Frank Sinatra's film debut is a ridiculous movie. As you watch it, you keep asking yourself, "What is Frank Sinatra doing in this movie?"In the early 1940's, Sinatra was a singing phenomenon, the first "Teen Idol" of the 20th century! His Golden Voice was devastating, making teenage girls scream with hysteria, wet their pants, and faint in the aisles. Wherever Sinatra went, crowds of stampeding teen girls trampled each other and fought with policemen to see him! And of course, his records sold like hot cakes.Hollywood smelled money. They knew they had to get "Skinny Boy" into the movies. So RKO brought Sinatra out to California, and signed him to a contract. Then they threw him into a movie to see if he could swim.With "Higher and Higher," RKO borrowed the "plot" (note that I put the word in quotes) of a short-run Broadway musical by Gladys Hurlbut and Joshua Logan. They threw out most of the song score by Rodgers & Hart, and had their own songwriters write new songs for it (a common practice in Hollywood's Golden Age).The "plot" (what there is of it) centers around the household staff of a New York City mansion, who discover their drunken employer, millionaire Cyrus Drake (Leon Errol), has gambled away his entire fortune. (The servants in the house include Paul & Grace Hartman, Marcy McGuire, Mel Tormé, and Paul "Casablanca Sam" Dooley. Also, Mary Wickes plays a woman who shows up at the back door, claiming Cyrus Drake offered her a job. But when she discovers Drake is now broke, instead of moving on to find other work, she stays around to be part of the plot, for some unknown reason.)Then Mike O'Brien (Jack "Tin Man" Haley), who is Drake's valet and the head of the household, comes up with a scheme. They will turn Milly Pico (Michéle Morgan), the beautiful scullery maid, into a débutante, pass her off as Drake's daughter, and marry her off to a rich husband who will pay all their salaries. The servants are thrilled by this, and more than willing to participate in this fraud. Milly the maid is not happy with the scheme, but she goes along with it because she's in love with Mike. (God knows why. He treats her like dirt, and is too stupid to notice her devotion to him.)Then the doorbell rings. Marcy McGuire, playing the cook's teen daughter, answers it. And it's Frank Sinatra on the doorstep!"Hi, I'm Frank Sinatra!" he literally says. "I thought I'd stop by and sing a few songs."After Marcy faints into his arms (of course), Frank goes to the mansion's piano and begins to sing, "I Couldn't Sleep A Wink Last Night." It's never made clear why he's there, except that he's a friend of Milly the maid.The servants don't like this. They think Sinatra's in love with Milly. They say to each other, "Hey, we better keep an eye on this Sinatra guy. He could ruin our scheme to marry Milly off to a millionaire."What's amazing, and totally unbelievable, is that none of the servants ever say to each other, "Hey, this Sinatra guy has sold millions of records. He's a millionaire. Let's try to marry Milly off to him, and get him to pay our salaries!"For the rest of the movie, the servants keep hustling Milly around New York, trying to match her with some "High Society" millionaire. Sinatra is stumbling along through the plot, and often looks like he's not sure what he's supposed to be doing when he's not singing. He keeps looking off to the side, as if he's looking for another piano in the room, so he can sit down and sing.Of course, the "Idiot Plot" goes nowhere (and very slowly, I might add). Victor Borge appears as the "millionaire" that Milly is almost forced to marry, but who of course turns out to be a fraud himself. Aside from one funny line, Borge is never given an opportunity to show us his musical comedy talents. His presence is wasted in this film!Fortunately, Sinatra's career would survive this film, and he would go on to better musicals, and better roles in movies like "From Here To Eternity." Who knew that "Skinny Boy" with the Golden Voice could actually act?!

