|
Du Barry Was a Lady |  | Actors: Red Skelton, Lucille Ball, Gene Kelly, Tommy Dorsey
Studio: Warner Home Video
Category: DVD
List Price: $19.98
Buy New: $6.49
as of 11/27/2009 13:09 CST details
You Save: $13.49 (68%)
New (28) Used (11) from $6.00
Seller: bookbarn2020
Rating:  20 reviews
Sales Rank: 28116
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Subtitled, NTSC
Languages: Portuguese (Original Language), Spanish (Original Language), English (Subtitled), French (Subtitled)
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 101 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: D79631D
UPC: 012569796317
EAN: 0012569796317
ASIN: B000O76ZRQ
Theatrical Release Date: August 13, 1943
Release Date: June 19, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Similar Items:
| |
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Madcap comedy musical about a hat check man. He gets the girl of his dreams when he wins the lottery - even if she doesnchr(39)t love him. But when hechr(39)s knocked out cold by a drinking accident he dreams that hechr(39)s King Louis XV after Madame DuRunning Time: 101 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/CLASSIC Rating: NR UPC: 012569796317 Manufacturer No: 79631
Amazon.com
Presented in glorious Technicolor, Du Barry Was a Lady is an all-singing, all-dancing musical extravaganza with enough star power to light a major city. Freely adapted from the Cole Porter musical that was a Broadway smash in 1939, this was Lucille Ball's first color film, and after several years of lower-profile movies at RKO, Lucy jumped at the chance to star in an MGM musical, assuming the role that Ethel Merman had played on Broadway. And while Lucy gets plenty of screen time to strut her stuff as the sassy and lovelorn nightclub singer May Daly, the real star of the show is Red Skelton as hat-check boy Louis Blore (played by Bert Lahr on Broadway), whose affection for May is matched by Alec Howe (Gene Kelly), a struggling songwriter with whom May--against her gold-digger instincts--has reluctantly fallen in love. But when newly-rich sweepstakes winner Louis accidentally drinks a "Mickey Finn" intended for Alec, he passes out and dreams of being France's King Louis XV, living in royal splendor and running after the lovely Madame Du Barry (Ball) in the palace at Versailles. It's a comedic spin on The Wizard of Oz, with the contemporary characters (including Zero Mostel in a wacky supporting role) playing their 18th-century counterparts. This free-form premise is merely a clever excuse for an eye-candy feast of musical comedy, and Du Barry Was a Lady works best as a smorgasbord of all-star entertainment, from the jazzy swing of Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra (with Buddy Rich on drums) to the grand-scale production numbers featuring the splendidly costumed Vargas girls (made famous in the pages of Esquire magazine) and Gene Kelly at his fancy-footed best. It's a veritable explosion of Technicolor fun (this DVD transfer is nothing short of spectacular), and in addition to some fine singing by Virginia O'Brien, vigilant movie buffs can spot Lana Turner in a small, uncredited role. Also included in The Lucille Ball Film Collection, this delightful DVD includes two short subjects from 1943: "Seeing Hands" is an Oscar-nominated "Pete Smith Specialty" short about Ben Helwig, who overcame blindness to become a gifted machinist; the film's progressive message encourages industry to hire persons with disabilities who can make a valuable contribution to wartime industry. Also included is the MGM "Barney Bear" cartoon "Bah, Wilderness," and a faded print of the original theatrical trailer for Du Barry Was a Lady, which really makes you appreciate the dazzling Technicolor of the full-length feature. --Jeff Shannon
|
| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 20
 Du Barry was a Lady October 18, 2009
T. Forster (Victoria, Australia)
Great cast. Classic comedy. Always a pleasure to watch. I enjoy it everytime. I am glad to have it in my collection of classic comedies.
