The Smiling Lieutenant was adapted by Samson Raphaelson and Ernest Vajda (Lubitsch collaborators on Broken Lullaby and The Merry Widow), from Oscar Strau’s operetta Ein Walzertraum (“A Waltz Dream”), itself based on Hans Müller-Einigen’s novel Nux, der Prinzgemahl (“Nux the Prince Consort”).
#The smiling lieutenant 1931 movie movie#
Despite having about a half a dozen movies to her credit – including a previous pairing with Maurice Chevalier, Hobart Henley’s The Big Pond – at the time Colbert was still better known as a Broadway actress (e.g., The Barker, Tin Pan Alley) than as a movie star. On the upside, The Smiling Lieutenant‘s two leading ladies are fine, even though Colbert’s performance is overshadowed by Hopkin’s transformation from duckling to swan. The Lubitsch Touch is found just about everywhere in The Smiling Lieutenant, especially in the Colbert-Hopkins musical number “Jazz Up Your Lingerie.” Unfortunately, Maurice Chevalier’s overbearing hamminess is also found just about everywhere in the film. Right now, TCM is showing Ernst Lubitsch’s light (but ultimately bittersweet) romantic comedy-musical The Smiling Lieutenant (1931), a Best Picture Academy Award nominee starring Maurice Chevalier as a French-accented Central European lieutenant in love with an orchestra leader (Claudette Colbert), but coerced into marrying a sweet but unsophisticated American-accented Central European princess ( Miriam Hopkins). (See also: TCM’s Claudette Colbert day in 2011.) Colbert, a surprise Best Actress Academy Award winner for Frank Capra’s 1934 comedy It Happened One Night, was one Paramount’s biggest box office draws for more than decade and Hollywood’s top-paid female star of 1938, with reported earnings of $426,944 – or about $7.2 million in 2014 dollars. 18 as TCM continues with its “Summer Under the Stars” film series. PARADE two years earlier, and the result is an utterly charming film that was box-office hit.Claudette Colbert, the studio era’s perky, independent-minded – and French-born – “all-American” girlfriend (and later all-American wife and mother), is Turner Classic Movies’ star of the day on Aug. This was the noted French entertainer's first work together with master director Lubitsch after their successful collaboration on THE LOVE Hopkins, meanwhile, enjoyed herįirst major opportunity to display her considerable comic prowess as the princess in need of a makeover, and Chevalier is in his best and most typical form.
Colbert-warm, sweet, with touches of sadness-is in wonderful form, and proves to be a fine singer to boot. Your Lingerie." Made and released during the Depression, THE SMILING LIEUTENANT offered welcome escapism for a public reeling under too real economic woes. The music is delightful, and the songs include such bon-bons as "Spruce Up The operetta plot bears little resemblance to reality, but the players are so good, the dialogue (by Lubitsch, Ernest Vajda and Samson Raphaelson) so witty, and the direction so skillful that no one minds the logic lapses. Niki refuses to consummate their marriage, however-that is, untilįranzi does a makeover job on Anna that sends the guardsman's head reeling. When Niki protests that he finds the princess attractive, she falls in love with him, and in no time, bound by his duty to his country, he finds himself married to her.
During a state visit to the Austrian capital by King Adolf (George Barbier), his desperately plain daughter, Princess Anna (Miriam Hopkins), mistakenly believes that the smile Niki has intended for Franzi was actually directed in her royal direction,īut is convinced the handsome soldier is only being kind.
With Franzi (Claudette Colbert), a violinist. The delightful story is set in Vienna, where Niki (Chevalier), an officer of the Royal Guards, shares romance and an apartment Studios, and made this musical as well as a French-language version, LE LIEUTENANT SOURIANT, with the same cast working from a new French script by Jacques Bataille-Henri. Only six years after the release of EIN WALZERTRAUM, the 1925 German silent based on the operetta inspired by Hans Muller's novel Nux, der Prinzgemahl, Ernst Lubitsch gathered Maurice Chevalier, Claudette Colbert and Miriam Hopkins, moved them into Paramount's Astoria, Long Island,