Many, many years ago, I read Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist. One thing that resonated a lot with me from this fantastic book is the notion that “if something happens twice, it will happen a third time.” Now, the first two installments of Old Academy Anew are from 1961 and 1951 respectively. Some would say that if you make a prophecy happen by choosing to enact it, you’re doing something you think should happen, not fulfilling it. A true prophecy is something that should happen without your input. Look how Voldemort and countless others have shot themselves in their stupid feet trying to cheat their destinies only to make them a reality. 1941 would be a third time starting a decade even if backward. This is Here Comes Mr. Jordan.
Please, let’s not debate if a decade starts on the year zero or one.
You could say I’m self-fulfilling the Thrice-Happening prophecy. I honestly tried not to, but, hey, that year had ten nominations for Movie of the Year (Outstanding Motion Picture at the time), including The Maltese Falcon and Citizen Kane. I mean, “Baby Mine” from Dumbo was nominated for Best Song, for crying out loud. You can’t tell me 1941 wasn’t a freaking awesome year for cinema.
And out of leftfield, for you trivia nuts, Cary Grant starred Suspicion, another MOY nominee that year when he should have been the leading man of Here Comes Mr. Jordan (our movie of the month) while still getting a Best Actor nod those same freaking awards for his role as Roger Adams in Penny Serenade. How about that? Interestingly, the 14th Academy award ceremony was held on February 26, 1942, almost three months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and even with WW2 already in full swing in Europe, there’s only one war movie nominated in those awards, Sergeant York, about a WW1 hero from Tennessee.
On a personal note, I loathe anything related to WW2— whether movies, songs, images; the whole concept of the thing makes me almost physically ill.
An esoteric friend of mine insists I must have suffered through it in a past life. I call zebra dung on that one because I believe the whole idea of reincarnation is not remembering shit and starting from zero when you get into your new body. So based on the personal note, beware you’re not gonna see any WW2 movie review here, or any war if I have a say, and guess what? I do. Pretty sure by now you think I’m rambling, but I’m seriously getting to the movie.
DESTINY & DESTINATION
Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) is labeled as a “fantasy romantic comedy.” Fantasy? Yes. Romantic? Depends on your standards. Comedy? Hmm. Today, of course, one enlightened keyboard warrior would exclaim from behind the security of their hentai bombshell profile picture something inane like “Well, if the movie wants to identify as a comedy, who are you to question how it feels inside?” completely forgetting that true, art is up for interpretation, but not so arbitrarily as to make the need for logical parameters of classification unnecessary.
Perhaps Here Comes Mr. Jordan was a comedy riot in the 1940s? But today It does have funny moments in the same way, The Martian (2015) or Passengers (2017) have moments.
Bringing you a smile but not making you ROTFL. To me, this is more of a spiritual movie even if it tries it damnest to tickle you with silly things like starting with pastoral vignettes and lyrically written exposition to end the scene with a boxing session where the lettering is divided as if they ran out of space (or imagination) to center the stuff properly.
One of the boxing chaps is Joe Pendleton (Robert Montgomery) apparently training for a very important match scheduled in two weeks. The reason why he’s doing this here in the middle of nowhere is never explained and seemed just like a convenient location to put him on his little airplane en route to New York city instead of taking the train with his manager, Max Corkle (James Gleason), and the rest of his entourage. Corkle tries to keep Joe from flying by himself, but he refuses with what amounts to basically “The Flying Pug flies. He shouldn’t be seen taking a train.” Mind you, this man not only pilots solo he also plays the saxophone.
Why he’s not called the Musical Punch is anyone’s guess.
In the air, Joe decides to practice his “lucky” sax instead of keeping his hands on the yoke (that’s the actual name for an airplane’s steering wheel if you didn’t know). Still, this isn’t what causes the accident taking his life but an actual technical malfunction in the form of a snapping cable. The whole thing is so cartoony one should be laughing (or at least chuckling), but I’m here looking at the scene with a giant WTF written on my face. The plane goes down as planes do when shit goes wrong and the main character needs to die.
Next, we see two silhouettes moving along a foggy empty terrain. As they near, we discover it is Joe and another man, arguing. Joe insists the man needs to take him back because he has stuff to do— to point him to a cab or something if the man isn’t willing to go with him. Far from them Joe (and us) sees an airplane (way bigger than his) and goes “Hey. There’s transport. I can fly it to New York. Let’s go get it.”We move closer to the airplane and see people as they are called to board.
