La veuve joyeuse

The fictional nation of Marshovia is facing bankruptcy. So, to try to improve their finances, they invite a widow (Lana Turner) to their nation in order to give her deceased husband a statue...and try to marry her off to the handsome Count Danillo (Fernando Lamas). When she learns of the scheme, the widow is naturally angry and leaves Marshovia...and the Count soon follows her to Paris. Can the scheme STILL work in spite of all this?

The 1934 version of "The Merry Widow" was a marvelous old film for several important reasons. The Franz Lehár operetta (based on Henri Meilhac's play) was given the special Ernst Lubitsch touch and it happened to star one of the most charming actors of its day, Maurice Chevalier. But, when MGM wanted to remake the film in 1952, it lacked this same marvelous direction and starred the handsome but much blander Fernando Lamas. Apart from the nice Technicolor, it really is inferior to the earlier version...though it still is watchable and pleasant...but nothing more.

Other than identifying the title character as an American now, The Merry Widow pretty much retains the same plot, even some of the same lines from the 1934 Jeanette MacDonald-Maurice Chevalier film.

Lana Turner is the widow of the man who was the richest person in the small kingdom of Mariskova. It's estimated in fact she has part ownership in 52% of the gross national product of the kingdom. She's the big fish in this pond.

Operating under the premise that Lana though she is now living in New York would still like to be a big fish in a small pond than be swallowed by an Austrian whale, King Thomas Gomez dispatches one of his playboy relations, Fernando Lamas too woo and wed the widow. The Hapsburgs are threatening that if they don't make good what's owed them they'll just come in and annex Mariskova. King Tom obviously does not want to spend his declining years in the fleshpots of Baden Baden or Marienbad or the French Riviera, he wants to stay king.

Getting the rich widow to underwrite the kingdom is not as silly a premise as it sounds. Just a bit before the action of The Merry Widow takes place, J. Pierpont Morgan literally underwrote the USA financial structure when asked to by President Cleveland.

Of course with a multi-millionaire fortune, Turner is naturally suspicious of a host of people trying to become friends and lovers.

The Franz Lehar songs which is what makes this operetta a beloved one by many repertoire companies are mostly present. Some are sung, others are relegated to the background. They are divided equally with the leading man and woman, here though Fernando Lamas carries the musical load. Trudy Erwin who dubbed Lana Turner's singing voice joins him briefly in the Merry Widow Waltz. All the other songs are given to Lamas including Vilia which is sung by the leading lady normally. Jeanette MacDonald sang it in the 1934 version and did it well.

Lamas and Turner were quite involved during this film. Esther Williams in her memoirs and this was years before she married Fernando tells that she was visiting the set at MGM one day and heard all kinds of squeals of passion coming from Turner's trailer. Obviously Fernando and Lana getting some rehearsal done.

Look for two nice supporting performances from Richard Haydn and John Abbott as a pair of bumbling Mariskovian diplomats and Una Merkel in her usual role as secretary and gal pal to Turner.

Even with technicolor this one doesn't quite measure to the 1934 version though Fernando Lamas does sing real nice.

