(85 min) Released 1936-05-12
Director: Josef von Sternberg
Stars: Franchot Tone, Grace Moore, Walter Connolly.
Albertina Rasch ... ballet
Genres: Comedy | Musical | Romance
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0027847/
Watched online.
Watched out of sequence. Should have been Captain January, Let's Sing Again, this movie, Show Boat.
Film debut of Gwen Verdon (b. 1925; Specialty Ballerina, uncredited). I did not spot her. The ballerinas were many, and no one did a solo, and no one looked to be only 11 y.o. But the print was blurry, so better luck to another try. The ballet rehearsal was the only dancing in the film.
This is a pleasant bit of fluff. Franchot Tone (b. 1905; first film in '32; maybe 2 dozen films before this; 66 total films, last in '68, the year he died of cancer.) is young and charming. Grace Moore (b. 1898; 6th of 9 films from '30 to '39; d. '47, plane crash in Denmark) is in good voice and sings a good amount of operetta. All 5 songs in the Soundtracks are music by Fritz Kreisler, words by Dorothy Fields, sung by GM, and listed as copyright 1936.
Of von Sternberg's 21 talking features, 2 are tagged Music, and 2 are tagged Musical, and 1 is tagged both, for a total of 3 candidates for this list. (I skipped the second version of The Blue Angel, same year, different language. Also omitted from his total.)
Columbia, dir. von Sternberg; 6-
