HIGH SOCIETY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 925, 3 May 1957, Page 19

HIGH SOCIETY

(M.G.M.-Vistavision) G Cert. ]-EELING miserable, depressed, out of sorts? Slightly corseted by the creditsqueeze? Upset by the disequilibrium of overseas payments, the one-sidedness of hire-purchase agreements? If you're looking for a way of escape (strictly temporary, of course), then High Society has a.funk-hole tailored to fit you and your particular neurosis. Primarily, of course, it’s an escape from suburbia to the Elysian Fields of the supertaxed, where everyone is gay and almost everyone is witty, and there are no dishes to wash. Mum will love it. But she needn’t have it all on her own. There’s Grace Kelly for . the girls (fashions .and all that); for the middleaged there’s Bing Crosby, for the slightly under midcle-aged Frank Sinatra and Celeste Holm; the music and lyrics of Cole Porter for the. sophisticates, and for all and sundry old Louis Armstrong, his trumpet and his cosy virtuosi. High Society is the kind of show I'd be pleased to underwrite, were I an underwriter, and tempted to cverwrite as. accommon or garden cash-customer. I must confess to feeling slightly apathetic about Miss Kelly, now safely entrenched behind the Almanach de Gotha, but I enjoy the allusive New Yorkerish quality of Cole Porter's lyrics. I like Crosby, I’ve acquired a taste for Sinatra and. Satchmo, and I just adore Celeste Holm. Ah, yes, I know the patter. of tiny crows’ feet is beginning to leave its mark arourid those big blue eyes, and the radius of some of the curves appears to have decreased sharply over the years, but she has a gaiety that few of the younger fry can match and a capacity for comedy: they might, well envy. And she is, every comfortably upholstered inch of her, a professional. She can convey by a twitch of the eyebrow or a tilt of the shoulder more than some run-of-the-mill screenplayers | could achieve with benefit of close-up,-cross-cutting and direction. ‘If you enjoyed her performance in The Tender Trap, then you'll enjoy her here, as the ace photographer of Spy magazine who (with Frank Sinatra as feature writer) descends on the gilded pleasure-domes of Newport to record a’ society wedding. The wedding doesn’t go altogether according to plan-in part because an ex-husband (Bing Crosby) is staging a jazz festival in the adjoining palazzo-but that doesn’t prevent a jolly time being had by almost all. High Society (director, Charles Walters) is, in fact, a smooth and tuneful show, wittier and more sophisticated than most musicals (and none the worse for that, either).