BALALAIKA

CREDITS

1939, 102 minutes, B&W.
Producer, Lawrence Weingarten; Director, Reinhold Schunzel; Screenplay, Jacques Deval, Charles Bennett and Leon Gordon; Cinematography, Joseph Ruttenberg and Karl Freund; Music Direction, Herbert Stothart; Sound, Douglas Shearer; Dance Direction, Ernst Matray.

CAST

Prince Peter Karaigan, Nelson Eddy; Lydia Makarova, Ilona Massey; Nikki Popoff, Charles Ruggles; Ivan Danchenoff, Frank Morgan; General Karagin, C. Aubrey Smith; Professor Marakov, Lionel Atwill; Captain Sibirsky, Walter Woolf King; Masha, Joyce Compton; Lieutenant Smirnoff, Phillip Terry; The Russian Cossack Choir.

SONGS

At the Balalaika by George Posford and Eric Maschwitz; new lyrics by Bob Wright and Chet Forrest; Ride, Cossack, Ride; Tanya; Wishing Episode (Mirror Mirror) by Herbert Stothart, Wright and Forrest; Flow, Flow, Flow White Wine by Stothart and Gus Kahn; The Magic of Your Love by Franz Lehar, new lyrics by Kahn and Clifford Grey; A Life for the Czar by Mikhail Glinka; Shadows on the Sand by Rimsky-Korsakov, arranged by Wright and Forrest; God Save the Czar by Alexei Lvov and Vasili Zhukovsky; Stille Nacht (Silent Night) by Franz Gruber and Joseph Mohr; After Service; Song of the Volga Boatman; Otchichornya.

PLOT SYNOPSIS

"Based on the hit London stage play, Balalaika stars Nelson Eddy as a dashing cossack captain who poses as a poor student to win the heart of nightclub singer (and pro-Bolshevik) Ilona Massey. But not even their great love can transcend the bitter clash between classes that leads to the Russian Revolution."
- Liner Notes from MGM/Turner Videotape

NOTES

". . .a splendid musical entertainment in the opulent MGM tradition."
- Clive Hirschhorn, The Hollywood Musical

"A sumptuously produced operetta in the opulent MGM tradition."
- Variety

"Perfect for a mixed-media show at the Russian Tea Room - but at a theatre, without distraction? Nelson Eddy, in another uniform, smiling vacuously, and that beautiful, blank songbird, Ilona Massey, in an overdressed adaptation of Eric Maschwitz's play about Russian exiles in Paris."
- Pauline Kael, 5001 Nights At The Movies

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