THE MERRY WIDOW (MGM, 1952) Warner Archive

1952 was an ‘interesting’ year to be tooling around MGM’s Culver City backlot. For although the freshly painted plywood facades remained remarkably familiar, closer inspection of the executive offices inside the Thalberg Building would have revealed a modicum of fear lurking beyond the peripheries of that ‘business as usual’ model in daily operations. Indeed, how could there not be any anxiety on the home front? Louis B. Mayer, the seemingly irreplaceable cornerstone of the company had been unceremoniously deposed in an old-time palace coup, instigated by his arch nemesis, Loewe’s Incorporated’s Nicholas Schenk. Mayer’s successor was Dore Schary, an administrator at best, who never fancied himself a ‘star maker’. Schary was wholly unaccustomed to Metro’s glamor-machine; even, perhaps, resentful that, at least for the time being, its Teflon-coated, costly and colorful confections were still out-grossing his stringently produced and personally supervised ‘message pictures’. Schary might have done well to observe that neither of these polar opposites in entertainment were rising to a level of distinction at the box office they had once held during the war years when MGM truly was ‘the king of glossy features’. In hindsight, MGM proved too big for Schary’s shoes, a distinction perhaps not lost on him, though he kept this to himself. But Schary's shortcomings would soon become apparent to the studio’s top-heavy roster of talent, hand-picked and cultivated to perfection under Mayer’s old home guard. As contracts came up for renewal, more often than not, this incredible assemblage of raw talent was shown the front gate rather than where to re-sign on the dotted line and one of Schary’s favorite blood sports was Lana Turner.

To Schary, Turner represented everything that was garish and glib about the old Mayer regime – a star, haughty and exclusive, capable of holding court, but also holding up production if it so pleased her, and, with more arrogance than pride of workmanship. Something had to be done to assert Schary’s authority as the new President of the company. And thus, Schary, to his own, and the studio’s ever-lasting detriment, embarked upon a campaign to transform Mayer’s dream factory into a streamlined and prolific purveyor of grittier, true-to-life storytelling – a place where there was no room or need for a Lana Turner. This ought to have kept Metro perfectly aligned with the post-war public’s increasing appetite for realism in their popular entertainments. Except that MGM, in hindsight, proved incapable of letting go of that fabulously out-of-touch froth that had once made it the envy of the industry. And so, the studio pressed on, resurrecting its past glories in a spate of costly remakes, more often than not, hardly up to scratch with the originals on which they were based, and rarely, if ever, to top them in the mind’s eye of those old enough to recall with fondness the ‘good ole’ days.

Curtis Bernhardt’s 1952 reboot of Ernst Lubitsch’s The Merry Widow (1934, and, itself a remake of the silent 1925 version co-starring Mae Murray and John Gilbert), is as lavishly appointed as anything MGM could muster in its heyday. Cobbled together from the mammoth sets originally designed for the studio’s 1938 production of Marie Antoinette, the 52’ Merry Widow also had 3-strip Technicolor to recommend it. Alas, what the picture thoroughly needed, and mercilessly lacked was a pair of costars who could finesse this creaky Franz Lehar operetta back to life. The ‘34 version benefited from the Gaelic charms of Maurice Chevalier and pert sass of Jeanette MacDonald – also, the splendor of a Ruritanian artifice working overtime under Irving G. Thalberg’s personal supervision. Alas, with Thalberg gone, and Ruritania not what it used to be, this Merry Widow proceeded to lumber along, looking more like a decorous postcard from the Mayer/Thalberg ‘wish you were here’ backlot, than a timeless glam-bam Euro-trash principality on the cusp of fiscal implosion. In a role that required so much more of her than to merely be as decorous as her surroundings, Lana Turner simultaneously illustrated two maxims in the changing Hollywood; first, that the ole-time sparkle of vintage champagne with which she had been so integrally associated throughout the 1940’s was fast fading in the rearview of the picture-making biz, and second, that even for Turner, then a more stately and very ‘mature’ 31-years-old (thanks, in part to her heavy nightclubbing) was doomed to remain in drydock, while that proverbial ship of time itself had already set sail without someone to inform the ex-sex-bomb she was no longer on it. 

While Turner still looked every inch the elegant, flaxen-haired vixen of the piece, her tragic insistence to act as though her own biological clock had stopped ticking at the age of 21, coupled with her crushing deficits as a musical/comedy entertainer, resulted in a movie musical in which the widow in question was neither as bereaved nor as ‘merry’ as she had once been when Jeanette MacDonald played the part.  Listening to Trudy Irwin’s silken dubbed vocals emanating from Turner’s hourglass figure, one has the distinct sense far too much embalming fluid has been applied to plaster-up and play-down Turner’s shortcomings. The same holds true for Turner’s co-star, Fernando Lamas (who did his own singing) – then, marketed by the studio as a Latin Lothario. Undeniably, Lamas had his ‘charm’ – a China-closet full of pearly whites and pomaded pate of wavy raven locks, though he could also be a bit of a brute where his leading ladies were concerned, both on and off the set. Born Fernando Álvaro Lamas y de Santos in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Lamas’ arrival at MGM at the tail end of 1949, after first appearing in movies in his native land, was seen as a much-needed shot in arm for the studio’s ‘he-man’ department, ailing from the formidable dearth created by the aging charms of its resident ‘king’ – Clark Gable. Indeed, no one could top Gable. Not that Lamas’ ego agreed. In life, Lamas ran through a string of disposable affairs and four marriages, already pursuing his third to actress, Arlene Dahl, at the time The Merry Widow went into production. For a brief wrinkle in time, it appeared as though Lamas would throw over Dahl for Turner, with whom he had been publicly seen, and, who was quite accepting of his advances…to a point. However, when Turner chose to pay Lamas little mind while they were in attendance at a Hollywood party, Lamas fitful rage and assault on her person convinced Turner she wanted nothing further to do with this fiery stud du jour. Lamas wed Dahl – more of a blip than a union (though it did produce son, Lorenzo) before skirt-chasing after MGM’s aquatic sensation, Esther Williams – who astutely resisted until long after all of Lamas’ wild oats had been sewn elsewhere. Williams, who did marry Lamas in 1969, would remain his dutiful wife until he died from pancreatic cancer in 1982, age 66.

