The Firefly *** (1937, Jeanette MacDonald, Allan Jones, Warren William) – Classic Movie Review 11,153

Now you don’t get many singing spies: ‘Jeanette MacDonald Is The Luminous Singing Spy!’… 

Director Robert Z Leonard’s 1937 black and white MGM musical The Firefly stars Jeanette MacDonald, who takes a rest from her regular partner Nelson Eddy to team up with Allan Jones and to play Nina Maria Azara, a lovely lady singing spy for Spain in the 1808-12 Napoleonic War, seducing French officers to get them to reveal their secrets. Jones plays Don Diego, who is actually Captain Andre, sent by France to Spain to spy on her.

Appealing Jeanette and Jones over-play engagingly in an attractively over-produced operetta, but it pulled their fans then as it will now because Jeanette is on sparky singing and dancing form, Jones has his moments, and the support roster is terrific, especially Warren William as Colonel de Rouchemont, Billy Gilbert as as Inn Keeper, Henry Daniell as General Savary, George Zucco as Secret Service Chief St. Clair and Douglass Dumbrille as Marquis de Melito.

There are several attractive songs from the 1912 Broadway show by composer Rudolf Friml and librettist Otto A Harbach, but it was Jones who had the big hit with ‘The Donkey Serenade’, developed from a Friml work for piano. Standout numbers: ‘Sympathy’, ‘Giannina Mia’, and ‘Love Is Like a Firefly’.

It uses nearly all of the music from the operetta but dumps the plot for a new storyline set in Spain during the time of the Emperor Napoleon I and adds the one new song ‘The Donkey Serenade’, a reworking by Herbert Stothart of Friml’s 1918 orchestral piece ‘Chanson’.

The original release prints were tinted with Sepia-Blue, Sepia-Orange and Sepia-Blue-Pink.

Also in the cast are Leonard Penn as Etienne DuBois, Tom Rutherford as King Ferdinard, Belle Mitchell as Lola, Corbet Morris as Duvall, Matthew Boulton as Duke of Wellington and Riley Hill (credited as Roy Harris) as Lieutenant.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,153

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