Il re della Louisiana

A good-in-parts film . . . That is sadly also NOT good in parts.

The movie is haphazardly put together. It plays more like a sketch show than a comedy film. Several great elements, but the movie feels like it doesn't know what type of film it is trying to be. It jumps from comedy, to ballet, to political satire, to carnival parades of flamboyance, and back again.

None of the individual components are poor. For example, Bob Hope does well in his comedy role, and the dancing is excellent. There is a scene that is pure bedroom farce, and is executed skilfully. And moments of delightful Ziegfeld-type stage grandeur. It's just that the film is loosely glued together: it's a mess of unconnected parts.

The costumes are extravagant, but sadly - in light of the poor finish to the film - these fantastic garments then start to look OTT, rather than beautifully fitting in with the film's feel. If the movie had been created well, then these outfits would have matched that ambience. Sad, then, that they don't mesh with the film.

Nonetheless, there are advantages to the costume elements of the movie. The diaphanous gowns are a delight! Tulle abounds, and a stylish double-layer look to many of the outfits is mesmeric. The wrapover is born! Interestingly, the dress style seems to anticipate a design yet to be invented: the date of some garments looked more to be the 'New Look' of the late-'40s than the wartime era of this 1941 film. Which is bizarre! Maybe the costume designer (one Raoul Pene Du Bois) was a forerunner to that post-war look! ,-)

One scene, in a fashion house sequence, with fully hooped skirts from circa the 1860s, looks COMPLETELY misconceived! The garments are out of place in a film of the Forties! But I suppose the luxury of style and fabrics, and the pure spectacle, cheered up wartime audiences . . .

The film is memorable for only a few segments, rather than as a whole:

~~ The ballet sequence is grand. No doubt it was taken straight from the stage version, where it was choreographed by the great George Balanchine.

~~ Vera Zorina - a performer of whom I'd never heard before watching this film - is superb in the dance scenes. She also performs delightfully in the drama scenes, and in the comedy moments. So kudos to the lady. Apparently she was cast in this version, after being a success in the same role on the Broadway stage.

~~ Bob Hope is funny in general, and has a few key moments. He does a brilliant filibuster scene, and even homages James Stewart's 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington' film role in the process. And there is a delightful 2-minute scene where Hope imitates the struggle of a woman getting into a complex girdle . . . The word 'laugh' doesn't cover it: it's masterful! And, unusual for Hope, the skit is not a word-comedy. I'd watch this film just for that segment alone. (BTW: the girdle sketch is in the last quarter of the film, if you want to watch that skit alone.)

Hope is perhaps miscast . . . Or maybe we are used to seeing him as a more lightweight, less stressed character. But focus on his humour in the part, and you'll like him in the role.

The script and pointed jests about the senate etc are VERY topical to its time. So those jibes are very dated. A lot of these political jokes are lost on a 21st-century audience - especially if viewers are NOT American - as the barbs won't be part of our political zeitgeist or country's history.

I'm not sure just what Irving Berlin's involvement in the film is (he is cited - "Music and Lyrics by Irving Berlin" - in the opening credits), as it is a DANCE musical rather than a song-&-dance musical. Sadly, because of the credits, I kept expecting a few songs - especially by Hope who is always entertaining when singing. But such vocals from Hope never appeared . . . More's the pity. There are only a few ensemble songs, and they are immemorable, so much so that I have forgotten them already! A bit of editing in the credits, by the Paramount studio, would have helped the viewer. I like Berlin's music, and was expecting some good songs by him, so it's non-event irked me.

It is not a bad movie. It's just too much variance, swinging from one genre of film to another. Other Bob Hope films have better passed the test of time.

I think if more movie viewers knew the story behind Louisiana Purchase the film might be better appreciated on some levels and downgraded on others.

Five years before Louisiana Purchase made it to Broadway, Huey P. Long was shot and killed in the State Capitol building in Baton Rouge. What Senator Long's intentions were for the future as far as national office was concerned is speculative fodder for historians. But he did leave behind a political machine that was the closest thing to a dictatorship we had in America's 20th Century.

Long gathered around him a gang of crooks that had few rivals among other political machines in skullduggery. Long was also smart in making very sure that very few of them were likely to be rivals. In fact some years earlier, Huey had some real problems with a Lieutenant Governor who started showing signs of independence. But that's another story.

When he died the sins of his henchmen couldn't be covered up for any length of time. Even while he was alive, FDR's Justice Department was digging into Louisiana for scandal. After Huey Long died it all came out. During the late thirties the newspapers were filled with stories of indictments and convictions coming out of Louisiana from the Governor on down. The title of the film comes from the popular name for the Long machine scandals, which were dubbed the Second Louisiana Purchase, like Watergate became the term for all the corruption stemming from the Nixon administration.

Maybe one day someone might do a serious expose of those scandals and they might make a great film. But this Louisiana Purchase isn't it.

Maybe because it was done too gently on Broadway to be real satire. The plot here and on Broadway is that the gang (who in real life would have had trouble tying their shoelaces without the Kingfish's brain behind them) frame a schnook of a State Representative as the fall guy for all the corruption. On Broadway it was William Gaxton, for the movies it was Bob Hope.

As written it's a typical Bob Hope role with a lot of topical humor that might be lost on today's audience. Irving Berlin did the songs for Louisiana Purchase. The show marked his return to Broadway, he was last there in 1933 for As Thousands Cheer. And it was his first book musical since The Cocoanuts. Berlin as a rule favored revue type shows. After Louisiana Purchase, Berlin did no other kind of show on Broadway or on film.

