Sweet Kitty Bellairs

I want to thank Richard Barrios for praising this little gem in his definitive book "A Song in the Dark: The Birth of the Musical Film." Otherwise I'd never have known about "Sweet Kitty Bellairs." Even if I had I might not have bothered. A 1930 screen operetta based on a 1903 play set in 18th century England--doesn't sound very enticing, does it? But "Sweet Kitty Bellairs" is genuinely sweet: an exquisitely stylized confection made by people well aware of the material's absurdity and delighted by its artificiality. Far from being a stuffy, sexless period piece, this is a saucy and buoyant pre-code escapade, free of cloying sentiment and reveling in the absurdities of powdered-wig codes of honor and sexual propriety.

It's short and sweet too. Director Alfred E. Green keeps the story galloping for 63 minutes (with tracking shots of highwaymen singing on horseback). Considering the date, this is fluid and lively film-making, not at all stagy. The witty songs move the story along and don't try to be showstoppers. The lead actors (Claudia Dell, Walter Pidgeon, and baritone Perry Askam) sparkle with irony, but Ernest Torrence walks away with the film. Playing a cloddish jealous husband, he's delighted by the role's buffoonery, sputtering into falsetto at the ends of his lines. And as a former member of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, he knows how to sing! Alas, by the time "Sweet Kitty Bellairs" was released the public had been so glutted with bad musicals that it neglected the good ones. Hence the obscurity of this Bonbon of a movie.

Sweet Kitty Bellairs is a great example of what I maintained in those early days of sound. All the studios big and small were scrambling to purchase all kinds of plays, anything with dialog so that the players could talk. Especially the new ones with stage training to replace the pantomimists of silent days.

In the case of Sweet Kitty Bellairs this was an old chestnut of a British Regency comedy of manners where it was decided to put music to it. Nothing terribly distinguished but serviceable for the plot. And no one seems to be taking credit. Note five different people in the credits are listed, but not one of those five says 'music by' or lyrics by'. I'm sure there's a story.

This film plays like a romance novel set to music with a dashing highwayman who is also an aristocrat, a shy poet, and a woman of a scandalous reputation. Add to that some Regency Era fops and a dirty old lord with gout and you've got Sweet Kitty Bellairs.

The film was old fashioned when it was released but it is an interesting antique and reflective of what producer David Belasco gave to the public in his highlight days during the gaslight era before World War I.

As Belasco was still alive when this came out, I wonder what he thought of it?

In the very early 1930s, operettas were quite popular. Films like "The Rogue Song" and "Sweet Kitty Bellairs" were just a couple such movies and less than a decade later the style was resurrected with the Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy films. However, by the mid-1940s the genre was just about dead due to changing tastes and when seen today the pictures come off as very strange and old fashioned. Based on what I've seen, I can understand why they are no longer popular.

When "Sweet Kitty Bellairs" begins, a group of rich 18th century folks are heading to the spa town of Bath for a holiday. However, their carriage is waylaid by bandits and the cheeky masked leader decides that instead of stealing all their valuables that he'd just take a kiss from Kitty. While she protests, it's pretty obvious to tell that she is quite taken by this stranger. And, what's also obvious is that the nice man she later meets at the spa is actually the bandit dressed in the fine clothes of a gentleman. What will come of this? See the film (or, better yet, don't).

This film was creaky with age and left me very, very bored. Much of the music just put me to sleep but the bad acting made it even worse. Particularly bad was Ernest Torrence who just didn't seem to know how to deliver his lines...though he would improve in later films. Perhaps he just wasn't used to sound films. All I know is that the movie left me very cold and this sort of silly fluff just didn't appeal to me. Far less well made and interesting than a MacDonald/Eddy film.

Claudia Dell gets a star build-up in this one and although the camera clearly loves her, particularly in mid length profile, this whole movie of an adventuress in the city of Bath is so miscalculated that it is occasionally embarrassing. The performances are pitched for the stage, rather than the movie screen and while this style of light opera might have suited Offenbach and Gilbert & Sullivan, by this period, the only other extant examples are those moments in Marx Brothers movies when Groucho sings "I want my Shirt" to something from CARMEN and occasional revivals of THE STUDENT PRINCE. The best version of that is a silent movie.

The whole thing is interestingly shot to look like a Hogarth series and if the music is rarely distinguished, at least "Peggy's Leg" has a little antiquated ribaldry about it. It is fascinating to see Walter Pidgeon as a young man and Miss Dell is lovely. She is reputed to be the model for the Columbia Pictures torch lady.

However, the story is that there was such a glut of poor movie musicals in 1929 and 1930 that the public refused to see them, killing the genre until 1933. Looking at this one, I can believe it.

A musical mix-up of identities, duels, and love, SWEET KITTY BELLAIRS takes place in the English city of Bath in 1793. The plot involves jealous lovers, intrigues, a highwayman, and masks as Kitty (Claudia Dell) tries to unscramble a few mysteries and win a shy lord (Walter Pidgeon). Amazingly this fluff comes from hard-boiled Warner Brothers.

Not a bad film at all, this one simply got lost in the glut of musicals in the early talkie period. Originally shot in Technicolor, this film survives only in B&W and was one of many "operettas" to get released after the success of RIO RITA.

Dell is very pretty but has only a so-so singing voice. Pidgeon seems oddly cast but handles the songs well. Ernest Torrence is a surprise as the blustering husband. June Collyer plays Julia. Flora Finch plays the old gossip. Lionel Belmore, Tom Ricketts, and Arthur Edmund Carewe also co-star.

A highlight is the ribald song "Peggy's Leg."