Sweethearts

Some spice along with the sugar, and most welcome. MGM chose an old chestnut, the 1913 Victor Herbert operetta "Sweethearts," for their first three-color Technicolor movie. Audiences in 1938 were unlikely to accept the original's story about an orphan raised by a laundry operator only to find out that she was a princess by birth, however, so the studio took that plot and turned it into a show-within-the-movie, thereby retaining much of Herbert's score. MGM hired Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell to write an entirely new backstage story, adding witty dialogue and a plot that made logical sense to the operetta's silliness. Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy play Gwen ...