ROMANCE ON THE HIGH SEAS

US, 1948, 99 minutes, Colour.
Jack Carson, Janis Paige, Don Defore, Doris Day, Oscar Levant, S. Z. Sakall, Eric Blore, Franklin Pangborn, Fortunio Bonanova.
Directed by Michael Curtiz.

Romance on the High Seas is a pleasant lightweight Warner Bros musical of the late '40s - the film which introduced Doris Day to the screen (her career was echoed in a film soon after, also directed by Michael Curtiz, My Dream is Yours). She makes the transition from radio star to screen star delightfully and with some verve which she continued during the '50s and into more dramatic roles in the '60s. The screenplay was written by Julius J. and Philip G. Epstein (Casablanca) with the help of Billy Wilder collaborator I.A.L. Diamond. The songs, including 'It's Magic', come from Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn. Direction is by action director Michael Curtiz who moved into popular comedies and musicals in the late 1940s. Doris' leading man is Jack Carson (also in Starlift and My Dream is Yours). She has an excellent supporting cast with Janis Paige and Don Defore as a suspicious married couple, Oscar Levant playing the piano, Eric Blore and Franklin Pangborn doing their brief comedy-type roles as well as S. Z. Sakall. The story is about suspicions in marriage of an executive and his wife with S. Z. Sakall as a benign uncle. Doris goes as the wife on a trip and achieves fame in singing. Jack Carson is a private detective who falls in love with her. There are pleasant songs and comic touches. A pleasing example of the Warner Bros. musical comedy style - repeated so often in the late '40s and early '50s with Doris and leading men like Gordon Macrae, Ray Bolger.