Love Me Tonight (1932) Director: Rouben Mamoulian
“Isn’t it romantic?”
★★★★☆
Love Me Tonight is an elegant little musical-comedy film starring the great French actor, Maurice Chevalier (whom I will forever associate with the goofy “smiling lieutenant” character in Ernst Lubitsch’s The Smiling Lieutenant). Love Me Tonight features a collection of classic American standards, like “Isn’t It Romantic” and other American jazz standards from composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Lorenz Hart (Rodgers & Hart) –Paramount’s Love Me Tonight is one of the more significant musicals in cinematic history. Throughout the early sound films, musicals often featured songs which were not necessary germane to the story, however Love Me Tonight changed that whole trajectory. Rodgers & Hart were hired specifically to craft songs intended to be woven into the film’s plot.
While I am not typically a great fan of Hollywood musicals, Love Me Tonight is a delightful little picture. It is simple, though predictable, but it is also innovative. In particular the scenes where multiple characters are singing songs in different locations (like “Lover”) took some unique editing skills for the time when splicing film and sound together in the backroom.
The story for Love Me Tonight is somewhat loosely based on a French play called Le Tailleur au château (“The tailor at the castle”). As a comical story, Love Me Tonight about a Parisian tailor. A family of wealthy aristocrats owes him money for his work so he travels to their castle, but along the way he meets a single, widowed daughter who has been unable to find herself a suitor. When he arrives at the castle, he is introduced as a “baron” and their romance blossoms, until he finally reveals the truth: he is nothing more than a mere tailor. He takes a train back to Paris alone in shame, but of course, she realizes the error of her ways and embraces her true feelings as the two lovers embrace at the end.
Credits:
- Directed by: Rouben Mamoulian
- Written by: Samuel Hoffenstein, George Marion Jr., and Waldemar Young
- Produced by: Rouben Mamoulian
- Starring:
- Maurice Chevalier…..Maurice, Baron Courtelin
- Jeanette MacDonald…..Princesse Jeanette
- Charles Ruggles…..Vicomte Gilbert de Varèze
- Charles Butterworth…..Comte de Savignac
- Myrna Loy…..Comtesse Valentine
- Cinematography: Victor Milner
- Edited by: Rouben Mamoulian and William Shea
- Music by: Richard Rodgers (music) and Lorenz Hart (lyrics)
- Distributed by: Paramount Pictures
Other Notes:
- Director Rouben Mamoulian, an Armenian immigrant to the United States, was a tremendously innovative Hollywood director who was known for such films as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with Frederic March and Queen Christina with Greta Garbo.
- Rodgers & Hart’s musical numbers in this film included:
- “That’s the Song of Paree”
- “Isn’t It Romantic?”
- “Lover”
- “Mimi”
- “A Woman Needs Something Like That”
- “I’m an Apache”
- “Love Me Tonight”
- “The Son of a Gun Is Nothing but a Tailor”
- “The Man for Me” (dropped before the film was released)
- “Give Me Just a Moment” (deleted before the film was completed)
- Love Me Tonight was Rodgers & Hart’s second motion picture. In 1930, after losses from the stock market collapse in 1929, they accepted a lucrative three-picture contract from Jack Warner and went to Hollywood. Unfortunately the film they were assigned (Spring Is Here) had one star who couldn’t sing and another with a very limited range, so they were limited in what they could write. When the film flopped in 1931, Warner quickly bought out their contract and they took their talents elsewhere.
- Love Me Tonight was significantly edited by the Breen Office post-1934. Unfortunately, eight minutes have been lost, including a scene of Myrna Loy in a negligee singing “Mimi.”