Here Comes Mr Jordan (1941)

A wonderfully cute film. Joe Pendelton (Robert Montgomery) is a boxer training for the biggest fight of his career. As he is flying to New York for the big event his plane begins to go down. When he comes to he is heading toward heaven with his messenger. The only problem is that the messenger took him from the plane before it hit the ground and he was not meant to die then. In fact, he had another 50 years to live. His case is then taken over by the mysterious man in charge, Mr Jordan (Claude Rains). He tries to make it back to his body but his manager, Max (James Gleason), has had him cremated. Then Mr. Jordan has no choice but to find another body for Joe. He decides to place him in the body of a millionaire playboy, Farnsworth, who is being murdered by his wife, Julia (Rita Johnson), and her boyfriend (and Farnsworth's assistant) Tony Abbott (John Emery). There he meets a young woman, Bette Logan (Evelyn Keyes), and they begin to fall in love. However, Joe wants to get back in the ring and have his big shot at the title. How will Mr Jordan be able to get Joe to meet his destiny?

This was a fun and cute movie. Robert Montgomery (father of Bewitched star Elizabeth Montgomery) was wonderfully fun as the boxer Joe. Claude Rains was his usual distinguished self as the mysterious Mr Jordan. Evelyn Keyes also shined as the beautiful Bette. There was a sequel made in 1947 called Down to Earth that starred Rita Hayworth. There were also two remakes of this film. Heaven Can Wait in 1978 with Warren Beatty and Down to Earth in 2001 starring Chris Rock. However, for classic movie fans the original is worth checking out.