This is where Here Comes Mr. Jordan tries to do one of its funny bits with the guy calling the names jumping the alphabetical order and his supervisor admonishing him for it. Meh.
Joe and his companion walk to the supervisor, who happens to be none other than Mr. Jordan (Claude Rains) of the movie title. Independently of the quasi-silly first impression with the name-caller (ha!), Mr. Jordan has a presence, a soothing aura that carries throughout the movie effortlessly even in the moments when he needs to be stern.
While more people keep boarding the airplane, the collector (as Joe calls him later in the movie) identifies himself as Agent 7013 (Edward Everett Horton) and tells Mr. Jordan, “He fought me tooth and nail all the way up here.”
Where is up here? We think we know, but the word “Heaven” is only used twice and never by the people from the movie’s Afterlife Machinery.
Joe doesn’t want to accept he’s dead, insisting someone got their wires crossed because he feels fine and he has a championship to win. Mr. Jordan goes to check on a list from another agent standing near the airplane and cannot find Joe, prompting the supervisor to walk to one of the pilots and ask to contact the Registrar Office for everything they have on Joseph Pendleton. Interestingly, the pilot, Mr. Sloan (a 28-year-old and very handsome Lloyd Bridges), is the only person we meet with not a number but an actual name much like Mr. Jordan. What’s the hierarchy here and why are these people being transported? One group goes to Finland, another to Australia. Are they about to reincarnate? We never learn the actual purpose of moving these souls (consciousness?) to either place.
Dang it.
While they wait, Joe continues his “I’m feeling fine” rant when Agent 7013 mentions that he took Joe because there was no way the boxer could have survived “while he was hurtling to Earth with the speed of a meteor.”
Joe laughs. “I wouldn’t have crashed. I would have pulled the ship up somehow if you have left me alone.”
Mr. Jordan turns to Agent 7013 with narrowed eyes. “You mean to say you pulled him out of that plane before he crashed?”
“Yes, sir. Oh, I know that we messengers shouldn’t permit our emotions to sway us, but there he was, sir, plummeting earthward. I wanted to spare him the agony of crashing, so—.”
“Unpardonably presumptuous,” growls Mr. Jordan.
“Yeah!” interjects Joe.
“I’m just desolate about it, sir.” Agent 7013 wrings his hands.
The three look at each other, and here comes the movie with its silliness when Mr. Jordan asks the agent what territory he covers.
“It’s a place called New Jersey. And if it could be arranged, sir, I should like very much to be transferred,” Agent 7013 answers with eyes big like plates, trembling disappointment pouring out of him.
Mr. Jordan doesn’t roll his eyes but his body language, including the little pace with his hands behind his back, tells you he should like very much to smack the agent. “You are new, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir. It’s my first trip. I was put on only this morning.”
“I thought so. Overzealousness. Out for record collections. This happens right along with the inexperienced.”
“Oh, dear.” Agent 7013 verbally clutches his pearls.
“It wasn’t in the cards.” Joe waves his instrument. “Nothing can happen to me when I got my lucky saxophone.”
“And how did he manage to wangle that thing up here?” Mr. Jordan turns from Joe to Agent 7013
Wait— Mr. Sloan has information. “Mr. Jordan, sir. On Pendleton Joseph, the official record says both his parents are happily withdrawn and awaiting his arrival. Joseph is scheduled to join them the morning of May 11th, 1991.”
Agent 7013’s face is priceless as the date sinks in.
Mr. Jordan utters a verbal head-shake, “Seems you were a little premature.”
“Fifty years!” Joe exclaims. “You certainly pulled a boner here.”
I’m not making this up. That is the actual dialog from 1941.
My inner teenager is snickering like a freaking idiot not only because by now Joe has used the absurd expression “In the pink” to imply he’s in his best shape at least three times, but also the wangled instruments, boners, and premature completion tossed around in a scene with a guy who could totally be America’s Grampa presiding the shenanigans.
All made the more preposterous because I am 83% sure those things were not intended as dirty jokes at the time.
With the truth uncovered, Mr. Jordan sends Agent 7013 to put Joe back together. Alas, the body is not at the crash site. Joe concludes Corkle must have taken it to his house to nurse him back to health. They find Corkle speaking with another guy about Joe, and Joe’s like “Hey, I’m here, you dumb so and so” only to be reminded for the nth time that people cannot see him out of his body. A body that is also not in that house. The movie tries to trick us into believing that Joe is such a good example that kids look up to him by making a trio of tweens show up with flowers there because they couldn’t find the “we can’t pronounce that word,” only to have Corkle expose (as in exposition) “crematorium.”
