1941’s Here Comes Mr. Jordan tells the story of Joe Pendelton (Robert Montgomery).

Joe’s a boxer, an honest and kind-hearted guy who is in training for the big title fight.  Despite the concerns of his trainer, Max (James Gleason), Joe decides to take his own private airplane out for a flight.  A freak accident causes the plane to go into a nosedive and Joe suddenly finds himself standing amongst the clouds with a bunch of other people who are waiting for their chance to enter Heaven.

7013 (Edward Everett Horton), an angel, explains that he took Joe’s soul up to heaven when he saw that the plane was about to crash.  Joe is not happy about this.  He wants his title fight!  7013’s superior, Mr. Jordan (Claude Rains), checks his records and discovers that a mistake has been made.  Joe was supposed to live until 1991 and he was also supposed to win the boxing championship.  Unfortunately, Max has had Joe’s body cremated.  Mr. Jordan decides to put Joe’s soul into the body of someone else who is scheduled to die.  Joe asks to be put in the body of an athlete so that he can pursue his boxing career.

Instead, Joe ends up in the body of a middle-aged banker named Bruce Farnsworth.  Farnsworth has been poisoned by his wife (Rita Johnson) and her lover (John Emery).  At first, Joe refuses to become Farnsworth but when he sees his murderers taunting Bette (Evelyn Keyes), whose father was defrauded by Farnsworth, Joe changes his mind.  His murderers are shocked when Farnsworth turns out to be alive.  Bette is shocked when the previously cold Farnsworth helps her get back the money that her father lost.  And Max is shocked when Farnsworth calls him to the mansion and explains that he’s really Joe Pendleton.  Only with Joe/Farnsworth plays the saxophone badly does Max believe what Joe says.  Joe asks Max to train him for the boxing match that he was scheduled to fight while alive.  Max agrees but Mr. Jordan warns Joe that, if he’s going to fulfill his destiny and become champ, it’s not going to be as Bruce Farnsworth, regardless of the fact that Joe/Farnsworth and Bette have now fallen in love.

A romantic comedy that is blessed with two likable performances from Robert Montgomery and Evelyn Keyes and a great one from Claude Rains, Here Comes Mr. Jordan was nominated for Best Picture of 1941.  It lost to How Green Was My Valley.  While Here Comes Mr. Jordan really can’t compare to some of the other films that lost (amongst the other nominees were Citizen Kane and The Maltese Falcon), it’s still a wonderfully charming film that holds up well today.  Everyone should be as lucky as to have a guardian who is as charming and urbane as Claude Rains is as Mr. Jordan.

In 1978, Here Comes Mr. Jordan was remade by Warren Beatty, who named his version of the story Heaven Can Wait.  That version of the story was also nominated for Best Picture, though it lost to The Deer Hunter.