Fifty Million Frenchmen

The melodies of "You've Got That Thing" and "You Do Something To Me" lace the soundtrack, but Hollywood did something to the screen version of the Cole Porter musical Fifty Million Frenchmen: It dropped the songs. At the time, moviegoers frowned on song-and-dance vehicles, so the studio-tinkered result was a frantic contraption of nonstop jokes, sassy pre-Code double entendres and the antics of vaudeville/radio stars Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson. The slender plot concerns a $50,000 bet that lovestruck American-in-Paris Jack Forbes (William Gaxton) can woo and wed the alluring LuLu (Claudia Dell) without his wealth. But the sidebars are more fun: Helen Broderick as a randy tourist who wants to be "insulted," the mischief of Olsen and Johnson (leading the Paris police on a madcap Keystone Kops-like finale chase) and a briefly seen Bela Lugosi as a magician mystic denied his chance to perform.