For a movie that's just about awful, there are a number of good things which a little knowledge of history, a taste for archeology and the fast forward button can help you with. Higher and Higher tells the story of Mike and Millie, while also shoehorning in Frank. Cyrus Drake (Leon Errol), a rich old coot, has gone bankrupt. His staff, led by his valet, Mike (Jack Haley), get the brainstorm to marry off the beautiful and naïve scullery maid, Millie (Michele Morgan), to a rich man after they introduce her as Drake's daughter at the Butlers' Ball, the prestigious annual coming out affair for debs with rich daddies. Cyrus Drake's coffers will be refilled and the staff will get their back wages. But Millie secretly loves Mike. To get his attention she pretends to like very much the skinny, slightly goofy looking young man who lives across the court, a singer named Frank Sinatra. Be prepared. There's a happy ending, but not before an interminable story and a lot of dud jokes. Jack Haley, so full of insincere sincerity, a product of years on the vaudeville stage, makes a match with the beautiful Michele Morgan that is seriously unbelievable. The comedy mix-ups aren't so much tedious as just unfunny. Now on to the good stuff. Higher and Higher was based on a 1940 Rodgers and Hart Broadway flop. It had a terrible book but some wonderful R&H songs. As is Hollywood's way, when the studio bought the rights they dumped the songs and kept the book. However, with Sinatra making his first starring appearance, they were smart enough to hire Jimmy McHugh (music) and Harold Donaldson (lyrics) to write all new songs. (A bit from one R&H song is used, "Disgustingly Rich.") McHugh and Donaldson came up with some proficient but unremarkable comedy songs, but they hit home runs for the three Sinatra ballads..."I Couldn't Sleep a Wink Last Night," "This Is a Lovely Way to Spend an Evening" and my favorite, The music stopped / But we were still dancing / Which goes to show / That music has charms The lights were low / So we went on dancing / I felt the glow of you in my arms The cast of Higher and Higher is almost worth renting the movie for. They are a group of some excellent comic actors and performers. They have little good material to work with, but if you're familiar with them you'll enjoy them. Among the rich coot's staff, we're talking Leon Errol, the coot; Mary Wickes, the social secretary; Mel Torme, only 18 and in his first movie, general helper; the wonderful Paul and Grace Hartman, who only have a couple of bits, butler and maid; Dooley Wilson, chauffeur; Marcy McGuire, maid; and Ivy Scott, cook. Victor Borge in his first American movie appears as Sir Victor Fitzroy Victor, a possible match for Millie. Perhaps he wrote his own stuff, but he has some brief but funny lines that already nail his successful stage persona. Frank Sinatra hasn't learned to do much acting yet, but he doesn't embarrass himself. He comes across as a nice young guy with none of the ring-a-ding-ding awfulness of his middle years. When he croons those three hits McHugh and Donaldson wrote for him, you almost hear the thonk plop flop of bobbie soxers fainting in the theater aisles. As for archeology, if you are inspired to track down the clever and memorable score Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart wrote for the stage show, you'll need to dig. Since the score didn't have a big hit, unusual in an R&H musical, and the show flopped, the songs were largely forgotten. One, "It Never Entered My Mind," managed to find a life with saloon singers who knew quality. Two or three more would occasionally pop up here and there in albums. To hear the rest, you need to search out the CD Ben Bagley's Rodgers and Hart Revisited, Vol. 1. It features eight songs from the score. Ben Bagley's CD Rodgers and Hart Revisited, Vol. 3 has three more. The songs are clever and smart.And finally, it will be a good thing if you give Michele Morgan a second chance. She was a memorable star in France but never quite made it in the United States. However, one of her best American films is that surreal and vicious Cornell Woolrich noir, The Chase. It more than makes up for her appearance in Higher and Higher. She is superb in Carol Reed's and Graham Greene's The Fallen Idol.

Mel Torme and Victor Borge, in their younger years, serve to make this film interesting - and especially viewing a young Sinatra, on the sunny side of 30, and definitely conveying that this was his "yes, I'm a popular singer, but hardly an actor yet" stage. Michele Morgan is an annoying, inane presence, and Jack Haley is an actor whose appeal has always been totally lost on me. Leon Erroll is silly, as always, but overall pretty funny. 7 stars of a potential 10 is about the right "grade," because with the combination of its positive aspects, along with the lack of much of a story, and a silly one at that, and the fore-mentioned annoyances - it is overall average at best. Most of the fascination is from the viewing of the three entertainment icons in their early years.

Cyrus Drake is a rich businessman who has had his staff of servants for many years – a situation that is put a risk when bad investments bankrupt him and threaten to put his loyal staff on the street. To bring money back into the family again, the servants plan to marry off the youngest maid, Millie to a rich man. The staff all pick their roles to establish the ruse, while Millie starts being taught how to be a well educated debutante. However their plans are endangered when singer Frank Sinatra moves in next door and Millie tries to hide her affection for fellow servant Michael.Billed as a Frank Sinatra film now, really this is a standard romance of the time, which features Frank in a small role as himself in order to get the teenage crowd in the doors (and they say cynical marketing at teens is a recent thing!). Ignoring this role the film is very much an ordinary piece of entertainment that was very much of the period – a piece of fluff with a convoluted plot, musical numbers, misunderstandings and true love finding a way by the end. In this regard it is OK but quite average, with no real laughs, no significantly moving moments and nothing that really stands out. The script allows for enough to go on to keep the interest but it is all pretty thin and gradually slips into nothingness with only frequent and lively musical numbers serving to keep boredom at bay. The silly twist towards the end is a good example of how lazy the scriptwriters were – basing their happy ending on the thinnest of plot devices.The cast are mostly OK – a mix of romantic parts and fast-talking characters. Sinatra didn't do that well playing himself and he looked uncomfortable – like he had been forcibly inserted into the film and felt unwelcome. He got better with time but here he is pretty wooden. Morgan is likable as Millie and Haley enjoys himself with the sort of character that usually plays the sidekick as opposed to his lead role here. Support from Errol, Wickes and an early role from a beautiful Hale (best known as Della Street to my generation) are all good value and help the material appear more interesting and lively than it actually is.Overall this is very much of its period and it is an average at that. Sinatra may not actually add much on screen but his name made it a bigger film than it could have been and ensures that it gets repeated on television quite often when others have been forgotten. As afternoon television filler it does the job but it is a wholly unremarkable film even with the presence of Sinatra and I imagine that, without his involvement that it would have long since been forgotten.