Rosalie

Fans of Eleanor Powell will wonder how she detoured into this Jeanette MacDonald/Nelson Eddy overblown costume piece -- and in the role of Jeanette MacDonald no less! Whereas delicate Jeanette would have floated through this pageant with an air of fluttering dignity, pants-wearing Ellie delivers too much punch for a princess. She barks most of her lines and unfortunately comes off as a bitch. A more delicate actress would have softened the barrage of "womanly" insults laid on Nelson Eddy and we would know this meant she was smitten. But with the confidant and athletic Powell delivering the insults you really start to wonder if wooden Eddy is a masochist or just extremely submissive. It's an electric energy that cost Powell her spotlight, and didn't fit with MGM's idea of what a feminine leading lady should be.

Those who are fascinated by Ellie's unusual (at least on film) gender-play will be thrilled to see her "go all the way" and dress as a man to sneak into a military academy where she leads the cadets in a marching drill in front of a phallic war memorial. While Powell is hardly mannish (and here with Jeanette's wardrobe and make-up budget she never looked prettier) the production plays with her "masculinity" and dresses her in all extremes of buttoned-downed marching band jackets and crisp uniforms, interspersed with overly feminine gowns with frou-frou puffy sleeves and Jeanette's corkscrew curls. It's an inconsistent and mostly unsuccessful gender dichotomy -- especially when compared to her smart wardrobe play and winning charisma in the Broadway Melody films.

Her tap numbers are too few and too short -- a Pieroette "ballet" on giant drums is an weird jumble of inconsistent imagery, and a brief scene with Ray Bolger makes you wish they'd shared a competitive dance of lightning legwork rather than the time-wasting dialog in the script. Other supporting players are also underused: as the Queen Edna May Oliver appears briefly in a tiered nightgown that exaggerates her Olive Oil frame, and Frank Morgan does his best to keep the banter rolling as a befuddled monarch with a ventriloquist dummy, but there isn't enough comedy here to entertain. A sudden accidental revolution in the tiny Balkan monarchy has potential, but is dropped just as quickly. Even the production numbers are too short, following the pattern of the other MacDonald/Eddy films where actual choreography and musical style are ignored for lots and lots of extras arranged in expensive costumes and plenty of operetta bombast from Eddy.

Other than seeing Eleanor Powell in one of her few starring roles this is a forgettable film that shows no one to advantage, except possibly MGM's costume department. I can see how this was originally a vehicle for Marion Davies because the sets are jaw-droppingly huge.

Eleanor Powell stars with Nelson Eddy, Ray Bolger, Edna May Oliver, and Frank Morgan in "Rosalie" from 1937.

The original music by Romberg and Gershwin was scrapped, and a new score was written by Cole Porter, which is very nice with the title song and "In the Still of the Night" the major songs that come out of it.

The plot is nothing unusual. A Princess (Powell) comes to America, where she hides her identity. She falls for a football playing cadet Dick Thorpe (Nelson Eddy, probably 15 years too old). Then she has to return to her country, Romanza, where she is betrothed to another. Dick follows her there along with his friend Bill (Bolger) whose girlfriend has dumped him.

I have to say that for me, this was Nelson Eddy's best singing - he showed more of his higher range and also demonstrated the ability to sing a high tessitura - I'm not trying to be a snob, that just means that even if music is consistently high, he can sing it. Not everyone can. This movie really made me wonder if there might have been a heldentenor lurking there someplace. Acting-wise he was pretty wooden. I never cared, not with that voice.

Eleanor Powell was delightful, both in her acting and great dancing.

Edna May Oliver is the domineering queen and Morgan is the bumbling King. Truthfully I really only was interested in the singing and dancing. And there was plenty of it, and some amazing sets.

West Point cadet Dick (Nelson Eddy) falls for foreign princess Rosalie (Eleanor Powell). He doesn't know she's a princess, though (they never do in movies). Rosalie is called back to her country to marry another guy. Dick follows along to win her heart. When he finds out who she is and that she's engaged, he heads back to America. Then the movie ends with everybody miserable. Just kidding.

36 year-old Nelson Eddy as a West Point cadet is a stretch but we'll overlook that. He does fine and better than fine when singing. Eleanor Powell smiles her way through the whole picture but it's such a pretty smile that I doubt anybody minds. There's some funny parts, such as the airport guys and the ventriloquist bits. Great supporting cast includes Edna May Oliver, George Zucco, Virginia Grey, Reginald Owen, and future Oz costars Ray Bolger and Frank Morgan. Thickly-accented Ilona Massey plays Powell's friend. She's lovely to look at but hard to understand. With a cast like this and such good production values, it really should have been a classic. Unfortunately, there are some problems with it. For one, it's overlong. A movie with such a banal plot has no business being over two hours long. Also, the two leads have little romantic chemistry. They're both likable but there's just no spark.

