The Great Lover

I watched this movie because I'm very interested in opera, and in seeing how opera has been portrayed in film. I also enjoy a lot of Irene Dunne's movies.

I was suspicious, though, when I saw that Adolphe Menjou was the romantic lead. He's fine in supporting roles, and even in non- romantic leads. He was, after all, nominated for a leading-man Oscar that same year for his role in *The Front Page*. But I have never been able to see how any woman could have found him even remotely attractive sexually, even back in 1923 when he starred in Chaplin's *A Woman of Paris*.

In this 1931 feature he was 41 years old, and looked every bit of it. That is not to suggest that men 41 and even much older cannot look sexually attractive. We have lots of examples to prove the contrary.

Nor does the age difference between Menjou and Dunne - only 8 years, though it appears greater - bother me. I had no problems with Audrey Hepburn appearing with male leads considerably older than she at the beginning of her career, such as Cary Grant (25 years older) in *Charade*, Gary Cooper (28 years older) in *Love in the Afternoon*, or even Fred Astaire (30 years older) in *Funny Face*.

But, to me, Menjou as a romantic lead looks slimy. It was impossible for me to believe that he had attractive women chasing after him, which he does in this movie. And if you can't buy that, the movie pretty much falls apart, as you can imagine with the title *The Great Lover*.

Dunne is fine as the not-too-scrupulous American soprano who, just back from two years of study in Italy, is hoping to break into opera in New York City and is willing to play with Menjou's expectations in the hope of landing an audition. We get to hear her sing a little, but not nearly enough to make it worth sitting through this picture. A shame. She had a good voice, and it would have been nice to hear what she could have done with some lyric soprano pieces.

The rest of the cast consists of the standard clichés about (Italian) opera singers, conductors, etc. They are all self-centered divas. Nothing new or interesting there.

We get very little in the way of staged opera. No production numbers such as Jeanette MacDonald or Grace Moore got in some of their pictures.

In sum, there really isn't anything here to justify sitting through even the short 71 minute run-time of this picture.

This movie is based on a play that ran 245 performances on Broadway in 1915-16 and then was revived in 1932. There must have been something more to it than this movie suggests, but I can't guess what.

Of some interest to opera lovers. Irene Dunne shows off her real-life operatic talents which I'm unqualified to judge. Herman Bing, brother of opera impresario Rudolf Bing, plays a comic Wagnerian tenor and sings a little. Some comic bits about typically temperamental opera stars.

Plot revolves around a romantic triangle with Menjou as an aging opera star in New York, Hamilton as his understudy, and Dunne trying to break into the business. Turns out Dunne and Hamilton had a warm but chaste relationship while studying in Europe.

IMHO this started out to be a bit racier than your average opera flick but the studio got cold feet. Early on, Dunn seeks Menjou's mentorship and possibly more. People keep warning her about his reputation as a womanizer and she keeps saying she doesn't care, she'll do anything to get ahead even though, in the language of the day, she's maintained her "purity." Then this thread disappears and it becomes a tepid battle for her hand in matrimony between the two male leads.

Cliff Edwards has a Lee Tracy type role as a fast-talking PR man that fades away without connecting with the plot too much. Ernest Torrence plays Menjou's manservant as an effeminate sort whose only interest in life seems to be arranging and spying on his employer's love life. Kind of creepy.

Every cliche in the book. I even heard a character say, "Come up and see my etchings."

In this early talkie the actors still think they are in the silent era. Adolph Menjou is horribly miscast as a latin lover.

The singing is only passable.

Back in those early days of sound all the studios bought up whatever they could in the way of scripts. The Great Lover had been a play produced on Broadway by George M. Cohan and Sam Harris back during World War I years, but as the background is opera you will not hear a note of Cohan's in the story.

As those early sound days also brought a glut of musical films MGM had Irene Dunne playing a young opera ingenue who falls under the spell of womanizing opera star Adolph Menjou. Menjou certainly has his share of opera groupies as we see in the film. But he falls for her and has a hand in bringing her career along just as his is going into decline. A little bit of Maytime is also present here.

More than just a few elements of the many versions of A Star Is Born are found in The Great Lover. Also here is Neil Hamilton a young opera singer also interested in Dunne and the great Olga Baclanova from the Russian Art Theater. Only Dunne needed no dubbing for her part.

An interesting old chestnut, I doubt we'll see a remake though.

Adolphe Menjou convinces as neither a great lover nor a great singer (his operatic singing voice is clearly dubbed) in this so-so pre-code romantic comedy. A young Irene Dunne fares only slightly better as a young songstress willing to prostitute herself with him in order to gain a foothold on the ladder to success, much to bland ex-boyfriend Neil Hamilton's great distress. Ernest Torrence is a highlight as Menjou's manservant, who identifies so closely with his boss that he refers to him as 'we'.