Here Comes Mr Jordan ***** (1941, Robert Montgomery, Claude Rains, Evelyn Keyes, Rita Johnson) – Classic Movie Review 3452

Heavenly aide Edward Everett Horton mistakenly despatches a boxer called Joe Pendleton (Robert Montgomery) up to the celestial resting place 50 years too early on the very eve of becoming world boxing champ. Although he’s been in a plane crash and gone to heaven, Montgomery discovers that his time hasn’t come to die. So the heavenly powers find him a suitable new body to inhabit while back on Earth and he is given a new life as a millionaire playboy.

Here comes director Alexander Hall’s double Oscar-winning classic 1941 fantasy comedy film with a now quintessential plot that’s perhaps now more familiar from Warren Beatty’s remake Heaven Can Wait (1978) and Chris Rock’s Down to Earth (2001). This then unusual, utterly delightful comedy has two main assets – a brilliant screenplay by Seton I Miller and Sidney Buchman and first-rate performances from beaming Montgomery as the prizefighter, silky Claude Rains as the sinister, celestial Mr Jordan, Horton as the heavenly aide, and James Gleason as a boxing coach.

Also in the cast are Evelyn Keyes, Rita Johnson, John Emery, Donald MacBride, Halliwell Hobbes, Benny Rubin and Don Costello.

Miller and Buchman’s Oscar-winning screenplay was adapted from Harry Segall’s play Halfway to Heaven, and Segall also won an Oscar for best original story.

Sequel: Down to Earth (1947).

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3452

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