That Lady in Ermine

That Lady in Ermine (1948)

GAY, MUSICAL COMEDY...SPARKLING WITH SPICY SITUATIONS!

Circa 1861, Angelina, ruling countess of an Italian principality, is at a loss when invaded by a Hungarian army. Her lookalike ancestress Francesca, who saved a similar situation 300 years before, comes to life from a portrait to help her descendant. Complicating factor: the newlywed countess feels strangely drawn to the handsome invader...

Date of release
1948-08-24
TMDB
6.0 / 10 (19)
Runtime
1h 29m
Genres
Comedy, Romance, Fantasy, Music
Director
Ernst Lubitsch, Otto Preminger

Casting

Interesting facts

That Lady in Ermine is a 1948 American Technicolor musical film directed by Ernst Lubitsch. The screenplay by Samson Raphaelson is based on the 1919 operetta Die Frau im Hermelin by Rudolph Schanzer and Ernst Welisch.

Production

In 1942, 20th Century Fox purchased the screen rights to the 1919 operetta Die Frau im Hermelin, which had served as the basis of the 1922 stage musical Lady in Ermine by Al Goodman, Harry Graham, and Cyrus Wood. The operetta previously had been filmed twice, in 1927 as The Lady in Ermine, starring Corinne Griffith and Einar Hanson, and in 1930 as Bride of the Regiment with Vivienne Segal and Walter Pidgeon.

When Ernst Lubitsch became involved, he initially wanted Jeanette MacDonald for the female lead, although Fox production chief Darryl F. Zanuck preferred Gene Tierney, opposite either Cornel Wilde or Rex Harrison. The Production Code Administration deemed an early draft of the screenplay "unacceptable" because "adultery and suspicion of adultery [were] treated for comedy without any compensating moral values." PCA Director Joseph Breen suggested…

The film was Lubitsch's first musical project since directing The Merry Widow for MGM in 1934. It proved to be his last film. Eight days after principal photography began, he died of a heart attack, and Otto Preminger, who had completed A Royal Scandal when Lubitsch was forced to withdraw due to illness in 1944, took over the reins.

Friedrich Hollaender and Leo Robin composed the five musical numbers performed in the film.

The cast included Reginald Gardiner and Virginia Campbell, but an error on the promotional poster (pictured above) mistakenly credits "Virginia Gardiner."

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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