High, Wide, and Handsome (1937)

INFORMATION FROM IMDb

Plot Summary
The setting is a small town in 1870s Pennsylvania. Sally Waterson and her father have stopped in town with their traveling medicine show, but when their wagon catches fire, they find themselves stranded. They're taken in by Mrs. Cortlandt and her grandson, Peter, who is trying to set up a pipeline that will supply oil throughout the state. Sally and Peter soon fall in love and marry. Neither their marriage nor Peter's pipe dreams flow too smoothly.
Written by Daniel Bubbeo

Cast
Irene Dunne ...Sally Watterson
Randolph Scott ... Peter Cortlandt
Dorothy Lamour ... Molly Fuller
Elizabeth Patterson ... Grandma Cortlandt
Raymond Walburn ... Doc Watterson
Charles Bickford ... Red Scanlon
Akim Tamiroff ... Joe Varese
Ben Blue ... Zeke
William Frawley ... Mac
Alan Hale ... Walt Brennan
Irving Pichel ... Mr. Stark
Stanley Andrews ... Lem Moulton
James Burke ... Stackpole
Roger Imhof ... Pop Bowers
Lucien Littlefield ... Mr. Lippincott
Purnell Pratt ... Col. Blake
Edward Gargan ... Foreman
and many more...

Directed
Rouben Mamoulian

Writing Credits
Oscar Hammerstein II
George O'Neil

Produced
Arthur Hornblow Jr. ... producer

Music
Robert Russell Bennett ... (uncredited)

Cinematography
Victor Milner
Theodor Sparkuhl

Trivia
One of over 700 Paramount Productions, filmed between 1929 and 1949, which were sold to MCA/Universal in 1958 for television distribution, and have been owned and controlled by Universal ever since. Its New York City television premiere took place Saturday 1 August 1959 on WCBS (Channel 2). It was released on DVD 9 December 2014 as part of the Universal Vault Series.

According to Margaret J. Bailey's book on Hollywood costume design of the 1930's, "Those Glorious Glamour Years," apple trees in blossom were required for some scenes. Frost in California had decimated the apple trees, so studio technicians at Paramount Studios worked overnight, peeling rosebuds down and sticking them on bare trees with maple syrup to simulate an apple orchard in full blossom.

Filming Locations
Big Bear Lake, Big Bear Valley, San Bernardino National Forest, California, USA
Big Bear Valley, San Bernardino National Forest, California, USA
Chino, California, USA
Paramount Studios - 5555 Melrose Avenue, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA (interiors)

High, Wide, and Handsome is a 1937 American musical film starring
Irene Dunne, Randolph Scott, Alan Hale, Sr., Charles Bickford, and Dorothy Lamour.
The movie was directed by Rouben Mamoulian, and written by
Oscar Hammerstein II and George O'Neil, with lyrics by Hammerstein and music by Jerome Kern.
It was released by Paramount Pictures.

Music
The movie includes the classic Kern-Hammerstein song "Can I Forget You?",
as well as "The Folks Who Live On the Hill". Director Mamoulian saw to it (with Kern and Hammerstein's help) that most of the songs were firmly integrated into the plot of the film and advanced the storyline.

Reception
Frank S. Nugent of The New York Times wrote, "A richly produced, spectacular and melodious show,
it moves easily into the ranks of the season's best and probably
is as good an all-around entertainment as we are likely to find on Broadway this summer."
Variety reported that it had "too much Hollywood hokum" and that it "flounders as it progresses, and winds up in a melodramatic shambles of fisticuffs, villainy and skullduggery which smacks of the serial film school."] Harrison's Reports called it "very good mass entertainment" with "delightful" music but a story that was "very weak." Russell Maloney of The New Yorker wrote, "Mamoulian's handling of the story leaves something to be desired (he's pretty preoccupied with apple blossoms and hillsides) but the general effect of the picture is pleasant.

The film was not a success when released, partly because it was shown in roadshow format, which caused it to lose more money than it normally would have.

User Review

Our Jerome Kern Girl
12 December 2007 | by bkoganbing (Buffalo, New York)

Quote from BKO

Irene Dunne had the good fortune in her singing films to have one of the greatest of American composers writing for her. In her career she did the lead roles in such Jerome Kern classics as Showboat, Roberta, and Sweet Adeline. And also she Kern write songs for the screen for her in Joy of Living and this film High Wide and Handsome. She was for a while known as the Jerome Kern girl of the screen.

For reasons I don't understand, except for Showboat she was not given a singing leading man. The story lines were rewritten to give her all the good songs and the leading man none. Not that Donald Woods in Sweet Adeline or Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. in Joy of Living or Randolph Scott in Roberta and High Wide and Handsome had any ambitions to sing, but it might have been nice to have her teamed with someone like Allan Jones again as she was in Showboat.

High Wide and Handsome is set in western Pennsylvania just after Edwin L. Drake invented the first practical oil derrick to drill for the stuff. Up to that time oil was considered a nuisance at best, a positive calamity at worst for some poor farmer who had the stuff oozing through to his soil. Randolph Scott is such a farmer who has the idea of marketing for heating fuel.

Others agree with him including Alan Hale who is in a part normally reserved for Edward Arnold. He's the boss of the railroad and who would be shipping the stuff and at the rate he determines, but him only.

Not beaten Scott conceives the idea of the first oil pipeline and then its a fight to the finish with the Hale and the railroad. By the way in real life this is how John D. Rockefeller cornered the oil market and gave the Rockefeller family the wealth it enjoys today.

Irene Dunne is in a medicine show that breaks down and she, Raymond Walburn and William Frawley are given shelter by Scott and his grandmother Elizabeth Patterson. Of course the usual boy/girl stuff happens.

Scott's an earnest of guy, but a bit of a prude as well. Later on when Dunne aids another entertainer in trouble, Dorothy Lamour, Scott and she break up when he finds the two of them trying to put over an act in a saloon to get her hired.

Two very big songs for Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein, II came out of High Wide and Handsome both sung by Dunne, Can I Forget You and The Folks Who Live On The Hill. Again this was a case of one hand washing the other as Paramount no doubt convinced the leading singer in America who by no coincidence was a Paramount contact player to record them and plug them on his radio show. Bing Crosby's records of them are classic and they sold a few platters back in the day. In fact why didn't they have Bing in this film? It certainly had more of a budget than the musicals Paramount was giving him.

Other villains in High Wide and Handsome are Charles Bickford and Irving Pichel. Bickford is just a plug ugly who does Hale's dirty work and probably would pay Hale to do it for him as he and Scott hate each other and that's made clear right at the beginning of the film. Irving Pichel plays a strange Puritan type individual, self appointed keeper of the community morals. His was a strangely underdeveloped character in the script that Oscar Hammerstein, II wrote.

Rouben Mamoulian who directed his fair share of musicals on screen and on the stage did a good job with his cast. And you can never go wrong listening and singing Jerome Kern's wonderful songs.

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