Meu Maior Desejo

This film had been thought of as lost for about half a century when apparently Kathryn Crosby must have been rummaging through some closets and announced that Bing had a copy of this formerly lost film of his.

It was restored and back in the early 1990s I saw the newly restored version with my friend Scott Barton and hosting the film was its co-star, Kitty Carlisle. It was a great afternoon.

And the film was well worth saving. Songwriters Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger gave Crosby, It's June In January and With Every Breath I Take to sing and Robin teamed up with Lewis Gensler for Love Is Just Around the Corner. All three songs were good selling records for Bing and a particular favorite of mine has always been With Every Breath I Take. He sang these a few times during the film both solo and as duets with Carlisle.

The records incidentally were the first movie songs and almost the first songs Crosby recorded for the brand new Decca record label. Although Decca signed many artists, Crosby was their number one artist for 20 years. Decca and Crosby were virtually synonymous.

No acting stretch here in terms of character. Crosby plays a rich crooner. Jokes about his wealth were a staple in Bob Hope's repertoire, although Hope did pretty good in that department as well. In 1934 Crosby was accumulating his fortune, but he wasn't near the point where as Hope once said, "he doesn't pay taxes, he just calls up the Treasury and asks how much they need."

Like many rich people and some not so rich Bing was collecting his toys in this film and he had one pistol in a matched set of dueling pistols that once belonged to John Paul Jones. Bing wants to get the set and donate them to the Naval Academy. Problem is that the other one belongs to Kitty Carlisle who is an exiled Russian princess living in Monte Carlo with her retinue which consists of Roland Young, Alison Skipworth and Reginald Owen. Essentially these people live off her selling her possessions and they're getting fewer and fewer.

So Bing goes off to Monte Carlo meets Carlisle and the fun begins. A standard criticism I have of Crosby's films is that Paramount shot them on the cheap, especially his musical numbers. It would have been great if Paramount had actually shot the thing in Monte Carlo, but to be fair, no studio in Hollywood would have gone those lengths in 1934. Twenty years later Paramount did go to Monte Carlo for a movie and the result was To Catch A Thief. Here Is My Hear would have been as special as that film had they done that and with color to boot.

This was also the first film Crosby did with William Frawley who appeared in several of his films. Frawley was one of film land's great misanthropic alcoholics and by all accounts not a nice man to know. Crosby and a lot of Hollywood gave up on him, until Desi Arnaz saved him from oblivion and gave him a fresh career as Fred Mertz.

Kitty Carlisle said that Crosby was a difficult man to know for her. He came to the studio, did his business and left. If he had his druthers, Bing would have been out on the golf course. But she enjoyed the two films she did with him. When I saw Here Is My Heart it was playing with Murder At the Vanities and she had not much good to say about her leading man Carl Brisson in that one.

One ironic tragedy. The film centered around Crosby trying to acquire antique dueling pistols. Crosby's crooning rival Russ Columbo was killed by an antique dueling pistol that summer around the time Here Is My Heart would have been in the theaters. A year before Columbo had visited Bing on the set of We're Not Dressing where Crosby's co- star was Carole Lombard who was linked to Columbo at the time.

Here Is My Heart was well worth saving. I guess we should all be grateful to Kathryn Crosby for doing her spring cleaning.

Successful singer Bing Crosby is in Monte Carlo on his yacht. He's trying to purchase one of the pistols given by Catherine the Great to John Paul Jones so he can donate it to the US Naval Academy. Russian princess Kitty Carlisle isn't interested in selling. Crosby winds up serving her and her entourage -- Roland Young, Reginald Owen, and Alison Skipworth -- dinner, so they insist on his being their regular waiter. Crosby falls in love with her immediately, and they're broke. The usual complications ensue. Crosby is is very comfortable in his playing, Young is fine, Owen is adequate, Miss Skipworth is wasted, and Miss Carlisle.... well, she's pretty.

There's a pretty good bunch of songs, including the premiere of "Love Is Just Around The Corner" for Crosby to perform. Miss Carlisle sings a Russian song. Supporting performers include William Frawley, Cecilia Parker, Akim Tamiroff and Arthur Housman. It's a pleasant vehicle for Crosby.

A musical comedy from Paramount featuring one classically trained voice and one popular singer, set in Europe, built around a romance between an impoverished princess and a rich man posing as a waiter to be near her... this sounds to me exactly like the kind of movie that Paramount would have assigned to Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald and director Ernst Lubitsch during the early thirties. I would bet my bottom dollar that this is exactly what Paramount planned to do with this musical remake of the 1926 silent comedy "The Grand Duchess and the Waiter." Unfortunately, none of them were available in 1934, so they gave it to Bing Crosby, Kitty Carlisle and director Frank Tuttle instead. In this case second best isn't good enough. Crosby holds his own reasonably well, making a surprisingly good substitute for Chevalier (or Adolphe Menjou, who played the part in the silent film); like Maurice, he has a breezy, easygoing charm, which fits his character, a common man who made good. But Carlisle is fatally miscast as the Russian princess. Jeanette MacDonald could play these snobbish aristocrats with an undertone of sympathy and humor; Carlisle can't, and she is so haughty that she becomes dislikable. She isn't a bad actress; this part just isn't meant for her. It would be hard for any movie to overcome that handicap. Maybe Lubitsch could have made something out of it, but Tuttle lacks his subtlety and his instinct for a clever gag.

