MAYTIME

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CREDITS

1937, 132 minutes, B&W.
Producer, Hunt Stromberg; Director, Robert Z. Leonard; Screenplay, Noel Langely; Cinematography, Oliver T. Marsh; Score, Herbert Stothart.

CAST

Marcia Mornay, Jeanette MacDonald; Paul, Nelson Eddy; Nicolai Nazaroff, John Barrymore; Archipenko, Herman Bing; Kip, Tom Brown; Barbara, Lynne Carver; Ellen; Rafaela Ottiano; Cabby, Charles Judels; Trentini, Paul Porcasi; Fanchon, Sig Rumann.

SONGS

Will You Remember by Sigmund Romberg; Now Is the Month of Maying by Thomas Morley; Love's Old Sweet Song by J.J.Molloy and G. Clifton Bingham; Vive L'Opera by Bob Wright and Chet Forrest; Le Regiment De Sambre Et Meuse by Robert Planquette; Carry Me Back to Old Virginny by James Bland; Santa Lucia by Teodoro Cottrau; Les Filles des Cadiz by Delibes and de Musset; Aria from Les Hugeonots by Meyerbeer; Czarina; Ham and Eggs; Summer Is a Cummin' In; Phanton La Vigne.

PLOT SYNOPSIS

". . .about an aging woman (Jeanette MacDonald) in a small American town on May Day 1905 who gives romantic advice to a young girl, Barbara Roberts (Lynne Carver), by telling her, in flashback, of her days in Paris as opera singer Marcia Mornay, and her brief but blissful romance with opera singer Paul Allison (Nelson Eddy). Marcia, however, sacrifices love for a career, weds her Svengali-like manager Nicolai Nazaroff (John Barrymore), and wins international acclaim. When Paul comes back into her life during an engagement at New York's Metropolitan Opera, Nazaroff is so tortured by jealousy that he kills Paul. Returning to 1905, this revelation is enough to convince Barbara that marrying for love is preferable to an opera career."
- Stanley Green, Hollywood Musicals, Year By Year

NOTES

"If Maytime was pleasing to ear, it was also a treat for the eye, being the best photographed. . .of all the MacDonald-Eddy black-and-white operettas. Director Robert Z. Leonard kept the proceedings tasteful despite the melodramatic plot, and imbued the film with a melancholy appropriate to the passing of time."
- Clive Hirschhorn, The Hollywood Musical

"Click operetta. . .cinch for the foreign market also."
- Variety

". . .enjoyable for more than camp reasons. The picture is too drawn out, the framing story is pitiably artificial, the staging is often suffocating (with MacDonald dressed in acres of ruffles and flounces), and the score rots your brain, but John Barrymore brings a bitter edge to the role of MacDonald's husband, and the atmosphere of thwarted compassion is compelling."
- Pauline Kael, 5001 Nights At The Movies


ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATION:
Score

The film was to originally have been shot in Technicolor with Frank Morgan as Archipenko and Paul Lukas as Nazaroff.

Maytime was the top-grossing film of 1937. See Box Office Hits

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