Louisiana Purchase **** (1941, Bob Hope, Vera Zorina, Victor Moore) – Classic Movie Review 10,688

‘It’s your greatest screen show with a De Sylva lining!’

Bob Hope is on top form as Jim Taylor, a dupe of his machinating bosses (Frank Albertson, Donald MacBride) at the Louisiana Purchase Company, in director Irving Cummings’s tasty 1941 musical comedy of political jiggery-pokery down South. Louisiana Purchase is Hope’s first feature film in Technicolor.

Based on a sharp, satirical 1940 hit Broadway musical by Irving Berlin (score) and Morrie Ryskind (play), with its political messages somewhat toned down in the screenplay by Jerome Chodorov and Joseph Fields (screen story by Buddy G DeSylva), this is a cue for plenty of thigh slapping and foot tapping, a handsome production shot by cinematographers Harry Hallenberger and Ray Rennahan in Technicolor, and a lively Irving Berlin score. The film satirises the US Democratic Party and political corruption.

It was nominated for two Oscars: Best Cinematography, Color (Harry Hallenberger and Ray Rennahan) and Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Color (Raoul Pene Du Bois and Stephen Seymour.

Also in the cast are Vera Zorina, Victor Moore, Irène Bordoni, Dona Drake (also in  1942’s Road to Morocco), Raymond Walburn, Maxie Rosenbloom, Frank Albertson, Phyllis Ruth, Donald MacBride, Andrew Tombes, Robert Warwick, Charles La Torre, Charles Laskey, Emory Parnell, Iris Meredith, Catherine Craig, Karin Booth, Barbara Britton, Edgar Dearing, Margaret Hayes, Frances Gifford, Donald Kerr, Sam McDaniel, Jack Norton, Dave Willock and Tom Patricola.

Robert Emmett Dolan is musical director as for the stage play.

It became Paramount Pictures’ most successful release of 1941, followed by another Hope film, Caught in the Draft.

William Gaxton played Jim Taylor on stage, but Vera Zorina, Victor Moore and Irène Bordoni reprise their stage roles.

The title is lost to the pages of history, referring to the State of Louisiana offering to drop Huey Long’s controversial Share Our Wealth programme and support President Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal. Roosevelt promised money for public works in Louisiana in a deal referred to as the second Louisiana Purchase.

The Bob Hope Thanks for the Memories collection featuring six Hope films made in the 1930s and 1940s was released by Universal Studios Home Entertainment on 8 June 2010, [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]. Three of the films, Thanks for the Memory (1938), The Cat and the Canary (1939), and Nothing but the Truth were making their DVD debuts. Also included are The Ghost Breakers, Road to Morocco and The Paleface.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,688

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com