Here Is My Heart

source: Here Is My Heart

Someone once said that every singer who came after him either learnt, borrowed, or stole something from Bing Crosby. Here he is at his vocal peak, the man who virtually invented 'Pop' singing, in one of the many wonderful little musicals he churned out in the 1930's, all of which are a sheer pleasure to watch, several have still to make it onto DVD, we can only hope and pray they do! Here is My Heart take you back to another time, a time when life was simpler, and Hollywood was entering it's Golden Era, no messages, just enjoyment, pity it didn't stay that way!

Lacking in chemistry, Bing Crosby and Kitty Carlisle are an odd romantic screen team to behold. She's a selfish and spoiled (but nearly broke) princess, and he's posing as a singing waiter to get close to her. Claiming to be in love with her, He kisses her, resulting in a slap and a tongue lashing. But by this time, her previous snooty entourage are crazy about him, and it's only a matter of time before he has their permission to tame this shrew. Only familiar with Kitty Carlisle as Mrs. Moss Hart and an occasional T.V. guest performer, I found her rather cold on screen. Crosby's personality cries for someone like Carole Lombard, Miriam Hopkins or Joan Bennett, but Carlisle lacks their oomph. Certainly here, she is extremely unlikable, a far cry from the charming older woman I would see on occasion 50 years later. Roland Young, Reginald Owen and Alison Skipworth score higher for laughs as Carlisle's elders, with Woliam Frawley amusing as Crosby's buddy. I got quickly tired of his fawning over her, and when she slapped him. I longed for him to slap her back. Songs are pleasant enough but the pacing is slow. One funny moment has Crosby in disguise reacting to the royal talking about him while serving the snooty group most clumsily. This is the weakest of Crosby's early films, and ultimately a pretentious bore.

Successful singer Bing Crosby is in Monte Carlo on his yacht. He's trying to purchase one of the pistols given by Catherine the Great to John Paul Jones so he can donate it to the US Naval Academy. Russian princess Kitty Carlisle isn't interested in selling. Crosby winds up serving her and her entourage -- Roland Young, Reginald Owen, and Alison Skipworth -- dinner, so they insist on his being their regular waiter. Crosby falls in love with her immediately, and they're broke. The usual complications ensue. Crosby is is very comfortable in his playing, Young is fine, Owen is adequate, Miss Skipworth is wasted, and Miss Carlisle.... well, she's pretty. There's a pretty good bunch of songs, including the premiere of "Love Is Just Around The Corner" for Crosby to perform. Miss Carlisle sings a Russian song. Supporting performers include William Frawley, Cecilia Parker, Akim Tamiroff and Arthur Housman. It's a pleasant vehicle for Crosby.

Here Is My Heart is another escapism romantic flick during the Great Depression intended to show poor audiences that rich people are frivolous and silly. So is the rest of this film. Bing Crosby is a bored millionaire who falls in love with a princess, Kitty Carlisle, but due to being in the wrong place at the wrong time, she thinks he's a waiter. To have a little fun, Bing plays along and pretends he's a penniless servant; Kitty wants nothing to do with him. My question is, why does he want anything to do with her? Can't he recognize she's snobby and make a play for someone else? Apparently not, and if you don't like Kitty, you're not going to like this movie. In a hilarious scene, Bing listens to a record of his own recording of "It's June in January", sings harmony with himself, and after listening to a high note, comments to the recording, "Ah, you made it!" When Bing is by himself or coming up with funny schemes with his buddy, Roland Young, the movie isn't that bad, but Kitty is just too much of a one-dimensional villainess and tends to ruin the scenes she's in. If you do end up liking this one, though, check out We're Not Dressing, which is very similar.

I agree wholeheartedly with Cygnus58 regarding Kitty Carlisle. She was beautiful though. This movie is definitely a vehicle for the incredible talent of Bing Crosby. Crosby was certainly in his prime in 1934. A pre-swing singer for sure, who I believe was eclipsed by singers like Frank Sinatra, Dick Haymes and others, after the advent of Benny Goodman and Swing Music in 1936. I never got Crosby until I saw this piece. Now I get it. His post-swing Dixieland type singing and his duets with the Andrew Sisters never cut it with me. But he is a fabulous entertainer and singer in this film. If you never liked the older Bing, you'll love him in this film.

