Freaktana A Major Disappointment

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Walter Sloane Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

edwagreen Mild fanfare with Red Skelton, Lucille Ball and Gene Kelly in this farce about what's going on at a local nightclub.Lucy is Lucy and Red does his usual nonsense. Kelly tries to play it straight but isn't given the substantial material needed. Zero Mostel, young and chubby looking, is along for the ride as a seer. You may not recognize him here but after all, it's 1943!The film begins to take off during Skelton's dream sequence of being transported back to revolutionary France as Louis XV. The costumes of that period along with the singing and dancing of modern music are a joy to watch.While Red, as Louis, has been over-taxing his subjects, he's in for a rude awakening when he gets up. Tax man Donald Meek is there to take away most of the money that he won in the sweepstakes.Much more of Cole Porter's fine music is missing in the film version.

theowinthrop It is a good musical, but it lacks...Cole Porter's score? DU BARRY WAS A LADY was a successful Porter show, mostly due to the antics of it's stars Bert Lahr and Ethel Merman. Merman was pretty svelt in her early Broadway and Hollywood career, and she was able to play the role of May Daly as it really was written - a gold digger who did not like the attentions of Lahr's Louis Blore (in the musical the attendant in the men's room of the nightclub in the modern portion of the story). When playing Du Barry, Merman's May is constantly keeping Louis at arm's length - and enjoying his discomfort. That is not the situation in the film...but the film varies in many ways.Besides the fact that squeamish MGM people changed Louis into a cloak room attendant, he faces two rivals for May. In the musical it was only Alec (Gene Kelly here), but in the film there is also Willy, the nightclub owner (Douglas Dumbrille) who actually turns out to be quite a nasty customer towards his monarch in the 18th Century section. In the show Willy was a trifle more sleazy in both modern and 18th Century sections, and actually sells a half interest in the club to Louis when he is enriched by his Irish Sweepstakes winnings.There was no Swami character in the musical - but it's nice to see Zero Mostel in one of his earliest roles: he plays the Swami for all he can squeeze out of it, wild-eyed in his crystal gazing (and managing to get a five dollar bill out of Andrew Toombs, as one of the customers). By the way, his name in the 18th Century section is not Taliostra, but Cagliostro - he is fitted into that section as the 18th Century charlatan who was dragged into the Affair of the Diamond Necklace. Mostel also does his imitation of Charles Boyer in the show, which was apparently from his own nightclub act (according to Robert Osborne, on Turner Classic Movies tonight).There was also no Ginny (Virginia O'Brien) character to pair off with Louis at the end. But there is no reason to be critical of this - Louis does deserve something for his giving up on May.This film version does preserve two songs of Porter's score. "Do I Love You Do I?" which Gene Kelly first sings and then dances to on stage is a good number. By the way, his dance routine here with the chorus girls may be the first time (on film) that he did that "push-up" positioned jump slide that he later repeated in THE PIRATE). There is also the conclusion of the musical with the principles (including band leader Tommy Dorsey) doing "Friendship". Lucille Ball would later sing the same song with Vivian Vance on I LOVE LUCY, so she sings it here. Oddly enough in that number she uses her real voice. Earlier it was dubbed to sound more sultry. One may also catch in some background dance music a third number from the show, "What a Swell Party This Is!" which was later to pop up and be sung in HIGH SOCIETY.But the most interesting song change (due to it's risqué lyrics) was "In the Morning No!" That song, a duet in the 18th Century section of the film between King Louis and DuBarry, has lines like, "Do you like Pike's Peak my dear? Kindly tell me so. Yes, I like Pike's Peak my dear...but in the morning no!!" In the film it is replaced by a duet in DuBarry's bedroom between the King and her, and here the double entrendres of the new song deal with food (cheesecake, for example). Who was fooling who here? Rags Ragland's character is a busboy in the original, and a pain in the neck to Louis Blore. But he does transform into the Dauphin (future Louis XVI) and does accidentally shoot an arrow into Louis's behind (not his back as in the film). He too had a song dropped from the film - "Give Them the Ooh La La!" which is better forgotten. Not one of Porter's best lyrics or songs.But then, I have an advantage. In the late 1960s I saw DU BARRY in a revival at the old Equity Library Theater on West 103rd Street in Manhattan. It was a good production, but I best remember it for the performance of the actor playing the Dauphin. Impish with a sinister grin, he was the charismatic figure in that production - even singing that awful tune with all the brio he'd bring to other roles. It was the only time I saw Danny DeVito in a stage production. He was wonderful.

