The Mayfair Swells Kick Up The Jams-Grace Kelly, Bing Crosby And Frank Sinatra’s “High Society” (1956)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Associate Film Critic Alden Riley

[Since the formal retirement of Sam Lowell as the long time film critic in this space (and of other publications going back to long defunct The Eye out in the Bay Area where he started out back in the 1970s) Sandy Salmon has stepped in to do the main chores. However Sandy, a longtime colleague of Sam’s, is also heading toward his own eventual retirement from the day to day film review grind and he has asked his associate Alden Riley to “pinch hit” on occasion. This is the first occasion for Mister Riley.] 

High Society, starring Grace Kelly, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong, based on the play The Philadelphia Story which in turn was adapted for the screen starring Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart, music and lyrics by Cole Porter, by 1956   

The Mayfair swells have their problems too as the film under review tries to give us plebeians a glimpse at in this 1956 cinematic musical version of the play The Philadelphia Story, High Society.  No, we are not going to be feted to their struggles to keep a roof over their heads (although the then high tax rate was alluded to), provide food for the table or figure a way to dress their kids. No need for that but to show us that they too, at least 1950s too, have as many problems with affairs of the heart as ordinary folks. The Mayfair swells have many private and exclusive watering holes. This one takes place in old money Newport down off the ocean in Rhode Island against a backdrop of the Newport Jazz Festival which George Weir had put together a few years before (and would when the folk minute hit high speed a few years later produce the Newport Folk Festivals).       

Although in the 1950s divorce wasn’t a national epidemic especially among the staid old money rich who deathly feared the breakup of their generational trust funds that is the central problem behind what is agitating the swells. Or rather one swell, Tracy played by fetching Grace Kelly who would move on to real royalty over in fairyland Monaco after this film. Tracy had dumped one man and was as the film opens getting ready to wed another. That dumped guy, Dexter, a successful jazz composer which in high society was just too plebeian a professional (and black an unstated premise), played by Bing Crosby was still holding the torch for his ex. Adding to the complexity of this whole show is the fact that a scandal sheet which has the goods on Tracy’s father’s philandering had been given permission to get the inside scope on what the Mayfair swells are up to when wedding bells are ringing. That rag sent a team of two, a from hunger reporter Mike, played by Frank Sinatra and a photographer, Liz who is carrying her own torch for Mike, played by Celeste Holms. They are supposed to get the inside dirt. (By the way with the starring billing of Crosby and Sinatra backed up by jazzman Louis Armstrong and his boys this one had no right to exist except as a musical.)   

Back to the fetching Tracy though who leads not only her intended staid uptight businessman bridegroom a merry chase but hard guy Mike as well. Of course we already know what she thinks of Dexter. Last year’s news. So between songs we get the drama of Tracy trying to discover who she really is, what her place in the sun is. Well you know the minute Bing and Frank showed up that the bridegroom was out. After a fling (a chaste fling remember this is the 1950s when sex wasn’t invented yet or something like that) with Mike (to Liz’s chagrin) she decided that Dexter was the one for her after all. Frankly this choice made more sense in the film adaptation of The Philadelphia Story where Katharine Hepburn decided on Cary Grant. Bing might have been a good singer but for fetching woman like Tracy Mike should have won the brass ring.    

[A note on Louis Armstrong and his role in the story. The famous jazz man was included as part of the play for the Newport Folk Festival and that part made sense. But his role, according to some sources, as an “Uncle Tom” type playing “ah, shucks” up to the swells was subject to some controversy among blacks and their white supporters. Remember this was 1956 and the start of the militant “New Negro” black civil rights movement which rocked this country.]