High Time (1960) Bluray limited edition / Not rated but would be G for good fun, good singing and good music.
I am a sucker for fish out of water movies. My two favorite are Crocodile Dundee (1986) and this one. This one is High Time. It’s the story of 51 year old widower Harvey Howard (Bing Crosby). HH is the owner of over 1400 successful hamburger outlets. He is rich, famous and can sing like Bing. Despite protestations by his adult children he decides to go to college. If you follow the time line of the story based on dialogue and visual cues it would seen that Harvey H. didn’t graduate from High School till he was 24.
HH joins Fabian, Richard Beymer (Tony in West Side Story) and one other actor in the dormitory/frat house life as Freshmen. Also at the school is Tuesday Weld who is the love interest of Fabian and RB. HT is directed by Blake Edwards who went on to direct the successful Pink Panther series, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and other great comedies. He also has Henry Mancini, before his multiple Best Score Oscars, to add the music background. HM provides the perfect rah-rah college theme along with a score full of fun and romance. Legendary song writers James Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen wrote one of their all time classic songs The Second Time Around and Bing introduced the song in this film.
The four years of college life only take 102 minutes to portray on screen. The story takes place at a fictional Southern College known as Pinehurst. In reality the exterior scenes where HH arrives to start each college year were filmed near Royce Hall at UCLA. The other college scenes were done at the University (then College) of the Pacific in Stockton, CA. Additional scenes were at the adjoining San Joaquin Delta College and the final scene and dance were done at Stockton Jr. High School.
As a fish out of water story this one is right up there with the Aussie down under then in NYC film mentioned above. Full of innocent humor and college pranks the college years flow by full of sports, romance and Mancini’s fantastic early score. It also gives you a chance to see a little of Stockton CA before the recent bankruptcy. Most of the indoor scenes were shot on the lot at 20th Century Fox in Hollywood.
While romancing the beautiful French Professor who teaches French, Bing gets a chance to sing the classic song mentioned above. He also chimes in with a Christmas Carol while Fabian adds a folk song. Bing was still in full voice and recording regularly at this time in his life. Keep in mind that Bing had 38 number 1 hit records. Compare this to The Beatles with 24 and Elvis Presley with 18 and you get the idea how big Bing was in the music world.
I have a VHS quality of this film on my DVR. It looks horrible but I have never seen any release of this film on VHS or DVD. Now for a limited time it is on Bluray disc. Limited to 3000 copies you can find it at Screen Archives web site. It is another fine release from Twilight Time. The original preview for the film is included. Watch for the camp fire scene. It didn’t end up in the movie. Henry Mancini’s score is available on the disc as an isolated track.
Rated 4.0 grade point average. It’s High Time you see High Time.