The Rogue Song (film)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Rogue Song (1930)

Directed by	Lionel Barrymore
Produced by	Irving Thalberg
Written by	John Colton and Frances Marion
Starring	Lawrence Tibbett Catherine Dale Owen
Music by	Herbert Stothart, Franz Lehár and Clifford Grey
Cinematography	Percy Hilburn and Charles Edgar Schoenbaum (Technicolor)
Editing by	Margaret Booth
Distributed by	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date(s)	May 10, 1930
Running time	104 min.
Language	English
IMDb profile

Lawrence Tibbett singing a love song to Catherine Dale Owen in "The Rogue Song."

The Rogue Song is a 1930 all-color (Technicolor) all-talking musical romance film which tells the story of a Russian bandit who falls in love with a princess, but takes his revenge on her when her brother rapes and kills his sister. It stars Lawrence Tibbett, Catherine Dale Owen, Nance O'Neil, Judith Vosselli, Ullrich Haupt, Elsa Alsen and Florence Lake. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy have small roles, which were filmed at the last minute and interspersed to increase the film's box office appeal.

The movie was adapted by John Colton and Frances Marion from the operetta Gypsy Love by Robert Bodansky and A. M. Willner. It was directed by Lionel Barrymore and Hal Roach (uncredited).

The story takes place in 1910, the location is Russia. Yegor (Lawrence Tibbett), a dashing (as well as singing) bandit leader meets Princess Vera (Catherine Dale Owen) at a mountain inn. They end up falling in love, but the relationship is shattered when Yegor kills Vera's brother, Prince Serge, for raping his sister, Nadja, and driving her to suicide. Yegor kidnaps Vera, forcing her to live a life of lowly servitude among the bandits. Vera manages to outwit Yegor, who's captured by soldiers and flogged. Vera begs Yegor's forgiveness. Although still in love with each other, they realize they cannot be together, at least for the time being.

It was nominated for Academy Award for Best Actor (Lawrence Tibbett).

Despite extensive searches, no complete print of the movie has been found. One reel featuring a ballet sequence survives intact, another surviving reel features Lawrence Tibbett singing to Catherine Dale Owen. In addition, a short fragment exists which is the only surviving footage featuring Laurel & Hardy. The original trailer also survives intact. In addition, the complete soundtrack survives, due to the fact that is was recorded on separate Vitaphone disks. The early two-strip Technicolor process used nitrate film stock, which proved especially unstable due to the color dyes used. The original negatives were destroyed and most prints of the films deteriorated rapidly. Digital restoration processes have been employed to transfer many early Technicolor films to more stable "safety" stock.