Maurice Chevalier

Jeanette MacDonald

Lupino Lane

Lillian Roth

Eugene Pallette

E.H. Calvert

Edgar Norton

Lionel Belmore

Virginia Bruce

Jean Harlow

Yola d'Avril

Ben Turpin

Ernest Vajda

W. Franke Harling

Guy Bolton

Merrill G. White

John Leipold

Max Terr

Ernst Lubitsch

Victor Milner

Oscar Potoker

Clifford Grey

Victor Schertzinger

Comedy

Romance

The Love Parade

Paramount Pictures

United States of America

CinemaSerf

Diplomat "Count Alfred" (Maurice Chevalier) is recalled to his home country where he quickly becomes the amorous pawn of the Queen (Jeanette MacDonald). She is looking to marry, but whom? She alights on "Alfred", makes him a prince so he is more suitable then subjects him to a rather humiliating wedding ceremony in which he is the one who promises to love, honour and obey! He's in love, though - so that's all fine. Until, that is, he discovers that being a trophy husband is a bit dull. He can't even have his breakfast on his own. Meantime, though, the Kingdom is having a bit of a cashflow crisis and the Queen can't afford any scandal as a loan is being negotiated. "Alfred" cottons on to this and realises this could could give him some leverage to change the hen-pecked dynamic of his marriage. Whilst all of these shenanigans are taking place "upstairs", "Jacques" (Lupino Lane) and "Lulu" (Lillian Roth) are having their own domestic squabbles but in a far more equilibrate state - even if she does always seem to end up with the upper hand. Victor Schertzinger and Clifford Grey have written half a dozen unremarkable numbers for this that Chevalier and MacDonald wade through without much emotion, and I felt that as the initially engaging relationship between this power couple shifted, so did my interest in a story with just too little chemistry on screen.

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