Folies Bergère de Paris

Folies Bergère de Paris is a 1935 American musical comedy film produced by Darryl Zanuck for 20th Century Films, directed by Roy Del Ruth and starring Maurice Chevalier, Merle Oberon and Ann Southern. At the 8th Academy Awards, the “Straw Hat” number, choreographed by Dave Gould, won the short-lived Academy Award for Best Dance Direction, sharing the honor with “I've Got a Feelin' You're Foolin'” from Broadway Melody of 1936.[1] The film, based on the 1934 play The Red Cat by Rudolph Lothar and Hans Adler, is a story of mistaken identity, with Maurice Chevalier playing both a music-hall star and a business tycoon who resembles him. This was Chevalier’s last film in Hollywood for twenty years, and reprised familiar themes such as the straw hat and a rendering of the French song "Valentine".[2] This is also the last film to be distributed by Twentieth Century Pictures before it merged with Fox Film in 1935 to form 20th Century Fox.

This article is about the 1935 film. For the cabaret theatre, see Folies Bergère.
Folies Bergère de Paris
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Directed byRoy Del Ruth
Written byJessie Ernst (adaptation)
Bess Meredyth (screenplay)
Hal Long (screenplay)
Darryl F. Zanuck (contributing writer-uncredited)
Based onThe Red Cat
by Rudolph Lothar and Hans Adler
Produced byWilliam Goetz
Raymond Griffith
Darryl F. Zanuck
StarringMaurice Chevalier
Ann Sothern
Merle Oberon
CinematographyJ. Peverell Marley
Barney McGill
Edited byAllen McNeil
Sherman Todd
Music byAlfred Newman (uncredited)
Production
company
Distributed byUnited Artists
Release date
  • February 22, 1935 (1935-02-22)
Running time
82 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

Zanuck simultaneously produced a French-language version of the story, also directed by Roy Del Ruth, called L'homme des Folies Bergère. It stars Chevalier and Natalie Paley and Sim Viva.[3] Because that film was intended for the French market, they shot scenes showing chorus girls bare breasted. When censor Joseph Breen heard of it, he insisted that the Production Code be enforced even in a film destined for another country. The American Film Institute catalog site describes Zanuck's losing battle with the censors.[3]

The Red Cat, which was produced for the Broadway stage by Zanuck, ran for only 13 performances, but the studio benefited from four film adaptations.[4][5] The third and fourth versions were in Technicolor, these being That Night in Rio, (1941) directed by Irving Cummings (and starring Don Ameche, Alice Faye and Carmen Miranda) followed by On the Riviera (1951), directed by Walter Lang (and starring Danny Kaye, Gene Tierney and Corinne Calvet).

Cast

See also

References
  1. "The 8th Academy Awards (1936) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. Retrieved April 8, 2014.
  2. L’homme des Folies Bergere, according to Chevalier by Gene Ringgold and DeWitt Bodeen, published in 1973 by The Citadel Press, Secaucus, New Jersey, (p 130-135).
  3. "L'homme des Folies Bergère". catalog.afi.com. Retrieved 2020-09-13.
  4. "On the Riviera (1951) - Articles - TCM.com". Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved 2020-09-13.
  5. "The Red Cat – Broadway Play – Original | IBDB". www.ibdb.com. Retrieved 2020-09-13.
  • Green, Stanley (1999) Hollywood Musicals Year by Year (2nd ed.), pub. Hal Leonard Corporation ISBN 0-634-00765-3 page 41
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