THE CAT AND THE FIDDLE
US, 1934, 88 minutes, Black and white and Colour.
Ramon Novarro, Jeanette Mac Donald, Frank Morgan, Charles Butterworth, Jean Hersholt, Vivienne Segal, Frank Conroy.
Directed by William K.Howard.
The Cat and the Fiddle is not a well-known MGM musical of the early 1930s. It is based on a Broadway play by Jerome Kern and Otto Harbuch, adapted by the team of Bella and Sam Spewak. Music and lyrics by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein.
Jeanette Mac Donald had made films with Maurice Chevalier and the next year was about to begin her series with Nelson Eddy. Here she is teamed with Mexican star, Ramon Navarro. He had appeared as Ben Her.
The plot is slight, he, Victor, composer, penniless, in Brussels, depending on the meeting arranged by his professor, Jean Hersholt, with an entrepreneur, Daudet, played by Frank Morgan. In a hurry, To gets into a taxi with a visiting American, singer and composer, Shirley, Jeanette Mac Donald. They do not get on well at all – and the taxi driver takes his music because he is not able to pay. As it turns out, each of the characters lives in an adjacent apartment and they clash with piano playing.
Nevertheless, Victor falls in love with Shirley, helps with her composition and is ready to sacrifice everything for her. He finds the taxi driver, retrieves his music, and then bowls the impatient entrepreneur who was persuaded to give him an audition. A crowd of fellow-musicians comes to listen, Shirley arrives for her appointment with the porfessor, looks in through a high window and is left stranded hanging. The entrepreneur gives Victor a chance, but he becomes infatuated with Shirley.
The couple seem to manage together, each falling in love, Victor trying to compose, and then he accompanies Shirley to Paris where her song is a great hit, sung all over the world in different languages, she becoming wealthy and supporting him, with Victor suffering writer’s block.
He pretends to spurn Shirley and goes back to Brussels to finish his operetta. She is hurt and, in the meantime, is courted by the entrepreneur who proposes and she accepts.
There is trouble with the production when the star of the show makes an advance and Victor is discovered by the wealthy husband, the producer, and she opts for him and comfort, and he withdraws his financial support. The theatre manager is after Victor who gives him a false cheque. Victor finds a substitute leading lady who is older and alcoholic.
In the meantime, the rather engaging character, Charles, Charles Butterworth, an eccentric man who gives Victor the money to get his portfolio back from the taxi driver but ask for lessons on the harp, sees that Shirley is about to marry, he hurries to see her, to try to persuade her to take the leading role – she refuses.
When all is about to fail, Shirley arrives, sings the role on the insistence of the entrepreneur – but, as the performance continues, Victor and Shirley fall in love again and the entrepreneur leaves.
The surprise at the end of the film is that it moves into the final stage sequence in colour, one of the earliest colour sequences at MGM.
