Review of Paree, Paree

I would not say that Bob Hope was a major star on Broadway, that eluded him until he got into films, but he was a prominent Broadway performer during the Thirties before he went to Hollywood for The Big Broadcast of 1938. This short was made in New York probably between his run in Roberta and Say When.

What Paree, Paree is is a condensed version of the Cole Porter Broadway show Fifty Million Frenchmen. The soundtrack includes You Do Something To Me, Find me a Primitive Man, You've Got That Thing, and the title song all from the stage production of Fifty Million Frenchmen.

This short while it lacks a lot of production values is a marvelous opportunity to see something of a photographed Broadway show of the time. In that it's like The Marx Brothers Cocoanuts or Animal Crackers.

Bob Hope was not in the original Broadway cast of Fifty Million Frenchmen, but Cole Porter would provide him with a great duet with Ethel Merman in Hope's last Broadway appearance a few years later in Red, Hot, and Blue. He introduced It's Delovely with her from that show which did lead to his Hollywood contract.

Now that would be great if someone preserved them on film singing It's Delovely.