The Vagabond King

This 1956 film version of the Rudolph Friml operetta "The Vagabond King" is a seldom seen gem of a production. Starring Kathryn Grayson, this was meant to be a star vehicle for European opera star Oreste. It didn't quite happen. It is wonderful however seeing some big name stars when they were very young performing in supporting roles. Leslie Neilson, of Naked Gun fame, Jack Lord of Hawaii Five-o, and Rita Moreno all put in admirable performances. It's even narrated by Vincent Price. Some day soon it'll be released on video.

Leslie Nielson said on a talk show that the film was a flop before they started to even film. His trouble was that he was under contract and was assigned to the film being told that he would be wearing tights. Nielsen had Rickets as a child and was very self-conscious of what he thought were very bowed legs, but he said he never thought of his legs again after they told him he would be wearing a dancers belt under the tights and then showed what it was. The first time he wore the tights he said he got so many cat whistles from the woman that he stopped wearing the belt until the director told him if he didn't wear it, he would only film him from the neck up.

After this film bom bombed at the box office, it was put in the public domain. There are many YouTube channels devoted 2 movies in the public domain including this forgotten movie.

For any of you who have heard that this version of The Vagabond King is terrible, that simply isn't so. It's not the best production of a classic operetta ever brought to the screen, but it's far from terrible. The only thing that was happening was that movie musicals themselves were slowly dying out and operettas were a thing of the past. This Paramount production, a remake of the 1929 version the studio did with Dennis King and Jeanette MacDonald was really the last operetta ever done for the big screen.

Today's audiences probably know the straight dramatic version of Justin Huntly McCarthy's play If I Were King, done on the silent screen by John Barrymore and for sound by Ronald Colman. Rudolf Friml's original operetta adaption premiered in 1923 on Broadway with lyrics by Brian Hooker.

The main songs from that score plus several new ones composed for this version by Friml with lyrics by Johnny Burke. This was the last movie score done by Burke, he and his partner Jimmy Van Heusen had come to a parting a couple of years earlier. Nothing memorable in the new songs, but they are interpolated nicely into the story.

This was a farewell for many people. This was Kathryn Grayson's last film, it was also the last for Walter Hampden who played Louis XI. It was the first and last for her leading man, Maltese tenor Oreste. Originally Paramount was going to get Mario Lanza, but Kathryn Grayson whom he did two films with and didn't get along with balked. Lanza himself was proving difficult at that time so Paramount used Oreste himself. Oreste isn't bad as the dashing Francois Villon, but public tastes were changing and operetta parts just weren't to be had any more.

This romantic tale of the beggar/poet who saves Paris from invasion by the Duke of Burgandy was fashioned by Rudolf Friml and Brian Hooker into one of operetta's best loved scores. No more romantic melodies were ever written than the plaintive Some Day or the appealing duet Only A Rose. And operetta never had a better song to rouse the populace than the Song Of The Vagabonds. Friml was at his career height when he wrote this score.

Rita Moreno is also in this film and she plays Hugette, the tavern girl crushing out big time on Francois Villon, who has eyes only for the royal ward Katherine Vaucelles who Grayson plays. Her number is the Waltz Hugette which enjoyed something of a revival that year because it was sung by Susan Hayward in I'll Cry Tomorrow. If you'll remember Hayward played Lillian Roth in that film and the Waltz Hugette was one of several of Roth's songs that she sang in that film and made a record of. Roth played Hugette in the 1929 Paramount version of The Vagabond King.

Operetta is gone now, no one writes soaring melodies of love, romance, and derring do any more. But if you like the art form with the sappy plots and all as I do, than you can't go wrong with this version of The Vagabond King.

The last operetta released by a major studio, and it's a pity, for this adaptation of the 1925 Rudolf Friml war horse is pretty nimble. It stars Oreste, a European tenor with the requisite high notes and a fair amount of dash, as the leader of the Paris rabble; he's quite at ease for such a major screen debut, though his accent, so apparent in song, mysteriously disappears in much of his dialogue, making one wonder if some of his lines were post-dubbed. Kathryn Grayson is her usual shrill and simpering self, albeit in a part Callas herself couldn't have made interesting, and Rita Moreno shows a lot of life and a lot of leg as Huguette. Walter Hampden, as the king, has better lines than most screen kings, and underplays them effectively. Friml, then in his mid-70s, appended his stage score with several new melodies set to adequate Johnny Burke lyrics, and one, "This Same Heart," is quite lovely. It's a studio-bound eyeful, with big sets and colorful costumes that have little to do with reality but everything to do with screen spectacle (did 15th century Parisians really don so much purple and yellow and green?), and the screenplay's pretty erudite for this genre, and Michael Curtiz ably keeps things moving (save a brief, silly Adam and Eve ballet that stops the action dead). Nobody went to it in 1956, audiences just weren't interested in operetta anymore, and they still preferred Mario Lanza to an unknown European quantity. But if you can catch this one--I did on Amazon Prime--you'll get a fine eyeful and earful of the lush melody, sweeping spectacle, and ringing romance that endeared audiences to operetta decades before.