The Rogue Song (1930)

Interesting facts

• Based on: Gipsy Love
• Awards: 0 · Nominations: 1

The Rogue Song is a 1930 American pre-Code musical romance film that 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. The Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer production was directed by Lionel Barrymore and released in two versions, with and without sound. Hal Roach wrote and directed the Laurel and Hardy sequences and was not credited. The film stars Metropolitan Opera singer Lawrence Tibbett—who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance—and Catherine Dale Owen.

Production

The film is MGM's first all-talking, all-color (Technicolor) production. It was also the screen debut of Lawrence Tibbett, a world-renowned star of the Metropolitan Opera. The film is notable today as Laurel and Hardy's first and only appearance in a color feature film (all of their feature films before and after were shot in black-and-white; their only other professionally shot color film was the wartime short The Tree in a Test Tube), although…

The film was adapted from the score of the operetta Gipsy Love, with a new story by Robert Bodanzky and A. M. Willner and only "a little" of the music in Franz Lehár's score.

Production was supervised by Paul Bern, and the anticipated 30-day shooting schedule began on August 29, 1929. The studio executives' response to the daily "rushes" was that the film was not working well and needed help. MGM borrowed Laurel and Hardy from Hal Roach, and after negotiations between Roach and Thalberg, Roach agreed to write and direct their scenes. The final film has eight scenes with the comedy duo.

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