The irresistible inconsequentiality of Blake Edwards' "High Time"

First things first: I appro­pri­ated the above image from a review of the Blu-ray of the 1960 motion pic­ture High Time from a review of that disc from the site DVD Talk. Sorry fel­las. I’m still hav­ing issues with get­ting Blu-ray cap­tures for my blog posts. And truth to tell, had I my druth­ers, I prob­ably would­n’t have, myself, used the above image, an arrest­ing pro­cess shot of Bing Crosby, “three-foot Chippendale” under his arm, climb­ing to the top of a large pile of wood, the bet­ter to boost the Freshman Bonfire past reg­u­la­tion height. I likely would have gone for one of the many innov­at­ive over­head (and occa­sion­ally in-camera) wipes that punc­tu­ate the film—a bed of golden and orrange leaves sweep­ing across the screen, skaters scat­ter­ing loose snow to reveal an ice-rink scene under­neath, and so on. But still. The above image is hardly un-apropos, as it depicts one of the dra­mat­ic high­lights of the film. Yes, you read it right. Bing Crosby get­ting a fresh­man bon­fire wood­pile up to code is one of the dra­mat­ic high­lights of the movie. 

It would be pretty pre­ten­tious, and worse, inac­cur­ate, to say that High Time is some sort of struc­tur­al­ist film avant le la lettre. But to me one of its main attrac­tions is that noth­ing actu­ally hap­pens in it. Here is the storyline: a chain res­taur­ant tycoon named Harvey Howard, now in his early fifties (Crosby him­self was about 57 at the time of shoot­ing), above the objec­tions of his snooty adult kids (the fel­low’s a wid­ower) decides he wants to get a prop­er edu­ca­tion, and to do it the prop­er way: by actu­ally going to col­lege. Living in a dorm. Participating in activ­it­ies. Joining a frat. Some eye­brows are raised at this. Then he gradu­ates. That’s pretty much it. 

Oh, oth­er things “hap­pen,” sure. Harvey brings the bon­fire up to code. He expresses bemuse­ment at the flirty ways of Tuesday Weld, who cuts an amor­ous swath through Harvey’s dorm mates term by term. He falls for a French teach­er (Nicole Maurey), there’s a minor scan­dal, it’s nipped in the bud. He dresses in drag as part of a fra­tern­ity haz­ing. And so on. A suf­fi­cient amount of incid­ent to keep an hour-and-forty-five-minute-or-so nar­rat­ive fea­ture boun­cing. And bounce it does. But there’s abso­lutely noth­ing fraught about it, noth­ing to catch at the view­er and request a level of involve­ment above an ostens­ibly simple mat­rix of enjoy­ment. The self-made man Crosby plays is a ultra-relaxed ver­sion of a par­tic­u­lar kind of can-do American prag­mat­ist. In one scene he stages the opening-of-the-semester ritu­al toast he shares with his dorm­mates (a light-division Jeffrey-Hunter-esque Richard Beymer, amus­ingly pom­pa­doured Fabian, non-sterotypical South Asian Patrick Adiarte, and lovely Weld) at one of his own eponym­ous “Smoke Houses,” and not only is the know-nothing head waiter a snoot, but the bur­gers are ined­ible. Harvey just throws an apron on, gets behind the grill, and cooks up a batch just right, and he does­n’t even fire the head waiter, merely instructs him, “You just cook ’em the way I did and they’ll turn out that way every time.” Every oth­er con­flict or poten­tial con­flict is dis­patched with a sim­il­ar lack of fuss. At the end of the film, after Crosby’s char­ac­ter deliv­ers the valedectori­an’s speech at com­mence­ment, we aren’t even cer­tain that things have “turned out” for Harvey and the afore­men­tioned French teach­er. We might as well assume they did, or that the movie is indif­fer­ent to the matter. 

Writing in the liner notes of the Mosaic Records col­lec­tion The Complete Bing Crosby CBS Radio Recordings 1954–56, Crosby bio­graph­er Gary Giddins (whose long-awaited second volume of the Crosby biography—the first is the superb A Pocketful Of Dreams—is sup­posed to be due this fall, and will cov­er the peri­od in which High Time was shot and released) runs down Crosby’s accom­plish­ments in the peri­od pri­or to the mak­ing of this pic­ture: “[Crosby] was […] a prom­in­ent tele­vi­sion star and pro­du­cer (Ben Casey and Hogan’s Heroes were the most suc­cess­ful of sev­er­al shows launched by his com­pany), whose annu­al one-hour spe­cials were high­lights of broad­cast­ing sea­sons in the late 1950s and early 1960s, suc­ceeded by his record-breaking stint as the most fre­quent host of the Hollywood Palace and his annu­al Christmas shows, car­ried over from radio and a tra­di­tion in mil­lions of American homes. In addi­tion, there were his ‘extra­cur­ricular’ activ­it­ies, includ­ing his tire­less work in sup­port­ing the troops dur­ing the Second World War, for which return­ing ser­vice­men voted him the indi­vidu­al who had done the most to boost G.I. mor­ale; as well as his role in cre­at­ing the first and longest run­ning celebrity pro-am golf cham­pi­on­ship, play­ing host for 35 years and rais­ing mil­lions in char­ity; his lead­er­ship­in devel­op­ing the Del Mar racetrack; and his co-ownership of the Pittsburgh Pirates. For a man whose care­fully nur­tured per­sona was that of a lazy scamp, he was just about the busiest man in Hollywood.”

There’s noth­ing of the scamp in Bing in High Time. Sure, he goes along with a frat prank, but it’s only bacause it’s what the frat requires of him; he’s actu­ally pur­su­ing the norm­at­ive in doing so. When he objects to the rules, it’s because the rules are unfair, as when French instruct­or Mme. Gauthier’s pos­i­tion is threatened on account of their involve­ment, which at this point in the pic­ture is entirely on the up-and-up any­way. And it is per­haps no acci­dent that one of the pic­ture’s most lyr­ic­al scenes is, yep, a Christmas one, with Bing lead­ing a chor­us of “It Came Upon A Midnight Clear.” In terms of pop icon­o­graphy, the movie rep­res­ents a shift in the Crosby per­sona; the whole scen­ario of the film is tailor-made for the older fella who’s young at heart. It is once again prob­ably ridicu­lously over­stat­ing the case to say that Crosby was here pos­i­tion­ing him­self as the can-do uncle for the young pion­eers of the New Frontier, but the act­ively anti-fraught optim­ism of the pic­ture is a real thing. 

And it isn’t as if Blake Edwards could­n’t do fraught. His next film, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, has a light frost­ing that only slightly cam­ou­flages the emo­tion­al push-pull that resolves in the gal­van­iz­ing rain­storm of its final scene. Soon to come were Experiment In Terror and The Days Of Wine And Roses. In High Time we find him indul­ging his love of comedians—for Crosby was a comedi­an, and a great one—and per­haps an envy for a free-floating state of being in which a take-it-as-it-comes atti­tude was ninety per­cent of suc­cess. That’s what Crosby’s embody­ing here, and as such, High Time falls on the performer-as-auteur side of the the­ory. The Blu-ray from Screen Archives Entertainment/Twilight Time is not rated enorm­ously highly be the DVD Talk experts I stole the image from, but I found it excep­tion­ally pleas­ing, clean and bright, like the song says, and a good rep­res­ent­a­tion of its lively col­or palette.