Product Details

• Actors: Robert Montgomery, Claude Rains, Evelyn Keyes, Rita Johnson, Edward Everett Horton
• Directors: Alexander Hall
• Writers: Harry Segall, Seton I. Miller, Sidney Buchman
• Producers: Everett Riskin
• Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD, Full Screen, Subtitled, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono), French (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono)
• Subtitles: English, Portuguese, Japanese
• Region: Region 1 encoding (US and Canada only)
  PLEASE NOTE: Some Region 1 DVDs may contain Regional Coding Enhancement (RCE). Some, but not all, of our international customers have had problems playing these enhanced discs on what are called "region-free" DVD players. For more information on RCE, click here.
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: Unrated
• Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
• DVD Release Date: February 6, 2007
• Run Time: 94 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000KX0IOU
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #49,856 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Here Comes Mr. Jordan" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

HERE COMES MR. JORDAN - DVD Movie

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Still "In the Pink" Sixty Years On, October 25, 2003

By 

Robert Moore (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Here Comes Mr Jordan '93 [VHS] (VHS Tape)

It is a shame that this delightful comedy isn't better known today. Part of the reason might lie in the fact that the film's star Robert Montgomery (father of Elizabeth Montgomery of BEWITCHED), after a stint in the military in WW II, did very little acting following the war. Therefore, he doesn't have many later films to draw attention to his career as a whole. Also, after the war he because deeply involved in political matters, and was one of Hollywood's more avid Communist hunters. For whatever reason, the film does not today have the reputation it deserves.

There have been two remakes of this film, so some explanation is in order. HERE COMES MR. JORDAN was a film version of a play by Harry Segal titled HEAVEN CAN WAIT. There was a 1944 film by Ernst Lubitsch called HEAVEN CAN WAIT starring Don Ameche, but that movie had nothing in common with HERE COMES MR. JORDAN (apart from being an equally superb comedy). In 1978, Warren Beatty wanted to remake HERE COMES MR. JORDAN using the original play's title with Muhammad Ali in the lead role, but Ali's schedule made this impossible, so he cast himself in the lead and transformed the central character into a football quarterback. Not as good as the original film, this actually wasn't a bad movie at all. In 2001, the film was remade again as DOWN TO EARTH, starring Chris Rock. I often love Chris Rock, but this film is not merely one of the low points of his career: it is a miserable film on every level, with the dreadful decision to make our hero a comic rather than an athlete.

Because of the remakes, the plot is familiar: Joe Pendleton, a boxer with a penchant for playing the saxophone and a shot at the title, is accidentally taken to heaven fifty years too early by an overzealous angel who wrongly assumes that he is about to die. The angel, Messenger 7013 (played marvelously by the inimitable Edward Everett Horton), brings Joe to his supervisor, Mr. Jordan (played magnificently by the ultra-suave and civilized Claude Rains). It is decided to provide Joe with a new body, where upon he tries in his new millionaire's body to get back into shape ("in the pink") in order to get a new shot at the championship. The only trouble is that the millionaire's wife and lover want to kill him so they can get his money and each other. Rounding out a great cast is Evelyn Keyes as the girlfriend of Joe (and the love interest of his subsequent incarnations) and James Gleason, Joe's trainer, who nearly steals ever scene he is in. The scene where Joe, in his new body, hires Gleason and then tries to convince him of his real identity, is just hysterical.

More people need to see this film. It remains one of the finer comedies made immediately before the onset of WW II, and is vastly better than the two films based upon it. It deserves far more attention than it has, in recent years, received.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Joe Pendelton says, Evelyn Keyes GOOD... Rita Johnson BAD!, December 19, 2006

By 

Mikey (Gold River) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Here Comes Mr. Jordan (DVD)

(January 1, 2007)

A WONDERFUL, WONDERFUL MOTION PICTURE...

Very happy to see that this terrific film will finally be struck to DVD.

But please, Sony, correct the cover art faux pas that has plagued this great film since its VHS release.

The actress pictured next to Robert Montgomery should be Evelyn Keyes, but is NOT!

Instead, actress Rita Johnson is pictured. Rita Johnson played the part of the murdering, adulteress wife of Bruce Farnsworth (Montgomery) in the flim. :-\

This art was obviously created or selected by someone who has never viewed this fine film--or the very beautiful Evelyn Keyes.

Please, Sony, correct this miscue before this DVD's February release date.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Intensely romantic fantasy, outstanding performances., January 14, 2007

By 

R. Christenson "SpaceComics.com" (Pine, CO USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Here Comes Mr. Jordan (DVD)

Here Come's Mr. Jordan is an intensely romantic fantasy displaying the most extreme example of enduring love that spans human identities, and one of the first and best films of it's kind. It's kind includes Angel on My Shoulder, The Bishop's Wife, That's The Spirit, A Guy Named Joe, and so forth. They don't make movies like these anymore; the closest I've seen recently is The Dust Factory.
Robert Montgomery (They Were Expendable, Lady In The Lake) plays prize fighter Joe Pendleton, who's hobbies include playing the saxaphone and flying. James Gleason (The Bishop's Wife, Suddenly) plays Joe's manager Max Corkle, the only human who knows what really happened. Joe apparently died when his plane dived into the earth. But the angel of death responsible for New Jersey - that is, the one who collects souls from the state, played here by Edward Everett Horton (Top Hat, Pocketful of Miracles) - separated Joe's soul and body before the plane crashed, and Joe maintains he would have pulled it out of the dive.
Mr. Jordan is one of the roles Claudes Rains (The Invisible Man, King's Row) was born to play, the head angel in charge of the death department. When he takes up the case Jordan discovers Joe was meant to win the championship. But Joe's body has been cremated by now. It seems the only solution is to insert Joe's soul into another suitable body - any one about to be vacated that could conceivably become the boxing champion. It turns out not so easy to find an appropriate candidate, but when they're considering millionaire Farnsworth, Joe's immediately enamored with a young lady (Evelyn Keyes) attempting to see Farnsworth and appeal to him on her father's behalf. She claims Farnsworth framed her father, now in prison. But Farnsworth is upstairs being murdered by his wife and secretary as Joe and Jordan discuss the matter. Joe agrees to occupy Farnsworh's body to help the girl, and does, and they fall in love, genuine spiritual eternal love. But he can't use Farnsworth's body to fight - it's destined to die, he's destined to win. If forced to leave and use yet a third body, will she still love him, even know him? He tries to prepare her with one of the most well-delivered romantic monologues in the movies, and a neat plot twist makes things come out right.
Montgomery proves his acting talents here, the spirit showing through the flesh, and the final scene is not to be described in words; see it. The rest of the cast, especially Horton, Gleason, and Donald MacBride, make the movie work as a comedy as well as romantic drama. The film was remade a few decades later as Heaven Can Wait with Warren Beatty, James Mason, Jack Warden, Buck Henry, and Charles Grodin, with some additional humor - especially Grodin's role - but otherwise no better than the original. Both are fine casts, but Montgomery and Rains just can't be beat.