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Tracy Lord, a Rhode Island heiress, is on the eve of her second marriage when her ex-husband, an unemployed millionaire named C. K. Dexter-Haven, returns to his house in Newport. His purpose is to win Tracy back, and he has several allies in the Lord family. At the same time, Tracy is blackmailed into allowing two magazine reporters, Mike Connor and Liz Imbrie, to cover her wedding to George Kittredge, a staid and ambitious businessman. During the day or two before the wedding, Tracy is forced into making some discoveries about her own character when both Dexter and her father accuse her of being harsh, arrogant and unforgiving. Overcoming his prejudices against the idle rich, Mike finds himself increasingly attracted by Tracy. On the night before the wedding, they are involved together in a drunken escapade. Shocked by his fiancée's behaviour, Kittredge breaks off the engagement. But Tracy now realises that it is Dexter whom she really loves, and Mike returns to the faithful Liz Imbrie.

The Philadelphia Story, made by George Cukor in 1941 with Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant and James Stewart, was an exceptionally enjoyable comedy of manners. Anyone unacquainted with the original would scarcely deduce this from High Society. which adds colour, VistaVision, a surprisingly weary Cole Porter score and Louis Armstrong's band, shifts the locale from Philadelphia to Rhode Island, and quite misses the earlier film's sophisticated charm. A good deal of the original script has in fact been retained, but the dialogue needs comedy playing much more pointed than the present team can manage. Grace Kelly gives a slightly strained performance, with some unsuccessful sorties into the Hepburn territory; Bing Crosby is characteristically casual and Frank Sinatra characteristically brash. Among the supporting players, only Celeste Holm and Louis Calhern really gauge the tone of the material. Where the dialogue has been altered, it appears to have been with the deliberate aim of reducing its sophistication and broadening its appeal - and in this case popularisation has meant vulgarisation. The plot manoeuvres look slightly shabby in their new context, and the introduction of Louis Armstrong to provide a sort of musical running commentary on the action merely overloads the film. The best of the numbers, sung at a party by Crosby and Sinatra, is "Did'ja Ever": nothing in the score specially written by Cole Porter for the film has the lift of this pre-war number.

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