The Cat and the Fiddle

In the years before she teamed up with Nelson Eddy and became the object of later camp mockery, Jeannette MacDonald starred in several bright, sophisticated musical comedies directed by Ernst Lubitsch, and in one of the greatest of all musical films, Rouben Mammoulian's Love Me Tonight. MacDonald had many talents, and they were all on display in these movies. She could sing wonderfully, act, do comedy, and be quite sexy.

Unfortunately, while The Cat and the Fiddle belongs to this pre-Eddy period, it does not measure up to the other films. It has all the saccharine sentimentality--the corn--of old fashioned operetta without any of the high spirits and with little of the sophisticated humor. In addition, Ramon Novarro is no Maurice Chevalier. He is earnest but dull and too effeminate to be believable as the object of MacDonald's romantic interest. The best one can say is that he can sing reasonably well.

Besides the pleasure of hearing MacDonald sing and do her best to inject some life and naughtiness into the story, there is one other high point: Charles Butterworth in his role as Charles, the goofy hanger-on with the absurd non-sequiturs. He was a delightful character actor of the time.

There is one particularly good Jerome Kern song: The Night Was Made for Love. Also worth seeing is Vivienne Segal in one of her rare movie appearances. One of her greatest Broadway roles was in Pal Joey.