This film had been thought of as lost for about half a century when apparently Kathryn Crosby must have been rummaging through some closets and announced that Bing had a copy of this formerly lost film of his. It was restored and back in the early 1990s I saw the newly restored version with my friend Scott Barton and hosting the film was its co-star, Kitty Carlisle. It was a great afternoon. And the film was well worth saving. Songwriters Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger gave Crosby, It's June In January and With Every Breath I Take to sing and Robin teamed up with Lewis Gensler for Love Is Just Around the Corner. All three songs were good selling records for Bing and a particular favorite of mine has always been With Every Breath I Take. He sang these a few times during the film both solo and as duets with Carlisle. The records incidentally were the first movie songs and almost the first songs Crosby recorded for the brand new Decca record label. Although Decca signed many artists, Crosby was their number one artist for 20 years. Decca and Crosby were virtually synonymous. No acting stretch here in terms of character. Crosby plays a rich crooner. Jokes about his wealth were a staple in Bob Hope's repertoire, although Hope did pretty good in that department as well. In 1934 Crosby was accumulating his fortune, but he wasn't near the point where as Hope once said, "he doesn't pay taxes, he just calls up the Treasury and asks how much they need." Like many rich people and some not so rich Bing was collecting his toys in this film and he had one pistol in a matched set of dueling pistols that once belonged to John Paul Jones. Bing wants to get the set and donate them to the Naval Academy. Problem is that the other one belongs to Kitty Carlisle who is an exiled Russian princess living in Monte Carlo with her retinue which consists of Roland Young, Alison Skipworth and Reginald Owen. Essentially these people live off her selling her possessions and they're getting fewer and fewer. So Bing goes off to Monte Carlo meets Carlisle and the fun begins. A standard criticism I have of Crosby's films is that Paramount shot them on the cheap, especially his musical numbers. It would have been great if Paramount had actually shot the thing in Monte Carlo, but to be fair, no studio in Hollywood would have gone those lengths in 1934. Twenty years later Paramount did go to Monte Carlo for a movie and the result was To Catch A Thief. Here Is My Hear would have been as special as that film had they done that and with color to boot. This was also the first film Crosby did with William Frawley who appeared in several of his films. Frawley was one of film land's great misanthropic alcoholics and by all accounts not a nice man to know. Crosby and a lot of Hollywood gave up on him, until Desi Arnaz saved him from oblivion and gave him a fresh career as Fred Mertz. Kitty Carlisle said that Crosby was a difficult man to know for her. He came to the studio, did his business and left. If he had his druthers, Bing would have been out on the golf course. But she enjoyed the two films she did with him. When I saw Here Is My Heart it was playing with Murder At the Vanities and she had not much good to say about her leading man Carl Brisson in that one. One ironic tragedy. The film centered around Crosby trying to acquire antique dueling pistols. Crosby's crooning rival Russ Columbo was killed by an antique dueling pistol that summer around the time Here Is My Heart would have been in the theaters. A year before Columbo had visited Bing on the set of We're Not Dressing where Crosby's co- star was Carole Lombard who was linked to Columbo at the time. Here Is My Heart was well worth saving. I guess we should all be grateful to Kathryn Crosby for doing her spring cleaning.

A musical comedy from Paramount featuring one classically trained voice and one popular singer, set in Europe, built around a romance between an impoverished princess and a rich man posing as a waiter to be near her... this sounds to me exactly like the kind of movie that Paramount would have assigned to Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald and director Ernst Lubitsch during the early thirties. I would bet my bottom dollar that this is exactly what Paramount planned to do with this musical remake of the 1926 silent comedy "The Grand Duchess and the Waiter." Unfortunately, none of them were available in 1934, so they gave it to Bing Crosby, Kitty Carlisle and director Frank Tuttle instead. In this case second best isn't good enough. Crosby holds his own reasonably well, making a surprisingly good substitute for Chevalier (or Adolphe Menjou, who played the part in the silent film); like Maurice, he has a breezy, easygoing charm, which fits his character, a common man who made good. But Carlisle is fatally miscast as the Russian princess. Jeanette MacDonald could play these snobbish aristocrats with an undertone of sympathy and humor; Carlisle can't, and she is so haughty that she becomes dislikable. She isn't a bad actress; this part just isn't meant for her. It would be hard for any movie to overcome that handicap. Maybe Lubitsch could have made something out of it, but Tuttle lacks his subtlety and his instinct for a clever gag. The movie has virtues; the music is good, and the scene in which Bing sings "June in January" is imaginative. The supporting cast is solid, especially Roland Young and Reginald Owen as members of the royal family. The sets and the photography are attractive. I'm glad to see this movie emerge from the closet it had been hiding in for half a century, but it just isn't one of Crosby's best films.

Not only do they not make 'em like this anymore, they can't. Unfortunately, this delightful bit of charming musical whimsey is so far removed from our brutal, jaded modern world that the recipe is probably lost forever. But then, that's part of what makes "Here Is My Heart" so appealing. It's a slice of movie past that seems like a wonderful little lost place in time to 21st century sensibilities. Watching it is like discovering breathing. Bing Crosby somehow deftly owns the film, in spite of sharing the screen with such veteran scene stealers as Roland Young and Reginald Owen, who are at their best. The fact that Bing may have been at his vocal peak at the time certainly helps, as he proves why he was the number one male vocalist for two decades, flawlessly crooning "June In January" and "With Every Breath I Take". But it's the way he commands the screen with little visual bits of business that is a revelation. This type of love story was Der Bingle's stock in trade prior to his Father O'Malley days, and it's evident why he rose quickly to the list of top ten box office stars during the thirties. Trouble is, most of his films from this period are sitting in vaults somewhere, gathering dust. Be sure to catch this charmer of a movie if it ever shows up on late-night TV or in a theater. It's a crime that it's not available on video!

source: Here Is My Heart