlife’s clerical error, the eponymous Mr. Jordan (Claude Raines) offers the boxer his choice of newly-deceased bodies to live out the rest of his life in. That some body-hopping occurs due to the pesky fact that good, honest people can’t seem to keep themselves from being murdered shades the film with an undercurrent of menace—while the picture is rightly discussed as a comedy, it is one in which the genre’s interplay with tragedy is its defining trait. Montgomery’s character is severed from his old life and thrust into a world he has no place in, evoking both the noirs of the period and the post-war home-front dramas to come. His very ambivalence towards the suggestion of “trading” his life for another culminates in the erasure of his past, playing out with an uncommon poignancy in the final act. While Montgomery was far from the most dynamic performer of his day, Here Comes Mr. Jordan is extraordinarily generous in its character moments, with each of the supporting players (including James Gleason in a memorable role as a promoter) given an affecting send-off by the film’s end.
Director: Alexander Hall
The climactic sequence of Bedtime Story is a screwball homage to the Marx Brothers’ classic A Night at the Opera. Attempting to interrupt his ex-wife (Loretta Young) and her new husband (Allyn Joslyn), Luke Drake (Fredric March) invites a cast of characters into their hotel room, culminating with an over-crowded, riotous frenzy. It’s an amusing visual, but it doesn’t really play. Perhaps the key reason is that March simply isn’t Cary Grant. Although he showed some comedic abilities in his career (Design for Living is one of the great comedies of the 1930s), in this instance he’s a stretch. His timing is off, he’s not a particularly reactionary performer, and in the end the man wrought to be selfish but likable only conveys the former. Similarly, Young is cast in a role better suited for Irene Dunne, Rosalind Russell, or any of the other great comediennes of the time who could deliver a barbed entendre with ease. Only Joslyn seems capable in this context, with a dependably hilarious performance as the other man. In his late scenes with Young, he plays his character as an over-eager man child, overwhelming his bride with a hilariously libidinous enthusiasm.
Director: Alexander Hall
In their second pairing (after 1942’s Crossroads), William Powell and Hedy Lamarr star as a married couple torn apart by, of all things, astrology in The Heavenly Body. Though Lamarr was serviceable in dramatic roles, she is a dreadful comedienne, straining hopelessly through every line. On the other hand, the always reliable Powell is committed and entertaining, even if director Alexander Hall is uncertain about whether to portray him as a tragic figure or a clown. The picture’s only real interest is as a piece of wartime history – in addition to the air raid warden whom Lamarr is smitten with and the astrologer’s collection of canned goods which she hides from the ration board, the film has a clear message directed to the wives of soldiers. In one of the final scenes, Powell’s colleague tells Lamarr that, though her husband is far away while at work, he watches her from his telescope and loves her all the same. Despite the historical interest, however, the film plays like a mediocre sitcom at best.
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