High, Wide and Handsome

High, Wide and Handsome (1937)

SINGING ADVENTURE!

The setting is a small town in 1870s Pennsylvania. Sally Waterson and her father have stopped in town with their traveling medicine show, but when their wagon catches fire, they find themselves stranded. They're taken in by Mrs. Cortlandt and her grandson, Peter, who is trying to set up a pipeline that will supply oil throughout the state. Sally and Peter soon fall in love and marry. Neither their marriage nor Peter's pipe dreams flow too smoothly.

Date of release
1937-07-21
TMDB
6.2 / 10 (5)
Runtime
1h 44m
Genres
Music, Western
Director
Rouben Mamoulian

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Budget: $1.9M

High, Wide and Handsome is a 1937 American musical Western film starring Irene Dunne, Randolph Scott, Alan Hale Sr., Charles Bickford and Dorothy Lamour. The film was directed by Rouben Mamoulian and written by Oscar Hammerstein II and George O'Neil, with lyrics by Hammerstein and music by Jerome Kern. It was released by Paramount Pictures.

Production

Paramount Pictures and producer Arthur Hornblow, Jr. conceived High, Wide and Handsome as a "big-budget" musical that would deliver "prestige entertainment" supported by a talented cast and crew.

High, Wide and Handsome was filmed on location in Chino, California. Principal filming began in early January 1937 and finished in late April that year, exceeding its 10-week shooting schedule.

The production was particularly challenging, both physically and operationally, due to "torrential rains, mudslides [and] equipment malfunctions." Tragically, a catastrophic accident during filming injured over a dozen of the cast and crew, some seriously.

With the assistance of Kern and Hammerstein, director Rouben Mamoulian attempted to firmly integrate the songs into the plot of the film to advance the storyline.

High, Wide and Handsome, budgeted at about $1.3 million, had a final cost of $1.8 million.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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