The Critics' Corner on THE MERRY WIDOW

The Merry Widow cost $1.6 million to make and lost about $100,000 during its initial release. Historians have attributed the film's box-office failure to the popularity of more American musicals like the Busby Berkeley extravaganzas at Warner Bros. and the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers films at RKO.

"Doing it in his own way, yet refraining from committing mayhem on the lovely Lehar masterpiece, Lubitsch has turned in a winner in this Merry Widow. As the music sweeps, so sweeps Lubitsch. It's a swell picture on its own and a credit to picturedom in general." - Bige, Variety.

"The new Ernst Lubitsch confection, a witty and incandescent rendition of The Merry Widow, had its first public hearing on this earth last night, where it was presented amid the tumult and the shouting which befit important cinema openings and perhaps the coronation of emperors." - The New York Times.

"Undoubtedly this charming, tongue-in-cheek version of Lubitsch comes closest to the composer's and librettists' intentions, even though only half the score is sung and that almost entirely by Jeanette MacDonald." - George Sadoul, Dictionary of Films.

"it is Lubitsch; it is also Hollywood; it is the cream of the American bourgeois film. It is a charlotte russe." - Peter Ellis, New Masses.

"Patchy, but sometimes sparkling version." - Halliwell's Film & Video Guide.

AWARDS & HONORS

The Merry Widow won the Oscar® for Best Art Direction for Cedric Gibbons and Fredric Hope. It was the film's only nomination.