silverscreen888 The Roy Del Ruth directed romp "Du Barry Was Lady" from 1943 I suggest is one of the most imitated of all cinematic musicals. Its sincere main storyline involving dancer lovestruck Gene Kelly with gorgeous Lucille Ball and funnnyman Red Skelton with Virginia O'Brien is solidly presented. But this Sam Goldwyn style extravagance then blossoms out to include an extended dream-fantasy sequence. The later frenetic pageant stars all the characters in a royal French misadventure with Kelly as a rebel against the corrupt King, Ball as the infamous Du Barry who falls for the handsome "Black Arrow", her chief enemy, and Red Skelton as the dreamer and inept french King Louis XV. The immense cast also includes Rags Ragland, an early Zero Mostel as the Swami, powerful Douglass Dumbrille as Kelly's rival, Donald Meek, George Givot, talented actress Louise Beavers as a lovable but bossy maid, Niagara, and the Tommy Dorsey orchestra with the Pied Pipers, at this time including Dick Haymes and Jo Stafford, plus the Goldwyn Girls. The script for this expensive and lovely musical excuse for two hours' entertainment was supplied from a play by Herbert Fields and Buddy DeSylva, adapted by Nancy Hamilton. the screenplay was provided by Irving Brecher, with additional dialogue by Wilkie Mahoney. If the viewer looks closely, one can perhaps spot Marilyn Maxwell as a Goldwyn Girl, Ava Gardner (somwhere in the background), and fine actors Emory Parnell, Kay Aldridge and Grace Albertson in bit parts. Dorsey's orchestra is given several fine numbers, featuring his many talented sidemen. But the film belongs to the Kelly-Ball mismatch and to Red Skelton, being pursued by O'Brien. The producer was Arthur Freed, who employed Karl Freund's lucid cinematography, memorable art direction of the great Cedric Gibbons, Edmund Willis's elaborate set decorations done with Henry Grace, Gile Steel's male costumes and lovely female counterparts designed by Irene Sharaff, Sydney Guilaroff's difficult hair styles and Jack Dawn's inspired makeup. Music I suggest dominates much of the film; so, mention should be made of the orchestrations by Leo Arnaud and Axel Stordahl, done with George Bassman and music adaptor Roger Edens. Sy Oliver was also involved in orchestrations along with musical director George E. Stoll. Charles Waters is credited with the choreography, including several very fine production numbers. After not having seen the film for many years, I found its theatrical basis only a bit confining--the entire main film takes place in a large nightclub the performances more than adequate and the technicolor of this production absolutely lovely. Ball is much better in the French dream sequence I judge than in the more dramatic central plot; Kelly and Skelton acquit themselves very winningly; and Dumbrille and Mostel dominate every scene they are allowed to play. This can be a most enjoyable film, I suggest, for those in the mood for pure entertainment with a stronger story line than is usual for such 1930s and 1940s extravaganzas staged by Hollywood's studio tsars.

nycritic DU BARRY WAS A LADY is one of those precious few movies that found Lucille Ball performing at an A-movie status and even then it wouldn't bring her much success. Her move to MGM did change her image completely, however, bringing it to the one that became her trademark with her flaming-red hair, huge pompadour, and four-cornered lips, all making their debut in this film. She looks absolutely gorgeous, her hair luxurious and fitted into fabulous gowns that cemented the presence she already exuded but had been denied.The plot of DU BARRY WAS A LADY is barely there and as light as a bubble: a hat-check man, Louis Blore (Red Skelton) is in love with nightclub singer May Daly (Ball) who is herself in love with a dancer, Alex Howe (Gene Kelly). However, she rebukes the attention of either men, letting Kelly know early on she can never marry poor because of the poverty-related circumstances she was born into. Louis winds up winning the sweepstakes, May agrees to marry Louis, but in a turn of events, Louis is given a "mickey" that sends him into an extended dream sequence which mirrors the actions taking place in the present and has May slowly but surely develop a change of heart and find her true love.Overall, the movie, like all of the MGM musicals, is a tour-de-force of visuals, musical numbers, and kinetic energy. It capitalized on the advent of Technicolor which made it even richer to enjoy; had it been filmed in black and white it would not have had the same impact. Lucille Ball became -- if momentarily -- a star in her own right even when her part initially required little more than she be there and speak her lines, although she brought a sharp comic timing courtesy of her intense training with Red Skelton that foreshadowed the type of physical comedy she would exercise in "I Love Lucy." DU BARRY WAS A LADY is also notorious for bringing Ava Gardner into visual consciousness in a small part and introducing a twenty-eight year old comic actor named Zero Mostel.