SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Cheryl A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

mike48128 It's a glossy MGM Technicolor dream and one critic admitted that might be the best part of it. A curiously bland musical with a sterling cast and a surprisingly tiresome Zero Mostel as the "Swami"(?) The Du Barry opening number is a beauty with Miss Ball wearing a gorgeously stunning costume gown, but the song is quite unmemorable and is only there to support the fantasy sequence later. They replaced half the Broadway Songbook of Cole Porter with fluff and toned down both the story and the cast. Lucile Ball is not a true redhead and it's dyed so bright it would make "Rudolph" wince! Everybody's songs are dubbed. Several highlights make it worthwhile: Tommy Dorsey and several famous singing groups give great performances on an oversized nightclub stage the size of a football field, as in "White Christmas". The Esquire Magazine calendar girl number is a knockout pinup piece with another forgettable non-Cole Porter tune. The 40 minute "Mickey Finn" fantasy with Red as Louis 15th is fun, but in order to see it, you have to sit through the rest of the movie (Alas, this was before discs.) Red Skelton is in fine form and Miss Ball never looked lovelier. Gene Kelley seems to be best on stage and but not worthwhile swashbuckling around! The studio's "French" segments are gloriously staged. Finally, a finish with a Cole Porter classic song. You will agree with me that the whole thing should have been better!

SimonJack Never having seen the stage play by this same name, I can't compare a stage production to the movie. But as a movie, "Du Barry Was a Lady" needs to stand on its own. I remember watching Red Skelton and Lucille Ball on their TV shows. Everyone knows about Lucy. I think Skelton was terrific on TV. His comedy characters, Clem Kadiddlehopper and Freddie the Freeloader especially always got tons of laughs, and skits with his guest stars often had we viewers rolling with laughter. I've seen a couple of Skelton movies that were fairly good, and several in which Lucille Ball was quite good. Unfortunately, this is not a good film for either star, or for Gene Kelly. I read a couple of reviews that seemed to make excuses for MGM having to scrap much of the stage original stuff to satisfy censors. I don't buy it. I think that's letting MGM and the writers, directors and everyone off the hook. All one has to do to verify this is to look at the many good and great comedy romance and musical films that Hollywood was producing at the time. No, this one suffers from a lack of anything very funny, and I think that rests with the writers first. This just isn't a very good screenplay. It isn't funny, and its so choppy that we get poor performances out of the main stars. Still, I give this film six stars for one reason -- the appearance and playing of Tommy Dorsey and his orchestra. Dorsey does several excellent numbers – he looks to have the full size complement of his group at its peak – around 25 to 28 musicians. Anytime a movie features one of the top big bands of the swing era, I will give it six stars to begin with, and then build up from there. Because of the era and the type of music that swing was, and its lasting effect on American music especially, and its longevity in films and on the air, I think movies that feature the most prominent of the big bands have a historical value as well as their entertainment value. So, Tommy Dorsey and his excellent musicians are the only good thing about this movie. And, that's enough of a reason to watch it if one hasn't seen it before.

kenjha Nightclub singer dreams of marrying into money but is in love with a poor fellow. Fluffy musical comedy plays like a variety show, with minimal plot holding together musical numbers and comedy skits. The film looks good in Technicolor, with red hairs of Skelton and Ball (dyed for this film and kept so thereafter) featured prominently. It's nothing special, but it's not terribly painful to watch either. Lucy mostly plays it straight while Skelton provides the comedy as a hat check man who wins the sweepstakes and woos Lucy. In only his second film, Kelly completes an unlikely love triangle as Lucy's poor and sullen boyfriend.

moonspinner55 Red Skelton plays a smitten working-stiff who finally makes out financially; he proposes marriage to the fortune-hunting singer whom he loves, who then becomes Madame Du Barry in his dreams. A chance--though not a very good one--for Lucille Ball to show off her comedic chops, however Skelton isn't given anything bright or funny to do, and Gene Kelly gets stuck in a second-banana bit. Attractive but dim musical-comedy which originated on Broadway; the Cole Porter songs from the play were largely scrapped here, although the "Friendship" number survived and it's the most energetic moment in the film. In this instance, Kelly gets to mug playfully and Lucy sings in her appealingly scratchy voice, yet once again Skelton is left outside the fun. ** from ****