50 Million Frenchmen

The title suggests a saucy, sophisticated pre-Code bonbon, but oh dear. Oh Dear, Oh Dear...

Warner Bros. Had bankrolled the 1929 Broadway original of this production, but by the time it went before the cameras in August 1930 the public had had enough of musicals and the studio in desperation completely cut out the Cole Porter score (only 'You Do Something to Me' is heard on the soundtrack as incidental music) and instead tried to turn it into a vehicle for Olsen & Johnson. After pretending it might just all go away, Warner Bros. Eventually slipped it into cinemas in February 1931 where it swiftly died at the box office (although it was released abroad still with its songs intact, in a version now lost).

At least in 1931 the thing was in Technicolor, but now lacking even that embellishment it just looks cheap and tawdry and the hotel setting stagey and drab. (The most obvious remaining evidence that it was ever in colour is a joke by Johnson about a parrot blushing, and the heavy makeup worn by leading man William Gaxton). Gaxton has been saddled with playing that tired old cliché, a millionaire playboy talked into temporarily giving up his millionaire lifestyle for a wager; not that the film does much with the idea.

For anybody hoping for pre-Code raciness, the humour is just coarse, with a creepy amount of lingering on ladies' underwear; and the gruesome sight of Olsen & Johnson modelling a pair of nighties. Several other reviewers have already commented on Johnson's laugh; which grows on you like fingernails down a blackboard. Bela Lugosi makes a fleeting appearance as a magician; but if you blinked you'd miss him.

"50 Million Frenchman" was originally a stage musical. And, apart from completely missing the songs*, it plays exactly like a stage production. It's very episodic with lots of Vaudeville-style humor. While it nominally stars the comedy team of Olsen and Johnson, they really are relegated to supporting roles where they walk on and do tiny comedy bits--bits that often seem to have NOTHING to do with the film's plot. As for the plot, it's about an American who meets a nice girl in France and falls for her BUT he accidentally loses his money and is forced to get a job. However, he IS rich and has bet another man that he can win the woman's heart without spending a fortune on her. Will she love him for who he is or will the man's friend win her, as he ISN'T pretending to be poor?

Back to Olsen and Johnson. Although this team is practically unknown today, they were quite successful on stage and made a few movies. Most of the ones I've seen were only fair, but their film "Hellzapoppin" is a terrific comedy. "50 Million Frenchmen" is NOT brilliant--mostly because Olsen and Johnson's material is pretty bad. Too often they weren't very funny and were quite corny--and the team laughed uproariously like every line was hilarious...which only reinforced how unfunny they were. In fact, the entire film is flat and unfunny and has not aged well. My feeling is that the film would have been much better without the comedy OR if they gave up entirely on the plot and just had a lot of zaniness (which is exactly why "Hellzapoppin" was such a good film). The other problem is that the film is simply too talky--as if the folks making the film didn't really understand the new medium of talking pictures.

Look carefully at Orizon the Magician. Underneath the beard and the costume, that's Bela Lugosi! He made this bit appearance before making his breakout film, "Dracula". However, as "50 Million Frenchmen" was held about a year before it was released, it turned out both films were released the same day back in 1931!

*While musicals were THE rage in the very early days of talking pictures, within only a couple years, the genre was pretty stale and box office receipts for these films dropped. So, while the Best Picture Oscar went to "Broadway Melody" in 1930, but around 1931 the films appeared to be passé. Because of this, studio execs ordered all the songs removed from "50 Million Frenchmen" before it was released. By about 1933-34, musicals were suddenly popular once again. Why the change? I have always assumed it's because the sound technology improvements enabled the musicals to sound a lot better and weren't inhibited by primitive microphones and flat sound. Additionally, the studios simply refined their style and plots enough that they once again were appealing to Depression-era audiences.

Fifty Million Frenchmen is a zany madcap farce with the boys on the loose in France. This Pre-Code comedy has some daring moments (Olsen & Johnson wickedly rummaging through lady's lingerie) and a real vaudeville feel to the humor. Olsen & Johnson are one of the most underrated and little known comedy teams of the 1930's and 1940's and this is a darn shame. Personally, I think their best work, in films like HELLZAPOPPIN' and CRAZY HOUSE, are far funnier than better known comedy duos like Abbott & Costello. Look for Bela Lugosi in a small cameo as a sinister swami who falls afoul of the boy's slapstick antics.

Hardcore fans of Olsen and Johnson and/or Bela Lugosi will need no persuading, but others may find Fifty Million Frenchmen a pretty heavy slog. It's one of those early talkies where the actors hadn't quite figured out how to adjust their body language or their vocal intonations to suit the new medium, and it's at times awkwardly paced and badly shot. Nonetheless there are some inspired moments of Olson and Johnson lunacy, especially when the boys disguise themselves as the assistants of a stage magician and end up on stage performing a deadly sword trick. The romantic subplots are unnecessary and uninteresting and Johnson's maniacal laughter soon gets irksome.

"Fifty Million Frenchmen" was a musical comedy play that Warner Brothers backed with the plan of turning it into a film. But by the time that it came for filming in 1930, musical films were landing with a thud as far as movie going audiences were concerned. So plans were made to strip out all of the songs and just add more Olsen and Johnson where the music had been. It was still filmed in Technicolor though, which has been lost. All that's left are the black and white copies, which explains its blurry appearance.

The basic thread of the story is not a bad one. A rich ne'er do well American playboy in Paris, Jack Forbes (William Gaxton) well financed by his industrialist father to stay as far away from the family business as possible, sees Lu Lu Carroll (Claudia Dell) and falls instantly in love. Michael Cummins (John Halliday) says that he is also interested in her. He bets Forbes that he cannot win the girl's heart without any of his money as a means to impress her and take her places. If Forbes wins, Cummins will pay him 50 thousand dollars. If Cummins wins the bet, Forbes will pay him 50 thousand dollars. In the meantime, Forbes must make his living any way that he can, starting with no money or letters of credit in his pocket.

Warner Brothers, in just another year or two with better performers, could have made this work as a pretty decent precode. The main problem is the large part that Olsen and Johnson have in this film. Their part is that Cummins hires them to make sure that Forbes doesn't cheat and borrow money off of anyone. They're just not funny and Johnson's incessant hyena-like laughter gets old in a hurry. Show me you're funny, don't TELL me you're funny! Make this about Forbes and his creative attempts to survive and impress the girl given that he has no money and no contacts in a country that is foreign to him, and this could have been interesting. Instead the focus is Olsen and Johnson and their juvenile and archaic attempts at humor.

The few interesting spots include Helen Broderick as someone who hires Forbes as a guide and Bela Lugosi as a mystic.