Her Majesty, Love

Anyone who (reasonably)expects to see Marilyn Miller dance, other than two brief ballroom partner dances, or to sing more than a few lines, is bound to be disappointed. It's difficult enough to imagine her as a bartender in a 1920s Berlin cabaret. The script falls somewhere between romantic comedy and soap opera. Miller, charming when she does her own thing, has limited talent for either comedy or drama not alleviated by musical sequences. Not surprisingly, the liveliest and strongest cast member is W.C.Fields, who does his familiar turn of shocking the "snobs" of high society. Clarence Wilson is also effective.

Clearly influenced by the German musical comedies of the time, William Dieterle's first American film is a delightful pre-code musical comedy starring Marilyn Miller, of the Ziegfeld Follies. The real treat is the fun performances by such early comic legends of the stage and screen like W.C. Fields, Leon Errol, Ford Sterling and Chester Conklin. Songs add to the atmosphere of the story. The most notable aspect of this film is the technical brilliance of the cinematography and editing. Filmed with a much more fluid camera than the average film of 1931, with many scenes transitioned by brilliant dissolves. Worth the watch if you can find it.

Her Majesty Love was both the final film of Broadway star Marilyn Miller who could not translate her appeal from the stage to the screen in three tries. Not even the fact that she was romantically involved with studio head Jack Warner could save her career as Warner put business before the bedroom and terminated her contract.

This is a remake of a German film made the same year. In it Marilyn is a bartender at a top Berlin nightclub where she meets and falls in love with Ben Lyon, a young playboy whose family made a fortune in ball bearings. One sight of Marilyn and Lyon loses his bearings.

Marilyn and Lyon were at one time an item themselves and they do have good chemistry. At Marilyn's insistence, Jack Warner got W.C. Fields from Paramount who had not done anything in sound except for one short subject at RKO. Miller knew him from the Follies and admired his talent and she got him for the supporting role as her father.

Because Fields is in a supporting part his fans will no doubt be disappointed there isn't more of him. What there is is cherce as someone else in another picture said. His drunkeness and his juggling act from the circus gross out Lyon's snooty relatives.

The film however impressed Paramount executives to realize what a dimension in the talent of W.C. Fields they'd been missing. That's when he started getting those roles in the famous classics he made for Paramount and Universal. I'm sure Adolph Zukor thanked Jack Warner for doing this favor for him.

Leon Errol is in the film too and he's a drunken playboy who has hopes of nailing Marilyn on the rebound as Lyon's relatives put a kabosh on the romance. He's surprisingly subdued and a bit more serious in a role he'd play over and over again.

The film flopped and Marilyn left Hollywood. She made a big comeback on Broadway in Irving Berlin's As Thousands Cheer, introducing Easter Parade with Clifton Webb.

Still Her Majesty Love is not a bad film and it's a chance to see a rarely shown Fields film for his fans and one of three chances to see one of the biggest musical stars of the Twenties in Marilyn Miller.

Some great stars magic from other mediums just don't translate to the screen. Mary Martin is an example, another is the star of this film, Marilyn Miller. A huge stage star in the 20's and 30's famed for her magnetism and winsome personality, though behind the scenes apparently a horrendous dragon of a woman, she comes across as ordinary on film. Her singing is a tad shrill and her face photographs flatly. She only made three films all of which were successful but whatever their appeal was to audiences of the time doesn't come through very strongly today.

The film's story is nothing special just another one of romantic misunderstanding though it does have the advantage of W.C. Fields as Marilyn's father, displaying all the qualities that Miller is missing.

Probably the most interesting aspect of the picture is that leading man Ben Lyon many years after this had become a casting agent at 20th Century Fox and took a young starlet under his wing. Telling her she reminded him of Marilyn Miller he suggested she take that as her professional name, Miller having died about six years after this film. She demurred on taking the full name but adopted the first and using her maternal grandmother's maiden name as her last became Marilyn Monroe.

Marilyn Miller is absolutely charming as a girl from a Berlin barwho's woo'd by a bored rich boy. Ben Lyon is fine in that role. Leon Erol as his uncle is delightful -- the same character he was to play over and over, but this was pre-Code; and here is really is a dirty old man drooling over his young conquest.

W.C. Fields (not a personal favorite in his more famous outings) gives a restrained and appealing performance as Miller's father.