Oh, dear. Back to wherever Up is. Mr. Jordan comes with a solution: give Joe the body of someone freshly dead. It’s just like putting on a new coat— no biggie.
Hold it right there, buster. Joe is not on board; he has put ten years to get that body “in the pink.”
Agent 7013, who is either done with Joe’s attitude or has never been as humble as he appears, blurts, “What is the fuss for a thing that has the chemical worth of 32 cents?”
Writing this I feel like I need to figure the today’s value of those 1941 cents but nah… adjust for inflation and social media filters at your own mental peril; I’m not going there.
Since things have escalated, it’s time for Mr. Jordan to take matters into his own hands. After visiting one hundred and thirty candidates in several countries, we are back in New York. Where else can something happen with everybody using such an obnoxious accent that has more to do with timeframe than actual location?
Anyhoo, the final destination is the house of a shady millionaire who is about to be murdered by his wife and her lover.
CASUALTIES & CAUSALITY
Mr. Jordan’s solution is to give Joe another body to finish his run in the material world. Cool. This solution in itself is a contradiction because if everything is already written. How could this solution be possible if the mistake has not been foreseen in the first place? That Harry Potter Universe time travel glitch that whatever you change is already part of the future is better than a Marvel alternate timeline, but we can still go about this for eons without a completely satisfactory answer. And that’s exactly why this movie is brilliant.
Had this film come out today, the theories about it would make YouTube and all fanboy sites explode, trying to analyze all real and imaginary Easter Eggs: the word soul is mentioned only once, same as Hades, never Hell. Why use the Greek version of the underworld? Why in the world explain the body as a mere unimportant thing but skillfully avoid preaching about the next life in a place where the predominant conception of the afterlife implies either forever bliss or eternal damnation?
Links in the description are down below! And don’t forget to punch that subscribe button like your body is in the pink!
The Flying Pug and Mr. Jordan wait for the upcoming death in a richly decorated room. Lucky saxophone under his arm, Joe paces because his solution is happening in a different part of the mansion. Mr. Jordan plays the keys of a grand piano until Joe wonders what’s going to make the millionaire die; Mr. Jordan mentions a rundown condition to what you Joe infers, “Playboy type, huh. Wine, women, and song.”
“No, Joe. He’s being murdered.”
“Who’s doing it?”
“His wife and the man she’s in love with.”
The alarm in Joe’s face in contrast with the not bored but totally used to the mechanics of the situation of Mr. Jordan is one of the key moments to understand the mastery of this film.
Joe doesn’t want a murdered body, especially if he’s going to have to live with the people who dispatched Shady Bucks. He demands to leave, but Mr. Jordan must collect the dead man whether Joe chooses to use the body or not, so they must stay.
After a tense moment of waiting, both killer lovers descend to the main floor. The wife seems shaken, but her lover (who happens to be the personal secretary of the husband) urges her to keep it together for the plan to work. It’s supposed to look like he drowned in his bathtub after they pumped him full of horse tranquilizer. Apparently toxicology and postmortem examination shit didn’t happen in 1941.
The beast controller is my take on the situation; we are never told their drug of choice.
To give them an alibi, Bette Logan (Evelyn Keyes) shows up demanding to see that Swindling Asshole who put her sick father in jail after using poor old daddy’s name to sell worthless “securities.” What are these securities is anyone’s guess and unimportant to the story. Shhh.
And I say to give them an alibi because now they ask the butler to inform Dead Con Millions that Miss Logan is there demanding to see him, placing them in a different wing of the mansion while dude drowns…
Joe and Mr. Jordan are silent observers as the killer lovers humiliate the devoted daughter up to the point of telling her she’s just a stupid child for even hoping that a ruthless businessman like Moolah Scammer could even consider doing something to save her father.
Between her beauty and helplessness, Joe has no other (movie) option than to fall in love with her and accept the drowned meat as his vehicle for a while to right the awful wrong.
Obviously, (cheesy) shenanigans ensue.
Every single thing that happens in this film is absurd. Even if they look like normal situations to the untrained eye. In a world in the middle of a war and resurging from the Great Depression, common folk invested lots of money in whatever securities are. Smart audiences understand this is only for director Alexander Hall to have the famous movie image of newspaper printing presses rolling with sensationalist headlines. Also scores of people of all walks of life in the main offices of the Con Artist awaiting the reimbursement of money they entrusted to the wrong person. A qualifying match for a boxing championship is arranged because a man with money decides to participate. And including but not limiting to the contradictions of the film’s own rules regarding the Afterlife Machinery for comedic emphasis.
