Idol of Paris * (1948, Beryl Baxter, Christine Norden, Michael Rennie, Margaretta Scott) – Classic Movie Review 11,978

Director Leslie Arliss’s 1948 British film Idol of Paris about a mid-19th century French courtesan called Theresa stars Beryl Baxter, Christine Norden, Michael Rennie, Margaretta Scott.

Leslie Arliss, director of some of the famous 1940s Gainsborough Pictures studios melodramas (The Man in Grey, The Wicked Lady) re-creates the style for this ridiculous tale of a Paris ragman’s daughter, French courtesan Teresa (Beryl Baxter), who becomes the Second Empire’s queen of love.

Teresa (Baxter) fights a whip duel with her rival Cora Pearl (Christine Norden), which the 1940s public found most unladylike. It is all so hilariously overacted and overwrought that it could be appreciated as enjoyably bad. Among the hard-pressed cast, Leslie Perrins is Count Paiva, Michael Rennie is Hertz, one of Theresa’s lovers, Miles Malleson is Offenbach, Andrew Cruickshank is Prince Nicholas, Kenneth Kent is the Emperor Napoleon and Margaretta Scott is the Empress Eugenie.

The screenplay by Norman Lee, Stafford Dickens and Harry Ostrer is based on Alfred Schirokauer’s novel Paiva, Queen of Love.

Also in the cast are Kenneth Kent, Henry Oscar, Miles Malleson, Andrew Osborn, Andrew Cruickshank, Patti Morgan, Genine Graham, Sybill Binder, Leslie Perrins, Campbell Cotts, John Penrose, April Stride, Donald Gray, June Holden, Frederick Bradshaw, and Marianne Stone.

Maurice Ostrer produces as an independent after leaving Gainsborough Pictures and setting up the company Premier Productions. He produced the film with R J Minney and Leslie Arliss, who had all collaborated on The Wicked Lady.

Filming started in August 1947 at MGM’s British studios.

The movie flopped and Maurice Ostrer quit the film business and dropped eight contract players. Leslie Arliss and Beryl Baxter’s careers did not recover.

British film executive Maurice Ostrer (1896–1975) is best known for overseeing the Gainsborough melodramas as head of production at Gainsborough Studios from 1943 to 1946. Seven of the ten films Maurice Ostrer was directly responsible for executive producer were big box-office successes, and this is one of them.

Maurice Ostrer’s films as executive producer: Love Story (1944), Madonna of the Seven Moons (1944), A Place of One’s Own (1944), They Were Sisters (1945), I’ll Be Your Sweetheart (1945), The Wicked Lady (1945), The Magic Bow (1946), Caravan (1946), The Root of All Evil (1947), and Idol of Paris (1948).

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 11,978

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