Starring Vivienne Segal, Alexander Gray, Bert Roach, and Walter Pigeon
Directed by Alan Crosland
Music by Sigmund Romberg; Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein III
Warners hadn't had much luck with film operetta before this came out. Though The Desert Song was a hit, it didn't go over that well with the critics. Song of the West went over even worse, and then there was the infamously offensive Golden Dawn. No amount of fancy songs or jungle capers could put that one over with anyone, even then. By 1930, they were getting more creative. They hired Oscar Hammerstein III and Sigmund Romberg to create music for four original operettas, three of which made it out just as musicals fell out of favor. This is the only one of those three still existing today. It didn't go over well in the US in 1930, which was still reeling from the start of the Great Depression, but is this brittle confection worth checking out over 90 years later? Let's begin in the 1870's in old Vienna at the time of the Austrian Empire, as three close friends and students sing of good times to come, and find out...
The Story: Those three friends are Otto Stiemer (Gray), wealthy Franz von Renner (Pigeon), and plump, jolly Gus Sascher (Roach). The three join the Austrian army, but only Franz proves suited to it. Otto's heart is forever with his beloved symphony. Otto falls for the lovely cobbler's daughter Elsa Hofner (Segal), but her father (Jean Hersholt) wants her to marry a man with money and discourages their romance. She eventually agrees to marry Franz after Otto gets drunk when her father tells him Elsa is more in love with money than him.
Otto and Gus move to New York with Gus' girlfriend Gretl (Louise Fazenda). Otto gets small jobs with Broadway pit orchestras, but it's not enough to put food on the table. His shrill wife Emma (Virginia Sale) demands that he get a job in Gus' pickle factory and give up music. One night at the show, he sees the now-wealthy Elsa with the Hungarian ambassador (Bela Lugosi). They go for a ride after the show, and though she admits she still loves him, she doesn't run away with him after she discovers he has a son (Freddie Burke Fredrick) he adores.
Forty years later, it's now 1930. The elderly Elsa is preparing her granddaughter Barbara (Alice Day) to marry a wealthy man, but Barbara truly loves a poor composer (Gray). Despite her grandmother's protests, she finally gets her to hear her sweetheart's music...which sounds a lot like that symphony his grandfather never completed. Elsa is forced to confront her feelings for Otto and just how much he meant to her, even after all these years.
The Song and Dance: It's too bad this one isn't better-known today. What a truly lovely film! I'm so glad the color is intact here. The frothy pastels of two-strip Technicolor add enormous charm and sparkle to the proceedings. Segal and Gray overcome some slightly stiff dialogue with gorgeous performances of some of Romberg and Hammerstein's best film music. "You Will Remember Vienna" was the hit and the promise. Fazenda and Roach have their own fun as Elsa's chatty best friend and Otto's rotund business-minded pal. Hammerstein and Romberg had control over not only the music, but every set and costume, which explains the gorgeous production and why the music bonds so well with the romantic story.
The Numbers: In fact, we open with Otto, his two friends, and Franz's father Baron von Renner (Phillpp Lothar Mayring) singing "You Will Remember Vienna" in the young men's cheap apartment. "Goodbye My Love" is our first chorus number at the Dritte Cafe. The second is "Oli Oli Oli" as the students enjoy their time with the ladies and the soldiers join them. Gus convinces Elsa to reprise "Vienna" at the Cafe. It turns into another chorus number as the other soldiers join in, including an enchanted Franz. Franz joins in with his own song to woo her, "If I Were a Gypsy." "Here We Are" is performed by Elsa, Otto, and the students and their girls at the cafe. We also hear "The Regimental March" twice, both times as a lively chorus number in and outside of the cafe.
Gretl reminds the besotted Elsa what happens "When You Have No Man to Love" while they're discussing her suitors. Otto reprises an instrumental "Vienna" on his violin at the conservatory, to Elsa's delight. He tells her "I Bring a Love Song" in the other hit from this score. "Here We Are" is heard again after the announcement of Franz and Elsa's engagement, but Otto is heartbroken as he reprises "Vienna."
Years later, we cut to New York, where Otto plays "I Bring You Bad News" for a Broadway operetta of the time. He hears Elsa singing "Vienna" again in his mind, drowning out his obnoxious and unappreciative wife. "I'm Lonely" laments the singer (June Percell) in the show Otto plays for, before he encounters Elsa again. We get a jazzier reprise of "Here Are We" for Barbara, her sweetheart, and the Biltmore Trio in 1930. "Poem Symphony" is the concert number in the finale, the variation on "Vienna" that Otto had worked on for so long. We end with another reprise of "Vienna" as Elsa's spirit walks off with the now-late Otto.
Trivia: If your neck starts to itch when you see Elsa in the box at the Broadway operetta, yes, that is Bela Lugosi playing the Hungarian Ambassador next to her, almost a year before he became a star in Dracula.
What I Don't Like: Not only is the story standard operetta melodrama, it sounds like Noel Coward's Bitter Sweet (which debuted in London the year before) and the 1937 MacDonald-Eddy version of Maytime, and can occasionally be heavy going. Roach and Fazenda are so cute when we see them, I almost wish she in particular had more to do than a few catty comments and her one comic number.
The Big Finale: If any movie could benefit from being in the public domain, it's this one. I hope this exquisite candy box of an operetta finally gains the far wider audience it so richly deserves.
Home Media: Legal problems kept it off legitimate disc and streaming...but thanks to it entering the public domain this year, it's now all over YouTube.
