The Lottery Bride

An operetta about an Italian dirigible heading for the North Pole in a snowstorm has a lot going against it. Add to that - or rather subtract from that - a score by Rudolf Friml that does not have even one even slightly catchy number, and a script that gets worse and worse as it goes along, leaving reason and logic somewhere behind on the Norwegian tundra, and you have The Lottery Bride. Seldom has so much talent been so totally wasted, I'm afraid.

Jeanette MacDonald is really in very good voice in this picture, in particular in her one duet with her leading man. She does some fine singing, but it's a shame it's of music that is so completely bland. The two male leads also sing well.

But this plot is strictly from hunger - and I normally have no problem with silly operetta plots. This one is not at all funny. It is tedious melodrama with a lot of excessive acting.

If you like Jeanette MacDonald, as I do, you may be tempted to dismiss this review and give it a try. You'll be sorry, but you'll survive.

I can only wonder why Oscar Hammerstein would have wanted to produce this. It truly has absolutely nothing going for it. I couldn't wait for it to end, and didn't think it ever would. Actually, it doesn't come to an end; it just stops. There is still the crew of that dirigible stranded on the ice near the North Pole, and we never find out how they will get rescued. But we don't want to sit through any more to find out.

Apparently there are two versions of this movie--the original 1930 print and the re-issue print from 1937. The 1937 re-issue is 10 minutes shorter and lacks the color sequences originally included with the movie and apparently this version has been shown on Turner Classic Movies. However, the DVD (which is what I saw) is of the re-issue. I am not sure it would have mattered either way, as the absence of color isn't what bothered me about the film but the music, plot and overall style--all of which are badly dated.

Back in the 1930s, Hollywood made quite a few operettas. These films must have been popular as they made plenty, however they are rarely shown today--mostly because they are incredibly old fashioned. What was entertaining back in the day is clearly NOT entertaining today in these films. The biggest problem is the singing--and that's bad since these are musicals! The singing is in a grand, warbling style--and you just have to hear it to believe how ear-piercingly awful it is! Oddly, the worst of this singing was Jeanette MacDonald's, as it nearly made my head explode a few times, and of all the cast, she was to become the biggest musical star in the following years.

Jenny (MacDonald) and Chris (John Garrick) are in love with each other but both are also complete morons. When there is a misunderstanding, she runs off to become a lottery bride and he runs off to NORTHERN Norway! And, it turns out that is exactly where she runs to as well! But, because they ARE idiots, they cannot allow themselves to express their true feelings and so the two mope around for most of the picture--as well as sing! In addition to this plot, there is some inexplicable comic relief*. Joe E. Brown and Zasu Pitts are there for that purpose but oddly the script givens them nothing funny to say or do. Instead, they just seem lost and out of place.

So, you've got awful singing, a plot that really makes no sense and comedy that isn't funny. The only mildly interesting aspect of the film involves a dirigible and it's flight to the frozen north--but that's certainly not enough for me to recommend the film. Overall, a dated and unappealing movie.

*It's odd, but the wonderful comedian Max Davidson is in the film in a bit part. Yet, they do NOT use him for comedy at all! A wasted opportunity as his appearances in Hal Roach films are priceless.

It takes sterner stuff than mine to sit through this disastrous relic of a film that looks as if this was made during the silent film era--the acting by Jeanette and the rest of the cast is a holdover from silent film.

The few songs are forgettable and clumsily inserted into the plot, amounting to nothing at all. None of the actors are well-known aside from Jeanette who plays a heroine who is finally reunited with her long lost lover in the Yukon. No use going into details.

The final scenes involving a dirigible disaster are clunky and poorly edited with the most artificial looking icebergs (and icicles) ever filmed amid a snowbound exterior. And for some strange reason, color is used for this sequence alone. It doesn't help.

Neither color nor some feeble humor from Joe E. Brown is able to do anything to raise the level of this grotesque failure.

Not worth a watch--or a listen.