The movie has virtues; the music is good, and the scene in which Bing sings "June in January" is imaginative. The supporting cast is solid, especially Roland Young and Reginald Owen as members of the royal family. The sets and the photography are attractive. I'm glad to see this movie emerge from the closet it had been hiding in for half a century, but it just isn't one of Crosby's best films.

Playing J. Paul Jones certainly was no stretch for Bing Crosby. After all, Jones is supposed to be a world famous crooner and radio star...just like he was. Hopefully, otherwise Crosby wasn't too much like this sap!

So why did I call Jones a sap? Well, while at a hotel, he sees and instantly falls in love with a Russian princess (Kitty Carlisle)...even thought she'd never give such a 'commoner' the time of day. So, he pretends to be a waiter and even buys the hotel to be near her and her band of moochers...a bunch of dirt poor ex-royals. Considering she's a bit haughty and these Russians don't pay their bills, you wonder why Jones is so smitten...which is THE big problem with the movie. If you love royalty and think they are somehow better than the rest of us, the film works much better. I just thought these folks were jerks and could never exactly understand why Jones cared about any of them...which is a problem with a romantic comedy. Crosby is fine in the role...but I just think the writing was fair at best.

HERE IS MY HEART (Paramount, 1934), directed by Frank Tuttle, stars Bing Crosby in a fairy-tale type romance not so much in the Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald flavor of LOVE ME TONIGHT (Paramount, 1932), but something re-platted from Alfred Sevoir's stage production, "The Grand Duchess and the Waiter," and the 1926 silent Paramount comedy featuring Adolphe Menjou and Florence Vidor. As with many silent movies, most were remade or recycled with sound. For this sound edition, the grand duchess is now a princess and the waiter not only sings but offers a flare for comedy as well.

The story revolves around a 28-year-old John Paul Jones (Bing Crosby), songwriter and former radio singer who, after inheriting a million dollar fortune, makes a list of things to do, fulfilling his lifelong fantasies. Checked off is one where he rescues a damsel in distress, a damsel who happens to be Claire Hastings (Marian Mansfield), one of the guests upon his yacht, the S. S. Bon Homme Richard. His next check off on his "bucket list" is fishing right in the center of the Atlantic Ocean. Later that evening, J. Paul receives a telegram from his friend, James Smith (William Frawley), a reporter from the Paris Chronicle, notifying him that he's located the owner of the second pistol once owned by the American Revolutionary hero, John Paul Jones (whose name is, according to J. Paul, "a coincidence, not descendant"), the pistol he hopes to buy and add with the one he currently owns to present to the U. S. Naval Academy. Heading for Monte Carlo to make arrangements with the gun owner, J. Paul, after registering at the luxurious Hotel D'Athene, encounters an attractive but snobbish woman (Kitty Carlisle) in the elevator. He is later told by Smith that the woman in the elevator happens to be the Princess Alexandra, owner of the second pistol who refuses to sell the item to anyone who's not royalty. Because of J. Paul's background, he is told the princess refuses to sell it to him at any price. After a drunken waiter (Arthur Housman) loses consciousness while delivering a tray of food to the Princess's room, J. Paul, mistaken for the waiter, assumes the role so to be closer to the princess and her upperty family consisting of the Countess Ristova (Alison Skipworth), Prince Nicholas (Roland Young) Prince Vova Vladimir (Reginald Owen) and their talking parrot. J. Paul even goes to the extreme measures with every breath he takes by buying the hotel for himself. Learning the princess to be extremely bored with life, J. Paul also finds the royal family not what they seem to be Others featured in the cast are: Cecilia Parker (Suzette); Akim Tamiroff (The Hotel Manager); Charles Wilson (The Yacht Captain); and Charles Arnt (Higgins).

The musical soundtrack composed by Ralph Rainger, Leo Robin and Lewis Gensler include: "June in January" (sung by Bing Crosby); "Love is Just Around the Corner" (sung by Crosby and Marian Mansfield); "June in January" (reprise by Crosby while listening to his own recording); "Italian Opera Song" (sung by Kitty Carlisle); "With Every Breath I Take" (sung by Crosby); "With Every Breath I Take" (Crosby and Carlisle); "Love is Just Around the Corner," "With Every Breath I Take" and "June in January." Of the few songs written for the screen, "June in January" gets the most and best treatment here. As much as the title, HERE IS MY HEART might have some indication of this being a medical story involving heart transplants, or a romantic comedy set on Valentine's Day, it's a wonder whether or not such a song bearing its movie title might have been considered as another song interlude that was scrapped. Considering the movie title sounding more like a song tune than having any connection with the plot is somewhat typical for its time as movie titles go.

Unseen and unavailable for decades, HERE IS MY HEART has become the least known of all the Bing Crosby/Paramount musicals from the 1930s. Sometime in the 1980s during a pledge drive from WNET, Channel 13's New York City based public television station, it was Kitty Carlisle, Crosby's co-star from this and SHE LOVES ME NOT (Paramount, 1934), who mentioned in an interview that her second film with Crosby, HERE IS MY HEART "isn't around anymore." Though it wasn't fully expressed whether the movie was officially lost with no surviving prints available or not, HERE IS MY HEART has fortunately survived and available in full glory on DVD in 2000 as part of the "Bing Crosby Collection", with MISSISSIPPI (1935) on its flip side of the disc. Though Crosby seemed to have better on-screen chemistry with Mary Carlisle than he did with the sophisticated Kitty, HERE IS MY HEART, at 76 minutes, is a worthy rediscovery and one to check off your list of Bing Crosby movie titles to see. (***1/2)