The one thing I like about this movie is that Lana Turner got a chance to do something that she normally wouldn't do; be in a musical. O.K., so she couldn't sing and the one song that she did sing was dubbed by Trudy Erwin who dubbed Kim Novak in Pal Joey! Big deal! So, all of the singing numbers went to Fernando Lamas who "could" sing, and he does them very well, but this film has a lot more going for it than what one would think. First of all, it's not as stuffy as the Jeanette McDonald version in which she is to fall in love with Maurice Chevalier and why would a beauty like Jeanett want to fall in love with Maurice? At least we have the beautiful Lana falling in love with the very handsome Fernado which they did when making this movie together and it shows. What doesn't show through the movie is Lana's wrists which were bandaged because of a suicide attempt. The Merry Widow Ballet at the end of the movie is just down-right glorious. The cast looks like they're having the time of their life including Una Merkel who didn't look like it in the Jeanette McDonald version in which she played the same role! In fact, in this version, the credits and one scene on the balcony makes you ask, "Is Una's name Kitty or Katie? When Lana enters Maximes, we see Gwen Verdon doing the Can Can and at that time she wasn't really that well known except for her dance number with Betty Grable "I Feel Like Dancing Tonight" is Meet Me After the Show! But, Lana Turner never looked more beautiful, Fernando Lamas was just terrific as Count Denilo, and you couldn't help wondering where you heard Richard Haydens voice until you saw Disney's Alice In Wonderland in which he spoke for the Catipillar! And, of course, years later, we would recognize him as Uncle Max in the movie version of "The Sound of Music", and even though it's trivia now, we have Fernando Lamas' impersonating Richard Hayden, and very well, saying, "It's your little Fifi" which is right in there with the trivia question "What did Klatu tell Patricia Neal to tell Gort is anything happened to him!. Klatu Barada Nico". So, all in all, the music is great, the performances are high camp at its best, and that great Ballet at the end, leading into Lana Turner asking Charles Gomez, "What did your Excellency exactly mean - heads will roll?" and that glorious Technicolor makes this great entertainment, but - again, I have to say that these movies were meant for the large movie theater screen, and without that screen you can not even imagine how wonderful this movie and other were in those days! That large screen "did" make the difference!

In Australia we are still able to see the beautiful MGM musical in a real 1952 vintage 3 strip Technicolor print which is still in very good condition. I saw it last year and apart from a few bumpy reel changes it is very clean and not scratched too much. Lucky us! I know this is not the definitive version purists rave about (that is the 1934 version) but MGM in 1952 was about as technically lush and state of the art perfect as one could want for any musical. In fact MW is is as colorful and as visually lavish as MY FAIR LADY or ON A CLEAR DAY or HALF A SIXPENCE or even the indoor scenes in TITANIC to any modern audience. The Gen x-ers who saw this version were absolutely in awe of how spectacular this REAL Technicolor version is. Lana is amazingly beautiful and Fernando is his virile Latin he man best. The Waltz in the last reel is exquisite. The only irritating bit is the same 'mid-west-Yanks-in-Europe' antics that annoy in LOVELY TO LOOK AT made the same year. However, who really cares when THE MERRY WIDOW is visually astonishing and musically delicious. What a year it was at MGM in 1952! And this much guarded and treasured proper Hollywood 3 strip Technicolor print is staying here, folks! If you wanna see it you have to come visit.

My wife and I met doing a professional production of "The Merry Widow" in 1982 -- in English, but a straight translation.

Only the very basic skeleton of the original plot is visible in this "adaptation". Most of the characters have been deleted, along with the entire B plot, and all but one of the characters remaining have been renamed. Most of the characters in the movie aren't in the operetta, either. The action has been moved from Paris to, at first, Washington, DC, and then to the fictional country of Pontevedro, which the movie has renamed "Marshovia", and only later to Paris. The net result is that we don't reach the beginning of the original play until about 45 minutes in.

And the main source of tension in the plot is deleted, too. In the original, years before, Count Danilo and the heroine were very much in love, but his family refused to allow them to marry because she was poor; it's his broken heart that has rendered him a careless playboy. Now that, as a widow, she's the richest woman in the world, she still loves him, and he still loves her, but his pride won't let him admit it to anyone, even himself, and she must spend three acts playing mind games to break him down. The trope of the aristocrat with money problems who won't admit that he's in love with a rich woman for fear of what people will think supplied the main plots of a substantial fraction of Viennese operettas for decades after the 1906 "Widow". In this movie, they've never met before, which rips out not only the heart of the whole thing, but nearly all the comedy.

Lamas does a pretty decent job, though.

An interesting musical point is that several times we hear a snippet or so of "Trés Parisien", an extra song written (in English, despite the title) for the London première, which was not, as far as I know, usually found in American productions until the 1980s or so.