Despite getting third (or fourth, depending on which source you look into) billing, ROMANCE ON THE HIGH SEAS is Doris Day's show from the moment we get the first image of her -- or her back, as she stands pensively in front of the travel agency she is about to enter. Featuring a story that wouldn't have a need to exist had there been a little communication between its catalysts -- Janis Pauge and Don DeFore --, a married couple who even before their marriage is consummated see infidelity in all the wrong places; she from insinuations coming from the none-too-subtle secretary/blond bombshell her husband has hired (Leslie Brooks, in a nice but pat performance), he from the looks Paige gives the other men around her. Paige, from a random situation that stems from the moment she overhears Day's antics in the travel agency where they've crossed paths (Day plays Georgia, a lounge singer who has a thing for imagining elaborate trips to exotic locales she can't afford or as she states, "hasn't been to/didn't go to"), is amused at this, and decided to concoct a plan to send Day into the cruise she is slated to go on, to stay home and see if her husband will in fact, cheat on her. Paige's husband, also suspicious of his wife, sends a detective (Jack Carson) to do surveillance on her, unsuspecting that Day is impersonating Paige (rather badly, but what would he know? We do, and it's a great, breezy delight to see Day and Carson, who from here on remain on screen, play against each other, neither aware of the other's identity. An extremely silly comedy of errors, with cracking lines basically handed on a silver platter to Paige (who churns them out with real verve), also marking Doris Day's first appearance, and she basically saves this kind-of unmemorable feature from an otherwise different fate (of course, keeping in mind that director Michael Curtiz had brought Bette Davis and Joan Crawford into delivering fantastic performances in THE PRIVATE LIVES OF ELIZABETH AND ESSEX and MILDRED PIERCE).
Review of Romance on the High Seas
