Nas Asas da Fama

HITTING A NEW HIGH puts the spotlight on LILY PONS and her coloratura soprano vocal range, but unfortunately has a plot that is beyond silly. For publicity purposes, JACK OAKIE and EDWARD EVERETT HORTON decide to perpetuate the idea that she was discovered in the African jungle, a bird girl who happens to have a gorgeous singing voice. Horton puts her under the tutelage of a voice teacher so that he can put her on display as his own singing discovery. From that point on, the plot is saddled with even more improbabilities until finally everyone is happy that Miss Pons has been anyone's discovery, so impressive is her singing voice.

Indeed, RKO made sure that she gets to sing several arias (superbly), trilling her way through difficult arias with great ease and charm. But she was never the most photogenic of singers and no amount of close-ups are able to disguise the fact that she is not your typical Hollywood glamor girl. However, despite the banality of the plot, she seems a good sport to play the "bird girl" with such gusto.

For plot purposes, most of the spotlight is on JACK OAKIE, EDWARD EVERETT HORTON and ERIC BLORE--which turns out to be a good thing when it comes to comic relief. Horton and Blore are particularly effective in their zany roles, both capable of injecting some good laughs into the script.

Summing up: Pleasant trifle does indicate that Miss Pons had one of the best soprano voices at the Met (for some thirty years), even if she was not quite star quality on the screen.

Press agent Corny Davis (Jack Oakie) has an issue with a lion shoot. He's taking media mogul Lucius B. Blynn on an African big game hunt. Jazz singer Suzette (Lily Pons) is trying to be an opera singer. Corny has a crazy idea to make her Oogahunga, the legendary Bird-Lady from the African jungle.

The overall premise is bonkers. Lily Pons is an European opera singer with passable acting skills. This starts with the crazy lion scene. That's a real lion. The premise is a mess, but it's a fun mess for the most part. I really wanted her to go full out with all the birds in the world. The fun start and the crazy premise eventually runs out of steam. It needs more jokes and better comedy.

This is an often very funny movie, with something of a hole in the middle of it.

Lily Pons, though a fine singer and an attractive woman - who didn't photograph well, at least in this picture - did not have the charisma to carry off a movie. If you compare her to Jeannette MacDonald or Grace Moore, her equivalents at MGM and Columbia, you will see what I mean. She isn't helped by the fact that she is given an unsympathetic role. Rather than another replay of the singer who dreams of singing opera and disdains popular music, this movie would have been much better if she had been presented as a singer who wanted to do both, and fight against the prejudice that held that opera singers shouldn't do popular music. The best numbers in this movie are when she does pop music - especially "Hitting a new high" - so her disdain for them doesn't make her attractive to the audience. The staging of the Mad Scene from Lucia di Lammermoor is downright bad, and would have confirmed opera-haters' views of why opera wasn't interesting. She just walks around with her arms extended gazing up at the sky. You would have NO idea what the number, a very dramatic one, is actually about from watching her performance of it in this movie.

What makes this a fun movie is the character parts - Jack Oakie, Edward Everett Horton, and Eric Blore - who are given really first-class material and a LOT of screen time, with which they do a really first-class job. Oakie and Horton come off as a quirky couple, with Horton as the straight man and Oakie as the guy with all the jokes. With many 1930s musicals you want to delete the dialogue scenes and just focus on the musical numbers. Here, frankly, it would be tempting to eliminate most of the musical numbers and the romantic scenes (which are few) and focus on the scenes with Oakie, Horton, and Blore.

Though I would save the scene in "Africa" where Pons appears in a lagoon singing to exotic birds. It's the most charming number in the movie, and nicely done.

With the popularity of musical films during the golden era of Hollywood, the major studios dabbled some with bringing prominent opera stars of the stage to the general public. "Hitting a New High" is the third film by RKO to star French-born Lily Pons. She was a leading soprano with the Metropolitan Opera in New York, from 1931 to 1960. Besides opera, Pons was a successful concert singer. She was known especially for her exceptional ability to reach the super high notes - above high C which all good sopranos could sing. Pons regularly hit D above high C and was the only classical singer of her time who could sing F above high C.

Some of the musicals with opera singers did well, but many did not. The most popular opera singers with mostly successful films were Kathryn Grayson, Jeanette MacDonald, Jane Powell and Deanna Durbin. While just a few musicals by the opera stars were biographical, most were comedies and romance. One of the most successful overall was Jeanette MacDonald. She and Nelson Eddy were the most enduring couples in musicals, making eight films together. But she made 20 plus more films with various leading men of the day.

This film turned out to be a flop, and it was the last musical Pons made, with just one more small part in a later film. The problem with "Hitting a New High" is that it dwelled on Pons's coloratura talent - lots of vibrato and movement within long-held and repeated high notes that she just sang solo. She appeared to be warbling like birds that were in scenes with her. She only sings parts of two operatic songs in this film, and her frequent super high and chirping type of notes soon become tiring - even irritating. Still, the movie might have worked if it had a better screenplay to milk the great comedy talent assembled for the film.

With Jack Oakie, Eric Blore, E. E. Horton and Luis Alberni, this film should have caused lots of laughter. But the script hardly used any of their talents. It had a wacky plot of a singer being discovered in the jungle. That could have been developed with much humor, but it wasn't. Horton's frequent pompous and flummoxed high society character was overdone, with nary a humorous scene or funny line. He soon became irritating. Alberni wasn't used for comedy at all, and Jack Oakie's male lead was so weak in humor as to be dull. Eric Blore had one lively scene toward the end. Had the writers exploited the idea more that he was the father of the long-lost bird girl raised in the jungle, there could have been some great comedy. But RKO let that chance slip through its fingers.

As a result, this is a quite dull film that moves very slowly. It's wroth viewing for those who like music, to see and hear Pons reach those super high notes. Otherwise, it has just the small bit of humor added mostly by Blore. Most modern audiences would probably give up and quit watching this film before halfway through. I like musicals, and great comedies, so I stuck to the end.

What can one say about a picture where Lily Pons sits up a tree making bird noises while Edward Everett Horton tries to get her down by saying "Pretty Polly"? Well, it certainly didn't appeal to audiences back in 1937, because sources indicate that this picture proved a financial bust and put an end to RKO's attempts to turn Miss Pons into a movie star. I enjoyed it though, and maybe some of the bizarre humour in "Hitting a New High" might go down better today. Of course the plot machinations are contrived and weak, but is there anyone who really watches this kind of movie for the plot? Raoul Walsh keeps things moving along at a brisk clip, and Lily Pons, while not the most charismatic of film personalities, is reasonably appealing as Ooga Hunga the "bird girl". She also gives a pretty unforgettable rendition of Saint-Saens La Rossignol during the proceedings as well, but purists may not approve. However, the film is really stolen by Edward Everett Horton and Eric Blore, a not uncommon occurrence at RKO around this time, and for me they give this film most of the entertainment value it has today.