Swing High, Swing Low

Fred MacMurray was honored in the 2024 edition of TCM's Summer Under the Stars, and that gave me the opportunity to record another movie that I had seen the title show up a number of times, but had never actually seen the movie: Swing High, Swing Low. Now, having actually seen it, I can finally do a post on it.

Fred MacMurray is the male lead, although since the movie was made in the late 1930s, the real star is the female lead, played by Carole Lombard. Her character, Maggie King, is working her passage as a beautician on board a cruise ship that goes from the US Atlantic coast to the Pacific and back through the Panama Canal in the days when the US still controlled the Panama Canal and had a strip of land on either side. On this passage through the Zone, she sees a soldier patrolling the shore, and he sees her. His name is Skid Johnson (that's MacMurray as if you couldn't tell), and although he's in the army, he says it's his last day as he's being demobbed tomorrow.

Maggie isn't really interested in SKid, but the next day he's driving a taxi showing Maggie and her friend through Balboa, the city that served as the Pacific terminus of the Canal Zone although today it's part of Panama City. Maggie misses her boat as a result of Skid and his friend/roommate Harry's (Charles Butterworth) showing her around town. Worse, they go to a club where Skid reveals that he's a trumpet player and Maggie reveals she hates trumpet music. But at the bar a man hits on Maggie and Skid, obviously already in love with Maggie, gets in a fight with the man, to the point that Skid gets arrested and Maggie has to bail him out. So now she also doesn't have the money to get a ticket back to America.

So Maggie gets herself and Skid jobs at Murphy's (Cecil Cunningham, a woman even though she has the name Cecil) club in Balboa, Maggie claiming that she's married to Skid. Also workin at the club is Anita Alvarez (Dorothy Lamour), who at some point in Skid's past was his girlfriend, which introduces that romantic tension that's going to drive the rest of the plot. Skid gets famous enough that he's able to get enough money to go back to New York, although it's apparently only enough money for him, not both him and Maggie. This even though by this time Maggie and Skid have gotten married for real.

Back in New York, Skid works at a club where Anita just happens also to be on the payroll. And Anita has no qualms about trying to win Skid back for herslef. Doing this, however, leads to Skid's screwing up his marriage to Maggie, and when she files for divorce, he responds by turning to drink, which threatens to ruin his career, at least until she shows up again.

My being a fan of older movies is part of why I'd always been interested in seeing this one, but I have to say that it doesn't quite work for some reason. I think it's that at times it's too serious a drama for its own good, while at the times it tries to be lighter, it's not really a comedy either. It also doesn't help that despite being about musicians, and not fully developing the characters, it doesn't have particularly memorable music either.

Swing High, Swing Low isn't a terrible movie, but if I were going to introduce people to Fred MacMurray or Carole Lombard, there are other movies I'd pick for that job.