The 1933 Jerome Kern-Otto Harbach musical, adapted from a novel by Alice Duer Miller, wasn't that well reviewed to begin with. But audiences liked the songs, especially "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," and the gowns, and loved a scene set in a bar with 1,000 actual liquor bottles (Prohibition had just been repealed). Most of Harbach's unwieldy, and rather unfunny, libretto gets preserved in this film adaptation, and while the score is considerably reduced, as usually then happened in Hollywood, some of the missing songs at least survive as underscoring. He wasn't the most dexterous lyricist, either. ("Now laughing friends deride/ Tears I cannot hide." Some friends!) Fortunately, Dorothy Fields was retained to rewrite some Harbach lyrics (she's billed with Jimmy McHugh, but he had nothing to do with it), and contribute one new song, the lovely "Lovely to Look At." That helps the musical presentation; nothing's going to help this slim plot. Irene Dunne, a little over-prim to these eyes, is the dress designer who variously loves and hates an impossibly handsome Randolph Scott, the Indiana bumpkin who's come to Paris to visit his aunt Helen Westley, a renowned couturier. He's traveling with Fred Astaire's band, and Fred hooks up with Ginger Rogers, who's a cabaret star with a fake Polish accent (a tribute to Lyda Roberti, who did the part onstage) but is really, coincidence of coincidences, his old flame, Lizzie Gatz. Sit through this tiresome plot and you'll get rewards, mostly Fred and Ginger dancing, and a brief display of Fred's excellent jazz piano playing, Irene's pretty soprano, and Ginger's way of hoisting a so-so comic line. Also dresses, lots and lots of dresses. Claire Dodd plays her patented shrew, ably, and it's over in under two hours. William Seiter's direction is nothing special, and the screenplay certainly isn't. You'll have a good time anyway.
