High Society

One of the 25 films named to the 2026 National Film Registry for its cultural, historic or aesthetic importance to film history!

Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly and Frank Sinatra romp elegantly through the scenic, moneyed grounds and waters of outwardly elitist Newport, Rhode Island, in this witty musical version of Philip Barry’s The Philadelphia Story. Legendary jazz artist Louis Armstrong appears as himself, playing his trumpet and narrating in prose and song the peccadillos of his songwriter friend C.K. Dexter Haven (Crosby), C.K.’s beautiful perfectionist ex-wife Tracy Samantha Lord (Kelly, in her final film role), and her stuffy fiancé George Kittredge (John Lund). Sinatra and wise-cracking Celeste Holm are a scandal sheet reporter and photographer who arrive to cover the wedding and complicate the tangled romances. Armstrong and his composer buddy conspire musically and by other devious means to stop Tracy’s marriage. Dexter wants her back, but she takes off with the magazine writer — all of which gives everybody wonderful excuses to break into the incomparable songs of Cole Porter, including “You’re Sensational,” “True Love,” and “Well, Did You Evah!”  MGM pulled out all the stops to make High Society a must-see screen event back in 1956, even arranging to license Paramount’s magnificent widescreen process VistaVision, to ensure the film would be something truly special. (Dir. by Charles Walters, 1956, USA, 111 mins., Not Rated)