It's a musical with Nelson Eddy and Eleanor Powell so, it stands to reason, most of us will watch for the singing and dancing. The Cole Porter songs are sung well. "In the Still of the Night" is the stand-out tune. As is usually the case with her movies, Powell's dancing is the highlight of the film. She gets three tap numbers, including an impressive routine on big drums. All three numbers are fantastic. Watching Powell dance is always a treat and you should watch the movie for that, if nothing else.

Rosalie marked Nelson Eddy's first starring film without Jeanette MacDonald. That being the case MGM certainly didn't want Mr. Eddy to wander too far afield. If Nelson couldn't swap high notes with his co-star Eleanor Powell than at least all the kittenish banter that also characterized the Eddy-MacDonald movies was certainly left in tact.

MGM obviously bought this property after looking at the success Warner Brothers was having with Dick Powell in Flirtation Walk and Shipmates Forever. Powell was in his mid 30s when he did those roles as a cadet and midshipman respectively. Nelson Eddy was also in his 30s, in fact three years older than Dick Powell. But he looks like a man in his 30s and doesn't quite come off believably as a cadet.

That being said, movie audiences came to hear Nelson Eddy sing and MGM which scrapped the original score which was done by both Sigmund Romberg and George Gershwin, got Cole Porter to write a new one. And it's a good one. The title song Rosalie became a big hit, recorded by a number of artists and the classic In the Still of the Night is from this film. Oddly enough, probably because Nelson Eddy was so identified with operetta, these two Cole Porter songs never became identified with him per se.

Nelson also got the infinitely more talented Eleanor Powell as a co-star where Powell had Ruby Keeler for both his movies. MGM went whole hog on glamour with her numbers, probably the most spectacular she ever did on screen. She's also far more believable as a princess than Eddy as a cadet.

Supporting Eddy as his best friend and fellow cadet was Ray Bolger who has one dance number near a crate of fireworks which he accidentally sets off and sets off an revolution. Movies never knew quite what to do with Bolger. He certainly didn't have the look of a hero and most of his film roles were comedic supporting parts. On Broadway he was a big star and was the lead in such great hits as On Your Toes, By Jupiter, Charley's Aunt and The All American, only Charley's Aunt of which he did on screen.

Of course no one can talk about the supporting cast without mentioning two of the great players in studio era Hollywood. Frank Morgan and Edna May Oliver played off each other beautifully as Eleanor Powell's parents, the King and Queen of Romanza. Horsefaced faced Edna May Oliver played so many harridans in her career she practically took a patent out on those parts. That was one formidable lady on screen.

Complementing her completely was Frank Morgan's also copyrighted picture of befuddlement. Having read enough history to know that a whole lot of monarchs WERE as confused and befuddled as Morgan, lends a ring of authenticity to his role. He appeared almost exclusively for MGM in his career and was never bad in anything he did.

Rosalie was a prime example of the delightful nonsense that Hollywood used to do so well.

Writing comments about a movie like this one is difficult. The plot and dialogue are atrocious, but the score and visuals are first rate. So one splits the difference and gives it a "5." As some of the few comments thus far have implied, it is a formulaic comedy with loads of prominent character actors of the time reprising roles already played in other movies and on the radio. Audiences in 1937 were for the most part captive to that sort of thing. Diversity of tastes like that of today just did not exist, and everyone going to the movies in small-town America was inclined to go along with the gag mainly because it was literally the only show in town.

When as a lad I paid my 9 cents admission at the box office, I knew I was going to sit through anything they threw at me, including the newsreel at the beginning, the same old cartoons, a dumb serial episode with someone falling off a moving train at the end -- to be continued -- and a main feature in black-and-white that depended more on stock characters and situations than on anything new or scandalous.

Now I watch these same features on Turner Classic Movies with moody nostalgia and total suspension of disbelief. So what if Nelson Eddy at nearly 40 was playing a cadet of half that age? And what about my now knowing that his off-screen person was 180 degrees off the roles he played? His singing is still mesmerizing, an operetta voice the likes of which disappeared ages ago -- indeed a relic of the Nineteenth Century. Even an uncharacteristically inferior Porter tune like "Rosalie" gets a high-class treatment.

Sure, there are better musicals from the 30's, but this one is a piece of history as well as a minor work of art.