Alice Faye's sixth and final pairing with Don Ameche turned out to be one of their best, a delightful piece of escapism now available on DVD. What makes That Night in Rio (1941) especially satisfying is that it has a clever and funny story to go along with its musical numbers. In fact, it's as much a screwball comedy as it is a musical.

The plot (a close remake of the 1935 film Folies Bergere, starring Maurice Chevalier) finds Don Ameche in a dual role: he's debonair businessman Baron Duarte, as well as nightclub performer Larry Martin, famed for his uncanny impersonation of the baron. When the baron's important business deal goes awry, he must leave town to raise some emergency cash. Fearful that knowledge of his absence would cause a stock meltdown, the baron's minions (including S.Z. Sakall) hire Larry to impersonate him for real. The baron's estranged wife, Cecilia (Alice Faye), finds out about this plan but doesn't at first let on that she knows, while Larry's girlfriend Carmen (Carmen Miranda) loses her fiery temper when she catches him with Cecilia. It's only a matter of time before the baron returns and everything gets even more mixed up, with both Don Ameches flirting with both women, and delicious double entendres flying all around (which actually pushed the limits of the production code once or twice).

Ameche has far more screen time than Faye in this picture, and he is wonderfully appealing. He later called That Night in Rio his favorite of all his movies. Faye doesn't sing much - her character is not a performer like Ameche's or Miranda's - but she looks great and is as captivating as ever in her second Technicolor film. (Hollywood Cavalcade, 1939, was the first.) Faye biographer Jane Lenz Elder has written that one outfit worn by Faye in this movie was "perhaps the most lustrous ensemble [she] ever wore in films" - a gold lame evening dress and an elaborate jeweled necklace. Elder quotes one critic's description of it as "a scandalous dress [she] fills to overflowing." Faye had by now been divorced from Tony Martin, and during filming she was introduced to bandleader Phil Harris; the two were soon married, and their union would last 54 years.

This was Carmen Miranda's second American picture, following Down Argentine Way (1940), and she was already extremely popular. Here she performs three numbers, including the famous "I Yi, Yi, Yi, Yi (I Like You Very Much)." The entire score by Mack Gordon and Harry Warren is bouncy and pleasing; it doesn't have many songs, but it does have good ones including "Chica Chica Boom Chic," "They Met in Rio," "Boa Noite (Good Night)", and "Cai-Cai" (another Carmen Miranda number). The opening number, "Chica Chica Boom Chic," is so spectacular that the movie never tops it. Miranda, Ameche and an army of dancers wearing every color of the rainbow sing and dance their way through Hermes Pan's elaborate choreography with mighty zest, and the sequence goes on far longer than you'd expect - not that you'll be complaining.

Also in the cast is Maria Montez in a small role as a dancer whom the baron recognizes as an old flame just from seeing her legs! And supposedly Tyrone Power is there in the nightclub scene, somewhere, though this reviewer couldn't find him. As a joke, Power visited the set and inserted himself into the background of a shot without telling director Irving Cummings.

That Night in Rio's glamorous costumes, sets, and makeup in Fox Technicolor have all been preserved by the excellent transfer. The movie is available as a stand-alone DVD and as part of Fox Home Entertainment's The Alice Faye Collection, a set which also includes On the Avenue (1937), Lillian Russell (1940) and The Gang's All Here (1943). Gang's, unfortunately, has received only a middling-quality picture transfer, but the other titles look mostly good and come with many bells and whistles.

The extras packaged with That Night in Rio include a stills gallery, a trailer, a restoration comparison, a deleted musical number between Faye and Ameche, and a loving featurette called Alice Faye - A Life Off Screen. This provides a vivid sense of her life and values, and includes coments from her daughters and various historians. After leaving Fox in 1945, Faye returned to radio and had a successful weekly show with husband Phil Harris. (Excerpts are included here.) She returned to the studio in 1962 for the movie State Fair, which she regretted, and in her later years became a spokeswoman for Pfizer, traveling the country and encouraging older women to stay active. She even appeared in a 20-minute short film for the company in which she reminisced over her career and introduced her favorite clips while also talking up the health benefits of physical activity. The short can be seen as an extra on another disc in the collection.

As for the deleted number, it's a reprise of "Chica Chica Boom Chic," and while it isn't that revelatory, it's still nice to see a little bit of dancing from Faye because there isn't any in the finished film.

For more information about That Night in Rio, visit Fox Home Entertainment. To order That Night in Rio, go to TCM Shopping.

by Jeremy Arnold