Rose Marie

MGM, 1936
Starring Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, George Regas, and James Stewart
Directed by W.S Van Dyke
Music by Rudolf Frimil; Lyrics by Herbert Stothart

From 1935 to 1942, movie singer and comedienne Jeanette MacDonald and concert singer Nelson Eddy starred in eight operettas for MGM that ran the gamut from melodrama to romantic comedy to western. This was their second movie together, and the one they're probably most associated with today. An operetta is basically a musical with opera-inflected numbers that are more challenging and opera-like, but with lighter stories and more dialogue. That's certainly true of this story of a Canadian Mountie who searches for an escaped convict, but ends up falling in love with his sister. Let's head north to Montreal to find out if this adventure-melodrama is worthy of that "Indian Love Call"...

The Story: Opera diva Marie Del Fleur (MacDonald) drops all her appointments after half-breed native Boniface (Regas) comes to her and tells her that her beloved brother Jack (Stewart), a criminal who has escaped prison, has killed a Mountie and is currently in a cabin in the Canadian wilderness. Marie follows Boniface to a small outpost in northern Canada. There, he steals her money and abandons her, forcing her to look for work. She's too high-toned to earn money as a singer in a low-down bar, but she does attract the attention of Sergeant Bruce (Eddy), the Mountie in charge of finding her brother. Desperate to find Jack (and ignore her growing attraction to Bruce), she lies about not knowing Boniface and goes off with the native when she finds him again. Bruce is hot on her trail, hoping that she'll lead him to his man...but he finds that his duty conflicts with his heart when he realizes how much they've fallen in love.

The Song and Dance: This is MacDonald and Eddy's show all the way. We do get a little bit of a very young James Stewart as Jack, an even younger David Niven as Marie's fiancee Teddy, and Reginald Owen as her flustered manager Myerson, but it's mainly about the stars. There's some nice black-and-white cinematography too, both during the opera sequences and in sun-dappled outside shots.

Favorite Number: "Indian Love Call" is by far the most famous song from this film, and it lives up to its notoriety. The lyrics may be melodramatic and a bit dated, but the music is lush, and MacDonald and Eddy perform it beautifully. The "Rose Marie" canoe sequence is too funny; the reprise when Bruce is attempting to sing under Marie's window may be even better. There's a nice sequence early-on when Marie is entertaining the Premier of Quebec with "Pardon Me, Madame," and everyone gets so into it, the entire hotel and everyone strolling outside ends up singing along. The only chorus number outside of the opera is the amazing (if stereotypical) "Totem Tom Tom" routine at the Native festival.

Trivia: This is the second of three movie versions of the hit 1924 Broadway operetta. A silent film from 1928 starring Joan Crawford that's now lost and a 1954 spectacular with Howard Keel apparently stuck closer to the original show.

While that is the real outdoors Marie and Bruce travel through, they're not in Canada. The movie was actually filmed at Lake Tahoe, between California and Nevada.

MacDonald and Eddy would go on to make eight films together at MGM in the 30's and early 40's, six of them after this one.

What I Don't Like: I do wish Marie had been a little more sensible than to run off with a menacing man she didn't know...and she certainly should have kept her cash with her at all times, no matter how worried she was about her brother.

Neither MacDonald nor Eddy were up to the heavier dramatics later in the film. Stewart's miscast as the runaway criminal, and he still does better than they do. MacDonald is more at home with her comic bits, especially while stranded at the outpost or dealing with Bruce's teasing in the backwoods. Eddy likewise is stiff with everything but some of the lighter moments and his musical numbers.

Frankly, the story is a load of melodrama that collapses completely in a ridiculous and anti-climatic ending. This is another one where I wish they'd kept the original plot with the backwoods girl in love with a trapper who is wrongly pursued by Mounties and more of the original music. Once again, everything but songs for the leads and a chorus routine was deleted. I suspect Marie was an opera singer only because MacDonald badly wanted to sing real opera (and because she was too old at that point to play a backwoods tomboy).

The Big Finale: I know a lot of people consider this to be one of their best films, but "Indian Love Call" aside, the story is too dull to be a favorite of mine. Fans of theirs will definitely want it; casual viewers may be better off starting with Naughty Marietta or Maytime before coming here.

Home Media: As with all the MacDonald-Eddy movies, this one is currently only available via the Warner Archives DVD-on-demand service. (At the very least, while those movies can be pricey, the DVDs are a lot cheaper than they used to be when the Archives first debuted.)

DVD