Half Way to Heaven

Odd little circus film about trapeze artists and obsessive love.

Jean Arthur stars as Greta, a trapeze star with a traveling circus. The act's "catcher" is the obsessive and mean Nick (Paul Lukas). After a terrible accident, Arthur decides to hide out at a train stop and miss the train. She ends up in a small town where she's taken in at a boarding house. She meets a young man (Buddy Rogers) who happens to running away to the circus. Despite this rather clunky plot twist, Arthur and Rogers are quite good together.

Back at the circus, Nick goes nuts when he realizes that Arthur and Rogers are in love. Nick plans for another accident but Rogers fools him in a neat twist.

Co-stars include Helen Ware as the "all-seeing" fortune teller, Edna West as the boarding house lady, Irving Bacon as Slim, Oscar Apfel as the circus manager, and Nestor Aber as the younger brother.

The trapeze shots are quite good. Worth seeing for Jean Arthur and Buddy Rogers.

In what was probably a quickie timed to beat Fox's 'Four Devils' into the theatres, writer/director George Abbott fashions his best effort. With F. W. Murneau's highly anticipated follow-up to 'Sunrise' in production simultaneously, much of the camera movement in this trapeze artist talker is owed to the prestige oozing from down the street. The film opens with a horrible accident, splendidly photographed. Soon after, the heroine (and the audience) discover the truth, but all involved seem powerless to bring the truth to light. Then, Charles 'Buddy' Rogers arrives, and in a plot twist untypical for this era, he remains resolute in his beliefs. His character's strengths steal the film. I won't spoil the fun, but Paul Lukas does a dead-on Bela Lugosi impression throughout the film. And 'Buddy' didn't even need his 'Wings'.

Freddy Anderson plummets to his death when Paul Lukas doesn't catch him. Everyone believes it was deliberate. Their high trapeze act was a threesome, with Jean Arthur preferring Anderson. But no one can prove it, and the show must go on. So tyro Charles 'Buddy' Rogers gets a tryout, and it goes very well. And then Miss Arthur and he fall in love.

With the flying act and the love story and the threat, it's potentially a very cinematic story. However, it never quite excels, and I'm not sure why. Could it be the long-shot trapeze work that is obviously doubled? Is Lukas too urbane to believe as some one who would do something like that?is Miss Arthur still not accustomed to the microphone? Or is it the fact that it's directed by George Abbott, who never really prospered with the camera and went back to Broadway, 11 Tonies, and lived to be 107? With Helen Ware, Oscar Apfel, and Irving Bacon.