Texas, Brooklyn and Heaven should by all accounts been a winner with the wonderful cast of character players that inhabit this film in support of young leads Guy Madison and Diana Lynn. But for whatever reason the film both in its quiet humor and some uproarious belly laugh humor just doesn't quite gel.
Future horror film director William Castle was in charge of this small independent production released by United Artists. Madison is a writer on a Dallas newspaper who's left a legacy of $6000.00 by his grandfather so he decides to go to New York and try his hand at writing a play. Along the way he picks up hitchhiker Diana Lynn and the two go to New York. Finding Manhattan a bit pricey even then, the two wind up staying in Brooklyn. Madison in a small hotel and Lynn with an adopted 'mother' Florence Bates in an apartment which she rents from three spinster sisters, Irene Ryan, Margaret Hamilton, and Moyna McGill.
Other than those I've mentioned such outstanding players as James Dunn, Jesse White, Clem Bevans, James Burke, Michael Chekhov, William Frawley and Lionel Stander are all here. Audie Murphy makes his screen debut in the beginning of the movie as a copy boy on Madison's paper and his scene is with Madison. That alone should make any devoted old film fan want to see Texas, Brooklyn and Heaven, but for the most part these folks are subdued in their characterizations.
And like a much better film It Happened In Brooklyn from the year before there is nary a mention of the Brooklyn Dodgers or Ebbetts Field. That's almost sacrilege.
You might want to look at Texas, Brooklyn and Heaven just to see this fabulous cast. But I think you'll walk away disappointed.