An Explosion of Color! August 24, 2009
M. Burch
This classic gem is an explosion of color and pure comedy. Red Skelton and Lucille Ball together, are you kidding me? How could you not love 2 of America's greatest clowns in their prime film-acting careers. The plot takes a slight dip, as Red drinks a bit of an (un)savory cocktail, but the show must go on. Both these charming redheads were a special gift to cinema and television. Buy it, watch it, savor it, enjoy it, and don't think about it!!Du Barry Was a Lady
"Why is it all the rich people have the money?" May 7, 2009
Samantha Kelley (USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
May Daly (Lucille Ball) and Alec Howe (Gene Kelly) are in love, but he's too poor for her taste. Instead of marrying him, she wants to find a rich man even if she doesn't love him. When the hat check boy from the nightclub she works at (Red Skelton) wins a sweepstakes, she reluctantly agrees to marry him after he announces their engagement to the papers. Then after a big mix-up, the new money finds himself knocked out and dreaming he is Louis XV.
It is interesting that Ball wears red and pink frequently throughout the film, two colors that redheads are often warned to stay away from. Consequently, she looks more glamourous in her blonde wig and 18th century clothes in the dream sequence.
This snappy musical jumps around all over the place, but what it lacks in cohesiveness, it more than makes up for in entertainment. Really, the story isn't vital because the musical numbers are so good, and the stars have so much personality.
Kelly is gorgeous here, and his rendition of "Do I Love You?" is beautiful. "I Love an Esquire Girl" is a delight. The lyrics mention a lot of pieces of pop culture that are still relevant today, and it ends with a cameo by a beautiful star. The Cole Porter finale is a lot of fun as well, and a total departure from the story.
The worst musical number is Virginia O'Brien singing "Salome." The song isn't bad and her voice is great, but gosh, are her eyes dead! She looks incredibly bored the whole time she's singing, just staring into the camera like her eyes are made of glass.
Zany, colorful musical... March 15, 2009
Ruth Anderson
I absolutely love musicals, and while I'd rank Du Barry Was a Lady as one of the lesser films to come out of MGM's Freed Unit, it does have a lot going for it. The film is a shimmering Technicolor jewel, full of eye-popping sets and spectacular, elaborate costumes. Like two of the other films in the Lucille Ball Film Collection, Lucy plays a showgirl, but this time she's at her most luminous and sympathetic. Sure, she claims that money is more important than love, but she never leaves you doubting that she's got it bad for Gene Kelly's struggling piano-playing hoofer. Du Barry was only Kelly's second picture, and he gets a nice little solo to the Cole Porter gem "Do I Love You?" When the action moves to 18th-century France, Kelly turns into the "Black Arrow," a swashbuckling character that nicely foreshadows Kelly's turn in The Pirate five years later. Red Skelton is absolutely hilarious as the hapless hat-check boy in love with Lucy who turns into Louis XV when he mistakenly drinks a "Mickey Finn" intended for Kelly. Zero Mostel and Virginia O'Brien round out the supporting cast nicely. Tommy Dorsey and his orchestra are also prominently featured as the music act at the club where all the action occurs. The DVD is supplemented with the trailer, a cartoon ("Bah Wilderness"), and a truly fascinating short subject - the Pete Smith Specialty "Seeing Hands." This short was nominated for an Oscar and tells the story of Ben Helwig, who was blinded as a child and went on to become a really talented machinist during the war. It's really a very forward-thinking piece urging industry to hire people with disabilities because they could make important contributions to war-time industry. Du Barry is a good film to view for anyone who's a fan of the magic touch the Freed Unit brought to movie musicals - top-notch talent, colorful spectacle, and catchy tunes.
 What Gene Kelly does to "Do I Love You, Do I" is...ah...memorable. Thank goodness for Lucille Ball and Donald Meek October 9, 2008
C. O. DeRiemer (San Antonio, Texas, USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
"Be brave, my friend. You are dying for your country!" says The Black Arrow (Gene Kelly) to his pal, the grubby Taliostra (Zero Mostel), as the tumbrel bears them to the guillotine.
"Yeah," says Taliostra, "but I was born in the city." Expect much more of the same with Du Barry Was a Lady.
The 1939 Broadway smash starred two powerful performers, Bert Lahr and Ethel Merman, a first rate, innuendo-filled set of songs by Cole Porter, and lots of girls and gags. So what did MGM do when the studio bought the rights? Ditched Merman and Lahr and almost all of the Porter songs. (To be fair, a good many of Porter's lyrics would not have gotten past Hollywood's Code of Decency). MGM kept the girls.
