Overlooked Movies -- Heaven Can Wait (1943)

Yes, once again I'm cheating.  Many of you will be familiar with this movie, but I'm guessing that some of you have overlooked it.  (When Warren Beatty made a movie called Heaven Can Wait some years after this one, he took the title but nothing else.  His movie is based on one called Here Comes Mr. Jordan.)

The movie looks great.  (I miss Technicolor that practically blazes off the screen.)  The opening scene is a gem as Henry van Cleve (Don Ameche) descends a long stairway down to the magnificent art deco anteroom to Hell, where he meets His Excellency (Laird Cregar) for the interview that will determine whether Henry can enter Hell itself.  He feels he's fully qualified because of the life he's led, which he begins to describe to His Excellency.

His story is mostly about women.  He's known his share, but he falls hard for Martha Strable (Gene Tierney) the instant he sees her, and there's a fine flirtation in the Brentano's Bookstore of the latter 19th century.  Martha is engaged, and though she's obviously attracted, she flees.  Later Henry is attending an engagement party for his priggish cousin Albert (Allyn Joslyn).  It's no surprise to us that Albert's intended is Martha.  Henry finds her alone and proposes that they elope right then and there, which they do.

During their marriage, Henry continues to dally with other women.  Martha leaves him once and returns to her Kansas home (and some great scenes with Marjorie Main and Eugene Pallette), where Henry and his grandfather (Charles Coburn) track her down.  So does Albert, but Henry and Martha "elope" again.

After Martha's death, Henry is still gallivanting around, although it's obvious that he was deeply in love with his wife.  In his last illness he has a dream that a boatman has arrived to take him away.   Henry tells his nurse that he wouldn't get into such a shoddy rowboat and  insisted on a beautiful ship.  And the boatman returned with it and with a beautiful woman, too.  

After hearing Henry's story, His Excellency directs Henry to the "Up" elevator and tells him that his wife and grandfather are waiting for him and that there might be a small room for him there.

This is a funny and touching movie, and it's the best role Don Ameche ever had, at least for me.  He had a nice late-career revival in movies like Cocoon and Things Change, but in this one he's just tops.  So is everybody else.  A movie like this would no doubt flop today, but I liked just about everything about it.  Watch the trailer down below, and you might find that you'd like to see the movie, too.