Six Lessons from Madame La Zonga (1941) User Reviews

If they had waited they could have had "Pistol Packin' Mama."

[horn-5 · 29 October 2001]

Once a song made it onto the Lucky Strike Hit Parade listing, the odds were high that Universal or Republic would buy the title and try to find a screenplay to fit. As a song, "Six Lessons From Madame La Zonga" made the Hit Parade only once---at the mumber seven position in the week of August 17, 1940---and then promptly fell out, but that was either enough for Universal or they bought it on the assumption that it would go even higher and be a hot commodity when the film was released. The wonder is that it even made the Hit Parade in any position, and it was a non-evergreen memory from the past by the time Universal released this film in January of 1941. But the top-billed and above-the-title names of Lupe Velez and Leon Errol was a nice move on their part to cash in on the popularity of RKO's "Mexican Spitfire" series starring Velez and Errol, and some people most likely bought their tickets expecting just that. Other than missing the insufferable Dennis character from the RKO films, there wasn't all that much difference to be seen anyway. Al Capp ran a parody episode in his "Li'l Abner" comic strip, based on the song title, stretching into several weeks in 1941 called Six Lessons From Adam LaZonga, featuring a sawed-off little shrimp that looked like George Bernard Shaw who gave lessons in making love. The Capp work holds up better than the original song or the film.

A plot you could pack into a peanut shell.

[mark.waltz · 3/10 · 25 March 2013]

There's little to laugh at in this alleged comedy where everybody screams so much with bad fake Spanish accents that you have to lean in to make out the dialog to figure out what's going on. From what I gathered, three shysters (Leon Errol, Lupe Velez and William Frawley) are all trying to con each other while Errol's daughter (Helen Parrish) feigns an Argentine birth to impress the man she loves. Velez is trying to get money to re-open her famous conga nightclub in Cuba and uses old acquaintance Errol in her scheme.

You'll be able to understand Ricky Ricardo's temperamental Spanish rants before you figure out what is going on in this idiotic overlong short that could have been wrapped up in 20 minutes rather than an hour. Only Shemp Howard (of "Three Stooges" fame) gets any laughs as a mute waiter. Errol and Velez obviously enjoy working together, but they should have stayed over at RKO with the "Mexican Spitfire" series where the gags were fast and furious even if the plots were sometimes tedious. Notice that Velez's heavy accent disappears when she breaks into the title song.