High Time

This Bing Crosby film is just a good old time of fun. A great Sunday evening movie on a rainy night.

Bing is great in one of his best screen roles. He captures the humor separating the generations, yet in the end shows that there really wasn't much difference after all.

High Times captures the college life of the late 1950s, a time of fun, enjoyment, friendships, and romance. The movie captures a time before drugs, booze, and hazing turned into the Animal House of the 70s and the dismal destruction of today. One of the film's best scenes was Bing in drag for his frat party.

So, if you like Bing Crosby, college fun, light comedy, romantic fluff, you will enjoy watching High Times.

This is one of the best Bing Crosby's later films. He only gets to sing two songs in it, The Second Time Around and It Came Upon A Midnight Clear during a Christmas hayride with some of the rest of his younger cast members.

Bing is 53 year old Harvey Howard, self made millionaire restaurant franchise owner, who's decided to go back and do a lot of the things he missed when he was younger which included a college education. That in itself is an intriguing character for me. I've met a lot of self made types in my life who think because they are successful and make a lot of money in one field, they're omni-competent. Just the fact that Harvey Howard IS going back to college to improve himself intellectually and broaden his horizons is a plus for me with this character.

I read an interview with Fabian once who said that Bing was great to work with and put him right at ease. Fabian had just done one feature film called Hound Dog Man and it was less than a success. After High Time he went on to a pretty good career in films during the sixties.

The Second Time Around was the last of 15 songs that Bing introduced in films that was nominated for an Academy Award, a record not likely to be broken. It lost to Never On Sunday. It was a million selling song, but ironically not by Bing. Frank Sinatra took the song and he made it a big hit, probably the only time in Bing's career this ever happened.

The kids are just fine, Fabian, Tuesday Weld, Richard Beymer (a year away from West Side Story)Patrick Adiarte. Gavin MacLeod has some very funny moments as Bing's comic nemesis and absent minded chemistry professor and Nicole Maurey strikes the right note as the French teacher that widower Crosby falls for.

A really great feel good movie.

This movie does two things to you after you have seen it. It make you feel good and makes you want to go college. Besides being a feel good movie, it also teaches us a lesson that it is never too late to go forward in life no matter what age you are as Bing Brosy did so well in this movie. A good cast and script, some good music and you have a winner of a movie. No violence and it does very well for itself. I wish they would make more movies like this now

This movie has a special place in my heart. When I was but a young tad in Stockton, CA (about 6 years old) my mother heard that they were filming a moving with Bing Crosby a couple of miles from our house. I remember her taking me to the set and walking around fraternity row at the University of the Pacific trying to get a glimpse of Bing.

I don't recall ever seeing him, but when the film came out, I enjoyed it very much. Years later, I have seen it a few times, and have visited the campus (even took a class there and was involved in starting a new fraternity at the school. The film molded by idea of what college life was, and so in that way had a long lasting positive effect on me.

Parts of UOP still look the same if you care to check it out. (It was also used to film some of Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark and Brainstorm).

My only complaint about High Time itself is that the two conflicts (needed to move along a story) are too weak for my tastes, but as another person who commented above me, it is a fun movie.

A fun romp of a 50 year old Bing Crosby returning to college after becoming a multi-millionaire. He seeks to be just one of the gang. I really enjoy this Blake Edwards "clean" movie. A "Happy Days" type look at life in the late 50's or early 60's.

Of course Tuesday Weld and Fabian add spice but it is Gavin MacLeod that steals many scenes. (Is it just me or has anyone else notice how the younger he was when the movie was made, the older he looks? And the older he gets the younger he looks?)

It is just a plain fun easy time with lots of giggles and a few good laughs.