The other leads from Broadway, Victor Moore, Vera Zorina, and Irene Bordoni repeated their roles for the film and all did very well by them.

If this had been done as a serious drama, Hope's character would have been looking to cut a deal and turn state's witness on the others. He certainly wouldn't have gotten out of his troubles in quite the way he does in Louisiana Purchase.

Still fans of Bob Hope will appreciate the film and if people learn about the corruption in Louisiana in that period it might stimulate the more historically minded among viewers.

Comedian Bob Hope, in his first Technicolor performance, effortlessly portrays Jim Taylor, a political lackey of the Louisiana Purchasing Company who is unaware that he is being gulled, replacing William Gaxton who starred on Broadway in this long-running satirical comedy, featuring music and lyrics by irving Berlin. Although the original work by Morrie Ryskind, with its sardonic savaging of politicians and their methods, is carefully muted in this cinematic version, there remains much to enjoy as Taylor frantically struggles to avoid taking a rap for the misdealings of a coterie of his graftsodden superiors, played effectively by such as Donald MacBride and Frank Albertson. An opera bouffe opening serves to explain to the audience that in order to avoid onerous lawsuits, Louisiana must be accepted as a mythical location, with a bevy of comely singers offering the standard "no resemblance" disclaimer for the decoy State. Victor Moore, Vera Zorina and Irene Bordoni reprise their stage roles from a work sadly seldom performed since, with the veteran director of musicals Irving Cummings doing his best to retain some of its operetta nature and still permit Hope to gambol about as the target of a Congressional investigation headed by Senator Oliver P. Loganberry (Moore). The screen play generally fails to capture the essence of its source, and therefore much of Hope's timing is wasted upon poor material, while Moore is so torpid that he appears to be more sleep deprived than anything else. Raoul Pene Du Bois formulated the beautiful costumes and designed the splendid sets, including that for a traditional dream ballet sequence showcasing prima ballerina Zorina, and plot propelling and witty lyrics by Berlin, although too often cut, enhance the overall production, particularly the delightful title piece, sung and danced to by alluring Dona Drake. The opening scenes fare best, in particular that wherein Emory Parnell, a top studio lawyer, reads the script and then dictates a singspieled letter in rhymed couplets to advise executives against replicating the original show, a very clever and funny beginning to this lavish Paramount motion picture.

Although many of the same people who made this mess of a 1941 film were also involved in the original hit 1940 Broadway production, something definitely went wrong in the transition to film, and that something is Bob Hope who was not in the original show. Instead of letting this mild satire on contemporary politics in the style of "Of Thee I Sing" play as it must have in New York, Hope and his army of gag writers apparently shoved in a ton of meaningless machine gun gags, including a few on such wartime topics as immigration. The Norwegian ballerina Vera Zorina, wife of George Ballanchine at the time, was then a big star on Broadway, but pretty as she was, the camera did not love her. The only saving grace of this embarrassingly misguided musical is the superb clowning of the great Victor Moore as the befuddled senator. He, too, was a great star of the theater, but unlike the others in this film he somehow knew how to underplay his comedy for the camera. A few of the many songs Irving Berlin wrote for Broadway were retained for the film, most delightfully the catchy tune, "You're Lovely and I'm Lonely," which Zorina and Moore do hilariously as they might have done it on Broadway, in this case without the overbearing scene-stealing presence of Hope. Hope was a great screen personality and made many fine films, but this is not one of them.

Recently, I was reading one of Internet columnist Jeffrey Well's articles and he wondered what the appeal of Bing Crosby was and that he doesn't translate beyond his era. One can say the same of his partner in crime from that era, Bob Hope. Truly, what was the appeal of this fella? Most of his pictures are terrible, including the Road Movies. The ones I can stomach are the Paleface pictures. All Bob Hope ever did was deliver puns and innuendos laced as wisecracks rather than real comedy - punchlines with no punch. He was a spoofish of current pop culture which he uses so frequently that a lot of the wisecracks fly over your head once you are out of the era, no let's the year, not even that three months ago pop culture events. This movie is one of his further nonsense. As the trailer spieled, this an adaptation of a Broadway smash that has been running for two years but as soon as you see the movie, you know it has been warped beyond belief for the screen because nothing this flimsy could have run on broadway for two years lest two weeks. And you just can feel there is a lot of political humor that has been cut out, the Victor Moore character keeps referencing democrats and republicans in oblique terms that do not advance the movie and thus are not funny because the terra firma has been eviscerated. The plot - Hope is a state rep in the house who is set up as the fall man for a bunch of corrupt school board officers. Moore is the good to his bones senator sent to investigate the irregularities. Somebody'd going to jail and it ain't going to be Hope so he tries to blackmail the senator by photographing him in an uncompromising situation, to say. The girl for the task the Hungarian immigrant played by Zorina. That's that. There is a Mardi Gras scene that is an embarassment to all involved in the production, us as an audience and others who have not seen this movie. Musical numbers are lovely but numb. Why does this movie have musical numbers? No reason except a Hope picture must have some and Hope is in none of them. By the time he is doing a filibuster a la Jimmy Stewart in Mr Smith goes to Washington, you the viewer will be ready to kill him. What a shame!