THE LOTTERY BRIDE (1930), directed by Paul Stein, stars Jeanette MacDonald in her only film for United Artists, and the only movie ever produced by Arthur Hammerstein. In it, she plays Jennie, a young singer in the Yukon Case who must deny her true love, Chris (John Garrick) when she later becomes a lottery bride for his older brother, Olaf (Robert Chisholm). Also in the supporting cast are Carroll Nye as MacDonald's brother, Nels; Joseph Macauley and Paul Hurst, along with music by Rudolph Friml, J. Kerin Brennan, Carter Desmond, Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz.

American Movie Classics premiered this rarely seen antique July 1, 1996, as part of its fourth annual film preservation. Sorry to say this is far from the best movie Jeanette MacDonald ever appeared. Dialogue is laughable and acting style, especially from its co-stars, comes right out of the silent film era. There's some overly dramatic arm waving to specify my point. Maybe in silent movie form this might have proved better, with Vitaphone orchestration or piano scoring to guide it along. MacDonald sings two songs, a solo, "Yubla," and a duet with John Garrick titled, "The Northern Light." Other songs, including those sung by others, "You're an Angel," "I'll Follow the Trail," are easily forgettable. Comedy "relief" supplied by Joe E. Brown (on loan from Warner Brothers) and ZaSu Pitts helps some, but not enough to save it as a whole. Theatrically released at 80 minutes, VHS copies from Blackhawk video is clocked at 75 minutes minus the original early Technicolor finish. The AMC presentation, however, was taken from a 1930s 65 minute reissue that eliminates Joe E. Brown and Harry Gribbon's number, "Strong Men," and other scenes involving Brown and Pitts towards its second half. This edited form is the one that has turned up a decade later on DVD. Fortunately when THE LOTTER BRIDE turned up on Turner Classic Movies (TCM premiere: December 14, 2011), it not only presented the film at close to original length but the restoration of its missing Technicolor finish as well.

Regardless of good premise weakened by song interludes and inane dialog, I'm glad AMC and later TCM showed it anyway. A real curio for fans of early sound musicals or a chance to watch Jeanette MacDonald in her pre-MGM era. Otherwise, "let it lay."(**)

Arthur Hammerstein of the famous theatrical family and uncle of the celebrated lyricist Oscar Hammerstein, II, was a Broadway producer of considerable reputation. Probably deciding that the legitimate theater was risky in Depression times, he opted to go to Hollywood and produce his latest show as independent production released by United Artists. Hammerstein managed to secure the services of Jeanette MacDonald from Paramount and Joe E. Brown from Warner Brothers.

The three male leads John Garrick, Joseph Macaulay, and Robert Chisholm all came from the legitimate stage. Garrick would return to Great Britain where he had a considerable career in British cinema for the next decade. The other two had considerable credits on the Broadway stage.

The film is set in Norway with Jeanette working in an Oslo café and going out with Garrick. Italian dirigible explorer Macaulay has his eye on her as well. Jeanette's got herself an embezzling brother played by Carroll Nye whom she takes the fall for. But before that Garrick walks out in a huff thinking she's two timing him with Macaulay.

When released from jail, Jeanette becomes a Lottery Bride. She gets assigned a number and whomever draws her number among the miners in the area north of Trondheim gets that bride. Who should draw it, but Chisholm who's a miner up there and who's gone up to join him and forget a broken heart, but Garrick who is Chisholm's brother. Later on Macaulay joins bringing his polar expedition to town.

Unfortunately the three stage performers did not tone it down for the cinema and they overact outrageously. Macaulay as a villain of sorts is this side of Snidely Whiplash.

The climax of course is a rescue of the downed dirigible, reminding everyone of the ill-fated Umberto Nobile expedition of a couple of years before. On the plus side the special effects of the dirigible crash and rescue were pretty good though they're obviously miniatures to today's sophisticated eye. For the time they were first rate.

Rudolf Friml wrote the score with J. Keirn Brennan the lyrics and it's one of Friml's lesser efforts. Jeanette MacDonald as the movie name gets first billing, but most of the singing is done by the three guys from the stage. For comic relief Joe E. Brown and Zasu Pitts are here and quite frankly they're needed.

The Lottery Bride given its special effects was obviously something that Hammerstein was better off doing on the screen. The problem is that he couldn't shake his stage origins. After The Lottery Bride, Hammerstein went back to Broadway and what he knew best.