Presumably in recognition of the fact no one would buy Lana Turner as the widow of vaguely foreign extraction, in the remake of The Merry Widow, Turner plays Crystal Radek, a magnificently wealthy American relict on holiday in the financially depleted principality of Marschovia. Induced by the King (Thomas Gomez) to attend the unveiling of a statue in memory of her late husband, Crystal is beset by the slickly packaged charms of Count Danilo (Lamas) who has been ordered by the King to conquer Crystal’s heart so that her bank account may also linger in Marschovia, later, to fatten its stately coffers and keep its ailing economy afloat. One problem: this widow is not so easily swayed by animal magnetism, nor by sweet talk, nor even a delicious spin around the dance floor – 1934’s Hall of Mirrors sequence, featuring a small army of palatially-clad dancers, herein reduced to a rather gaudy vintage of extras scattered about a thinly fabricated ballroom that in no way – even in Technicolor – rivals the original moment for its sheer scope or production values. Alas, Crystal learns of the plot to woo her for her money and decides to play a cruel joke by setting up her devoted secretary, Kitty Riley (Una Merkel) to play the part of the wealthy dowager in her stead, thus to observe from a distance how much Danilo is willing to sell himself short for the sake of the nation. Aside: Merkel played the Queen in the 34’ version.

Despite her protestations, Crystal remains attracted to Danilo from afar. Now, Crystal arrives at Paris’ famed Maxim's where she poses as a mere chorine. Predictably, Danilo falls in love with her despite being pressured by the King to pursue ‘the widow’. While the glamor of the gathering is nevertheless well suited to Lana Turner’s virtues as the studio’s resident sexpot, in reality, Turner’s life could not have been in more dire disarray. Not only had her third marriage to millionaire, Bob Topping ended in divorce the year before, but Turner was quick to discover Topping had squandered not only his own vast fortunes, but also, virtually her entire life’s savings on gambling debts, leaving Turner – whose best years at MGM were arguably behind her - financially vulnerable and penniless.  Distraught and seemingly cornered, Turner attempted suicide by slashing her wrists, necessitating that her fictional counterpoint wear either gloves or heavy bracelets during the making of The Merry Widow to conceal the scar.

It is difficult to dismiss this version of The Merry Widow as an outright failure, especially since the picture showed a profit on MGM’s ledgers, though not an overly resounding one - only $27,000. If nothing else, this incarnation is also notable for a brief glimpse of the devastatingly talented Gwen Verdon as a lusciously leggy can-can chorine at Maxims, with marvelous bit parts going to Richard Haydn (as Baron Popoff) and Robert Foote (Marquis DeCrillion). Paul Groesse’s art direction, under Cedric Gibbons supervision, Arthur Krams and Edwin B. Willis’ set decoration, and Helen Rose and Gile Steele’s costume design rates a level of perfection as yet still possible under Schary’s sponsorship, all of it luridly photographed in Technicolor by Robert Surtees. Truer still, owing to their backstage badinage, the romantic scenes between Lana Turner and Fernando Lamas (when neither has to sing or dance) crackles with a smart and sexy energy only passingly referenced in the earlier incarnations. To alleviate confusion, MGM unofficially buried its two prior versions in their vaults (a common practice for studios then, pretending the past never existed while putting forth their reasonable facsimiles in their stead), and, changing the name of Lubitsch’s justly celebrated 34’ confection to ‘A Lady Dances’ for its television debut. Despite its miserly profit, MGM had big plans to re-team Turner and Lamas again for Latin Lovers (1952). When the bottom fell out of the couple’s real-life love affair, these plans were quickly rewritten for Turner to costar with the studio’s other resident South American heartthrob, Ricardo Montalbán instead.

Warner Archive’s DVD is modestly appealing. Colors are not quite as robust as one might anticipate for a 3-strip Technicolor feature, and there is more than one occasion where the layers are slightly out of register, resulting in those pesky (but correctable) halos that render the image a soft, blurry mess. That said, there is nothing quite so egregious here. Contrast is excellent and age-related debris is kept to a minimum. Perhaps, WAC will get around to a Blu-ray one of these days, but I wouldn’t bet even money on it. This print still needs some work to ready it for hi-def. On the audio front – we get a nicely purposed 2.0 mono. It sounds excellent for its vintage and particularly within the limitations of a mono mix. MGM’s sound mixing department was so clever back in the day. By isolating the recordings, employing stereo stems situated everywhere around the auditorium, they could then mix the best elements together into a down-sampled mono that sounded just grand. The Merry Widow is no exception to this rule.  In keeping within the margins of WAC’s DVD releases, this one only comes with a trailer – a forgivable sin. Bottom line: while not as magical as the MacDonald/Chevalier classic, this version of The Merry Widow is at least worth a second glance on home video. The DVD is better than adequate, if hardly perfect. A remastered/restored Blu-ray would suit this movie better. WAC...are you listening? Judge and buy accordingly.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

3

VIDEO/AUDIO

3.5

EXTRAS

0