New Moon **** (1940, Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, Mary Boland) – Classic Movie Review 11,319

‘The King and Queen of Song… gloriously together again… in a red-blooded romance… of moonlight and music… love and danger… buccaneers and beauties!’

Producer-director Robert Z Leonard’s 1940 MGM musical New Moon is based on the operetta by Sigmund Romberg, and stars Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy.

Marianne de Beaumanoir (MacDonald), aboard a boat from Paris to New Orleans to see the plantation her uncle has left her, meets and falls for Charles Duc de Villiers (Eddy), posing as a bondsman, who is hired by her plantation boss.

Down old Louisiana way, MacDonald and Eddy belt out the old operetta songs by Sigmund Romberg (music) and Oscar Hammerstein II (lyrics) with great zest and relish, providing vigorous, lusty enjoyment with a long moribund art form. MGM sends in a top production and an attractive cast of reliable support actors like Mary Boland, George Zucco and H B Warner, who give succulent performances.

They sure don’t write rousing songs like ‘Lover Come Back to Me’, ‘Stouthearted Men’, ‘One Kiss’ and ‘Softly as in the Morning Sunrise’ any more. Also: ‘Paree’, ‘They Way They Do It in Paris’, ‘Shoes’, ‘One Kiss’, ‘Wanting You’, ‘Marianne’, ‘Ombra Mai Fu’ and ‘Dance Your Cares Away’.

Disappointingly, there is no colour. William H Daniels shoots in black and white.

It is a remake of a 1930 version, New Moon, with Lawrence Tibbett, Grace Moore and Adolphe Menjou.

Robert Z Leonard replaced original director W S Van Dyke after two weeks.

Also Stanley Fields, Grant Mitchell, Dick Purcell, John Miljan, Ivan F Simpson, William Tannen, Bunty Cutler, Claude King, Cecil Cunningham, George Irving, Edwin Maxwell, Paul E Burns, Rafael Storm, Winifred Harris, Robert Warwick, Trevor Bardette, Arthur Belasco, Hilary Brooke, Alden Chase, Nick Copeland, Gino Corrado, Joe Dominguez, Ralph Dunn, Sarah Edwards, Frank Elliott, Jean Fenwick, Gerald Fielding, Dorothy Granger, Buster Keaton, Victor Kendall, George Lloyd, George Magrill, Max Marx, LeRoy Mason, Forbes Murray, Ted Oliver, Ed O’Neil, Jack Perrin, Frank Remsden, Claire Rochelle, Warren Rock, Florence Shirley, Harry Strang, Ray Teal, Ray Walker, Gayne Whitman, and Joe Yule.

Inexplicably, and unpleasantly, it is one of the films included in The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (and how they got that way) by Harry Medved and Randy Lowell.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,319

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