Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941)

Here Comes Mr. Jordan 
Directed by Alexander Hall
Written by Sidney Buichman and Seton I. Miller from the play “Heaven Can Wait” by Harry Seagall
1941/USA
Columbia Pictures Corporation
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Messenger 7013: I have an idea, Mr. Jordan, couldn’t we have him reborn?

Joe Pendleton: Nothing doing; I’m not gonna go through *that* again![/box]

This fantasy lacks a little in the internal logic department but is a fun film with nice performances by Robert Montgomery and Claude Rains.

Joe Pendleton (Montgomery) is a professional boxer who is looking at a fight that will give him a chance at the championship.  While flying his plane to the venue in New York, it crashes.  Messenger 7013 (Edward Everett Horton) plucks his soul from his body before the plane hits ground and takes him to a part of the after life that is administered by Mr. Jordan.  Problem is Joe was not meant to die in the crash or, indeed, for the next 50 years. Unfortunately Joe’s trainer (James Gleason) cremates the body before Joe’s soul can be restored to it.   Mr. Jordan scrambles to find Joe a new body.  Joe is pretty fussy as his old one was :”in the pink”.  Finally the two settle on the body of young millionaire Bruce Farnsworth who is about to be murdered by his wife and private secretary.

We see Joe’s body and hear his speech pattern but others see and hear Farnsworth.  Joe retains the memories of his former life and immediately starts training as he has been told by Jordan that he is destined to be champion.  He also becomes attracted to the pretty blonde daughter (Evelyn Keyes) of a bond salesman the real Farnsworth used as the fall guy in a fraud case and gets her father out of jail.  But the championship cannot be Joe’s before a number of comic complications set in.

One doesn’t expect realism from a picture like this one but every time I thought I had figured out the “rules” of the after life they seemed to change on me.  It didn’t mar my enjoyment of the film.  This is a lot of fun and I thought both Montgomery and Rains were terrific.  Here Comes Mr. Jordan won Academy Awards for Best Original Story and and Best Screenplay.  It was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Montgomery), Best Supporting Actor (Gleason), and Best Black-and-White Cinematography.

The story was remade in 1978 as Heaven Can Wait with Warren Beatty as Joe and James Mason as Mr. Jordan.  The 1943 classic Heaven Can Wait directed by Ernst Lubitsch is a different story, dealing more with the netherworld than Jordan’s domain.

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