Monte Carlo (1930)

On the day of her wedding to a Duke (Claud Allister), the bride (Jeanette MacDonald) leaves him at the altar and flees to Monte Carlo. Penniless, she meets a Count (Jack Buchanan) who poses as a hairdresser while he woos her. Based on the play THE BLUE COAST by Hans Muller Einigen and directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Another of the saucy and witty musical innovations that Lubitsch did in the early pre-code 1930s. The stage star Jack Buchanan (some 23 years before his triumph in THE BAND WAGON) steps in for Maurice Chevalier and he's charming. Jeanette MacDonald is in top form and sexy in her satin slips and form fitting negligees. When she went to MGM and they paired her with the stolid Nelson Eddy in those cloying operettas, that sex appeal disappeared and she atrophied. The songs by Richard Whiting and W. Franke Harling are clever and even spawned a hit song, Beyond The Blue Horizon. A sterling example of what is referred to as the Lubitsch touch. With Zasu Pitts and Tyler Brooke.