Naughty Marietta **** (1935, Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, Frank Morgan, Elsa Lanchester) – Classic Movie Review 5778

This 1935 movie of the 1910 operetta Victor Herbert (music) and Rida Johnson Young lyrics) gives Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy one of their best opportunities in the first of their series of very jolly, extremely popular movies together. It also stars Frank Morgan, Elsa Lanchester and Douglass Dumbrille.

MacDonald plays the French Princess Marie de Namours de la Bonjain (aka Marietta Franini), who is supposed to marry Spanish noble Don Carlos (Walter Kingsford) but instead runs away to New Orleans, where she falls for the lecherous Indian scout Captain Richard Warrington (Eddy).

The entertaining couple is on exuberant form and in fine voice in a number of rousing vintage songs, particularly for the evergreen ‘Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life’, but also I’m Falling in Love with Someone, Italian Street Song, and Tramp, Tramp, Tramp.

MGM throws in a quality production and cast to support them, and W S Van Dyke II directs briskly and confidently. Of course, made in 1935 and accessing an even earlier era, it is wildly dated, and very camp, but both operetta and the MacDonald-Eddy team deservedly still have lots of fans. And if Eddy really is perhaps a little bit hard to take, MacDonald has true class. Together they are old-style operetta perfection.

Also in the cast are Joseph Cawthorn, Cecilia Parker, Greta Meyer, Akim Tamiroff, Harold Huber, Edward Brophy, Mary Doran, Harry Cording, Jane Mercer, Marjorie Main and Cora Sue Collins.

It runs 105 minutes, is written by John Lee Mahin, Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, is shot in black and white by William Daniels, is produced by Hunt Stromberg, is scored by Herbert Stothart and designed by Cedric Gibbons.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5778

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