THE CHOCOLATE SOLDIER (1941)

Originally welded onto George Bernard Shaw’s ARMS AND THE MAN (War, Sex, Bulgaria), Oscar Straus’s popular Viennese operetta was retrofitted at M-G-M for Ferenc Molnár’s THE GUARDSMAN (jealous Musical Comedy Leading Man disguises himself to woo his own ‘unfaithful’ Leading Lady wife). No wonder Straus’s score is arbitrarily scattered about (with hit number ‘My Hero’ getting five hearings!), and buttressed with party pieces by Mussorsky, Wagner & Saint-Saëns. And why not? Nelson Eddy, on one of his periodic outings sans Jeanette MacDonald, is in resounding voice, and certainly does better on the vocals than in handling Molnár’s sophisticated Boulevard Farce. (Comic style on the hearty side). While new co-star, debuting Metropolitan Opera mezzo-soprano Risë Stevens, glories in a rich, warm voice that knocks the socks off M-G-M’s twittering stratospheric songbirds. (Her comic style? Mostly of the butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth variety.*) Poor Molnár also gets manhandled by the Hollywood Production Code since his playful banter on infidelity is sabotaged by having Stevens know right from the start that her new Russian lover is really her very own husband. In the play (and in M-G-M’s 1931 Pre-Code Talkie with Alfred Lunt & Lynn Fontanne), neither the audience nor the masquerading husband can be quite sure that she knows.* Considering that Roy Del Ruth directs as if one scene isn’t connected to the next, the film is harmless stuff, and certainly sounds well. And that recurring hit number, ‘My Hero,’ is a first-rate earworm.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Greta Garbo’s TWO-FACED WOMAN, out the same year, ran into the exact same Production Code trouble. In that one, it’s Garbo who’s two-timing herself with Melvyn Douglas . . . except he knows all along!

DOUBLE-BILL: *(A theoretical double-bill as this is currently unavailable.) Stevens did a 1955 tv version of CHOCOLATE SOLDIER that may have returned to the original Shaw-based storyline. OR: As mentioned above, The Lunts in THE GUARDSMAN/’31, alas very stiffly directed by Sidney Franklin.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Returning to Hollywood just once, in Leo McCarey/Bing Crosby’s GOING MY WAY/’44, Stevens never enjoyed the filmmaking process. Especially lip-synching on set where she generally sang her numbers an octave below pitch to her own pre-recorded track. It kept her from opening her mouth too wide and spoiling the pretty picture. She hated it. So, back to Met for two more decades on stage, then fund-raising until her death in 2013 at 99.