The escapism of the first order, and I simply love it.
In the end, Joe fulfills his dreams and keeps the beautiful girl he helped. It really doesn’t matter that he has to die several times to get there. Justice, or more accurately, destiny prevails.
IMAGERY & IMAGINATION
The boxing match meant to change Joe’s life happens while police detectives are investigating the disappearance of Shady Bucks’s body. Thanks to manager Corkle’s persistency because no one spends that much money to arrange a fight and vanish the next day. I mention this because the investigative force ends up listening to the match on the radio, which in turn brought memories of my father and me watching boxers fight on TV.
Yeah, the crazy film not only made me wonder about the Afterlife but touched me in places it shouldn’t have. Mainly because it was constantly trying to be cute when I can tell (eighty years later) it was secretly deep and subversive at its core.
I wondered why Mr. Jordan and not something more on the nose like Mr. Peters or Mr. Gates when it clicked— Jordan is the river you cross to get to the Promised Land!
Subtle but right on point. Especially when all of the usual celestial imagery has been basically removed, keeping the whole thing firmly on the ground even when the effing airplane to transport people awaits on a tarmac made of clouds; even the agents called themselves messengers, never angels!
Remember the no-preachy part. Think about this, Mr. Jordan (whatever his real position within the Afterlife Machinery) is supposed to collect Robbie McRobberthief right? So technically, and because the film never gives us a different option, that horrible man ended up in the same place where Joe Pendleton, an allegedly “good guy,” would when his journey is completed. Bad deeds don’t send you to the bad place?
I don’t think that is the film’s message, and remember that not every belief system works under the reward/punishment method. There’s more, but as I said with the Easter Eggs, we could debate about it for a long time.
This movie has several remakes (even a Bollywood one!), but you’re probably most familiar with Heaven Can Wait (1978) with Warren Beatty in the lead role and Down to Earth (2001) with Chris Rock as the deceased chump. Luckily for me, I haven’t watched either and based on the trailers available online, I’m extremely happy I didn’t.
I mean, you guys know by now I’m shallow as fekk and like pretty people. But not even a beef-cake like Warren Beatty (41 at the time of the movie but not looking a day over 30) could make me watch a basically blow-by-blow remake of an already deliciously perfect movie. Never mind the trailer makes it look like some tragic love story which in itself is misleading as fook. Not even going to bother with the 2001 mess. I’m just gonna be lazy and quote Rotten Tomatoes’ consensus: “A toned down Chris Rock fails to bring a limp script to life as the movie moves from one gag to the next.”
Yeah, what the tomato said.
Honestly, if you’re going to remake a classic like Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) at least give it a little something extra. The two I mentioned not even had the decency to change the secretary. Honestly, who still had male secretaries in both 1978 and 2001! Pretty sure not even gay tycoons or recalcitrant conservative matrons! C’mon! And neither came even close to the subversion of the original by not explaining the afterlife as “heaven” from the get-go in the mother heaving trailers. Sigh.
Somebody is going to steal this idea but hey, more power to that thief out there. If I wrote a remake of Mr. Jordan, Dead Dude (yeah, I’m calling him that), would be taken to Hell instead of Heaven.
The first body would be via a man murdered by his wife and his female assistant, yeah, luscious lesbian lovers. He has money, but he’s not a bad person (now, because he rightfully deserves to be in Hell). He keeps the first body to help a kid, and through that kid, he meets the love interest, whether man, woman, non-binary, unicorn, or esoteric intergalactic being; whatever is more convenient for the politically correct crowd buying tickets or streaming in that near future. This is why we make movies at the end of the day— for profit, not art or social commentary or redemption, just hard cold digits in some account, right? RIGHT?!
Imma stop here ’cause I ain’t giving the whole enchilada to a future thief. Put them woke-y neurons to work, you keyboard warrior you.
Bringing the esoteric theme to full circle, I think it’s interesting that I chose a movie focused on the Afterlife to be flung upon you a few days after the veil between the spiritual and the material worlds was as its flimsiest. Most ancient cultures have an understanding of this season, whether Samhain, All Hallows Eve, or Dia de Los Muertos. That end of October beginning of November has always had that aura of straddling the planes. Perhaps it’s time to accept that the material world is neither the only one nor the more important.
I’m giving this movie a 9 out of 10 to keep it “in the pink.”
Here Comes Mr. Jordan is currently available at Amazon Prime Video