MGM bought the rights for three reasons...to have a vehicle to showcase its up-and-coming comic lead, Red Skelton; the same with their newest knockout beauty coming to them from RKO, Lucille Ball; and to use Gene Kelly until they could figure out what to do with him. Skelton plays Louis Blore, a hatcheck boy at a posh New York nightclub who has a crush on May Daly (Ball), the club's headliner. But she wants security, not love. Still, we know she likes Alec Howe (Kelly), the nightclub's MC, dancer and songwriter, who loves her. When Louis wins the lottery, May decides to marry him. But then a mistaken mickey knocks Louis out and he wakes up as Louis XV, with May as Madame Du Barry and Alec as Black Arrow, the dashing fighter for freedom. All those comic relief employees of the nightclub, the likes of Mostel, Rags Ragland and Virginia O'Brien, show up as peasants or nobles, along with just about everyone else Louis had met in the nightclub, including Donald Meek. Things finally are resolved, with happiness all around, when Louis comes to and finds himself back in the nightclub with May, Alec and all his pals.
The movie has that smooth, unreal MGM Technicolor gloss that can make even genuine talent seem artificial. The best thing that can be said is that the movie has a few highlights and a great deal of barely imaginative but skilled professionalism. To substitute for the songs by Porter that were pitched, there is, in my view, a hodge-podge of mostly second-rate and facile Hollywood music and lyric writing. In place of Porter's clever, sophisticated and amusing songs, including the inventive and salacious "But in the Morning, No" where he comes up with some startling metaphors for sex in the a.m., we're stuck with "Madame, I Love Your Crepes Suzettes" and "I Love an Esquire Girl." Even Lahr wouldn't be able to make these lyrics funny. All Skelton does is mug and prance while he performs them.
If you like Red Skelton, you might enjoy Du Barry Was a Lady. He's in almost every scene, doing all of his unusual shtick. For me, Skelton was at his most appealing when he wasn't doing all the grab-`em-by-the-throat clowning, Give me the Skelton who was Wally "The Fox" Benton, master sleuth on radio, inept in real life, in Whistling in the Dark (1941) (1941), Whistling in Dixie (1942) and Whistling in Brooklyn (1943).
Lucille Ball is a knock out, strikingly gorgeous and with that skeptical, smart look about her that, I think, perpetually flummoxed studio heads. Those arched eyebrows of hers made her a challenge to cast. One of her most sympathetic and amusing roles, I think, was in Lured (1947), but it didn't do her career much good.
More than anything else, I think it's Gene Kelly's singing and dancing to Porter's great song, "Do I Love You, Do I" that establishes how out of sync this movie is with any sense of style or respect for excellent material. The song is one of the few from the Broadway show that was kept. To do it justice (even knowing that Merman introduced it) it needs the languid sophistication of a Lee Wiley or even the driving treatment Peggy Lee gave Lover. Instead, we have a typically Kelly interpretation, all on the surface, singing and tapping, and then a fast, athletic performance with chorus girls set to a blaring, flashy orchestration. Whoever was responsible for the grotesque treatment this great song received should have had their taps stapled to their lips. Here are the words. Perhaps you'll recall the melody.
Do I love you, do I?
Doesn't one and one make two?
Do I love you, do I?
Does July need a sky of blue?
Would I miss you, would I?
If you ever should go away?
If the sun should desert the day,
What would life be?
Will I leave you, never?
Could the ocean leave the shore?
Will I worship you forever?
Isn't heaven forever more?
Do I love you, do I?
Oh, my dear, it's so easy to see,
Don't you know I do?
Don't I show you I do,
Just as you love me.
For good measure, the movie also gives us Tommy Dorsey and his orchestra, an unbilled Jo Stafford and the Pied Pipers (with Dick Haymes), and a curious trio called The Three Oxford Boys who imitate various dance bands by humming through their noses. The movie is glossy and bright, and if you can tolerate Red Skelton's continuous mugging and pratfalls, it might be worth a look. The DVD transfer is first rate.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 20
|
|
|
|
CERTAIN CONTENT THAT APPEARS ON THIS SITE COMES FROM AMAZON SERVICES LLC. THIS CONTENT IS PROVIDED ‘AS IS’ AND IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE OR REMOVAL AT ANY TIME.
| |
