Typical whipped cream MGM comedy with some songs thrown in. Lana is a small time American entertainer knocking around Europe when we meet her at first with the unlikely name Frederica Brown. One night she happens to make the acquaintance of a romantic and musical prince who gives her the supposedly more charming but just as bad name of Fredda. Swept off her feet they make plans for the future which of course go off the rails when his father, the King, dies and he must take over. This of course happens everyday to itinerant performers! His meddling prime minister doesn't deliver the note he left for her and gives her the brush. She departs for home sadder but wiser.
Several years pass and Lana now renamed Fredda Barlo is a major film star with Barry Sullivan doggedly in pursuit and proposing marriage. Naturally this would be the precise moment the now deposed King would show up and they meet in the desert for a secret rendezvous, at the ranch house home of Marjorie Main and her niece Debbie Reynolds, where Lana gets the idea that he would be perfect to play the king in her new picture. You have to assume it's love because Pinza is not movie star material despite having a beautiful singing voice. It all continues on in equally ridiculous fashion until the expected ending.
A contentious production which Debbie wrote most amusingly about in her first biography. Just starting out, this was only her fourth film to be followed by Singin' in the Rain, she took the role of observer. Lana, pregnant during filming with a baby she would miscarry shortly afterward, hated Ezio Pinza, a boorish lout with incredibly bad breath and an octopus's hands and never saw the completed film. Marjorie Main who Debbie had the majority of her scenes with was a dotty old sod who carried on conversations with her long dead husband and would exit the scene to use the facilities reciting her lines as she departed. Metro put up with her eccentricities though since she was popular and punctual. The director just tried to keep the leads from killing each other and delivering the film on time and it does move at a decent clip.
A minor bauble for all involved this wasn't a hit when released and is certainly no work of art but it has the customary MGM high production values, the desert house in particular is beautiful, and is a harmless way to spend ninety minutes.
Several years pass and Lana now renamed Fredda Barlo is a major film star with Barry Sullivan doggedly in pursuit and proposing marriage. Naturally this would be the precise moment the now deposed King would show up and they meet in the desert for a secret rendezvous, at the ranch house home of Marjorie Main and her niece Debbie Reynolds, where Lana gets the idea that he would be perfect to play the king in her new picture. You have to assume it's love because Pinza is not movie star material despite having a beautiful singing voice. It all continues on in equally ridiculous fashion until the expected ending.
A contentious production which Debbie wrote most amusingly about in her first biography. Just starting out, this was only her fourth film to be followed by Singin' in the Rain, she took the role of observer. Lana, pregnant during filming with a baby she would miscarry shortly afterward, hated Ezio Pinza, a boorish lout with incredibly bad breath and an octopus's hands and never saw the completed film. Marjorie Main who Debbie had the majority of her scenes with was a dotty old sod who carried on conversations with her long dead husband and would exit the scene to use the facilities reciting her lines as she departed. Metro put up with her eccentricities though since she was popular and punctual. The director just tried to keep the leads from killing each other and delivering the film on time and it does move at a decent clip.
A minor bauble for all involved this wasn't a hit when released and is certainly no work of art but it has the customary MGM high production values, the desert house in particular is beautiful, and is a harmless way to spend ninety minutes.