La femme en cage

In the old days, studios would bring opera stars into movies. Some were successful - Nelson Eddy, Jeanette McDonald, Grace Moore, Lawrence Tibbett, Lauritz Melchior, Tony Martin, Mario Lanza and others. A few made a stab at it but weren't quite right. Lily Pons is one of those.

When Pons was in her sixties, I was a young student studying voice and for some reason my mother was always throwing her in my face. I have no idea why - she would occasionally show up at a gala and there's no way she had any high notes at that age - your cords thicken - so I have no idea what she was doing.

Anyway, she was very famous. For some reason, again in the old days, opera houses didn't mind that these singers had voices the size of a mosquito. Unreal.

Pons stars here in "Hitting a New High" from 1937. She plays Suzette, who sings with her boyfriend's (John Howard) band, but her heart is in opera, and she wants an audition with the great opera impresario Mr. Mazzini (Eduardo Cianelli) desperately. When she meets a big patron's assistant Corny (Jack Oakie), she tells him that she will do anything to get in to see Mr. Mazzini.

Corny arranges for his boss Lucius Blynn (Edward Everett Horton) to "discover" Suzette in the jungle and bring her back to New York. When he first sees her, she is singing to the birds and can't speak English. They call her the "Bird Girl."

Blynn brings her back to New York, fixes her up with a vocal coach, and then tries to convince Mazzini to hear her. Suzette has gotten a lot of publicity as the Bird Girl but her boyfriend Jimmy insists that she sing with his band in the evening. One night, Mazzini hears her and thinks he's made a great discovery.

The movie was amusing, thanks to Eric Blore as a band member who tries to get money from Blynn by saying he's Bird Girl's long lost father, Edward Everett Horton, and Jack Oakie.

Pons sings Air du Rossignol, Je suis Titania, and the Mad Scene from Lucia. Pons was a smart woman and very fashionable; she was pretty and petite. Her signature role was Lakme, which is not done much today.

Pons was a true coloratura, the highest soprano voice, and stuck with those roles. She did not have much of a middle voice; real coloraturas don't. She did have an excellent, fast coloratura technique; some of her high notes were better than others. She could be a very exciting singer.

Like many female singers from that era, her voice was small. But at least she stuck to her repertoire - I mean, Jeanette MacDonald sang Tosca which is ridiculous. She retired in 1973 - I have no idea what she sang at that point.

This film was a major flop, and Pons' last that wasn't a "concert film." Well, my mother always liked her.

If we substituted similar-looking Eleanor Powell for Lily Pons, this could be an Astaire movie, the look and cast are so familiar. I would say, though, you really have to like opera to sit through so much of it in quite static staging in this movie. The way she used her voice in Africa to sound like a bird was for me the best part and quite remarkable as was the bird on her finger to whom she sang. (The animal wranglers had some real challenges in this production and did an excellent job.)

I was glad to hear the famous opera star but her speaking voice was unpleasant and her persona uninteresting. And it had one of those endings that was so boring I felt they needed a certain number of minutes and then concluded the movie. So on the whole I'd say it's one to watch if you have time to kill and aren't too choosy. I'm giving this an extra star for the music and animals--the parrot in the final scene was far more interesting than what happened to the characters. It isn't particularly witty or engaging or entertaining or...anything. Whatever originality it had vanished after the African adventure. It's just kind of there and most if it might be best enjoyed by using it as background music while you did something else.

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.

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.

Hitting A New High was the last of 3 films that Lily Pons did under her contract with RKO. As that brief vogue for opera sopranos ended as it began in mid 30s Hollywood, RKO and Pons parted company. She would make guest appearances however in other films in the future, most notably Carnegie Hall.

In this one the score is a mixture of operatic material with some original score music written by Jimmy McHugh and Harold Adamson. One of the songs I Hit A New High had some success on the pop charts.

I'm not sure what Lily Pons must have thought of this film. In it she's required to go to Africa as part of an elaborate con game to fool millionaire Edward Everett Horton into thinking he's captured a bird girl who has something like a five octave range. Then it becomes a struggle between Horton and opera impresario Eduardo Ciannelli for her musical services. Jack Oakie is press agent con man who fools Horton who really is quite a dunce in this film.

It all gets more silly than funny. Hitting A New High did get an Oscar nomination for music scoring.

I'm sure that Pons though she does display a bit of a flair for comedy here was grateful her Hollywood contract was at an end.