THC stumbled across this scene from the 1929 musical comedy, The Love Parade, starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald in her first film role. The movie was made early in the "talkie" era. The Jazz Singer, considered the first talking film, and released in October 1927, had become a smash hit, but the first all-talkie film from a Hollywood studio, Lights Of New York, wasn't released until July 1928 and one of the largest studios, Columbia Pictures, didn't release its first sound film until February 1929.
The Love Parade was German-born director Ernest Lubitsch's first talkie and the film hit it big at the box office. Later in his career, Lubitsch was to make classics like The Shop Around The Corner, a charming film set in Budapest and starring Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan; Heaven Can Wait with Don Ameche and Gene Tierney; and the very funny To Be Or Not To Be, starring Carole Lombard and Jack Benny (and later remade by Mel Brooks), proving how unique the Lubitsch touch was as he's the only director who could have made a hit comedy involving Nazis in Occupied Poland during World War II.
The song is Anything To Please The Queen and it's enjoyable to watch and focus on the actor's reactions, particularly MacDonald's, while Chevalier has a very funny bit around 1:25.
Passed on this flick on TMC while channel surfing, but now I see it would have been worth the watch. dm
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