Rio Rita (1929 film)

Rio Rita
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Luther Reed
Produced by	William LeBaron Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.
Written by	Luther Reed
Based on	the play by Guy Bolton and Frederick A. Thompson
Starring	Bebe Daniels John Boles Bert Wheeler Robert Woolsey Dorothy Lee
Music by	Victor Baravalle (director) Joseph McCarthy (lyrics) Harry Tierney (music)
Cinematography	Robert Kurrle (Technicolor) Lloyd Knechtel
Edited by	William Hamilton
Production company	RKO Radio Pictures
Distributed by	RKO Radio Pictures
Release dates	September 15, 1929 (1929-09-15)
Running time	Originally 141 minutes; Surviving reissue print: 103 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$678,000[1]
Box office	$2,400,000[1]

Rio Rita is a 1929 American Pre-Code RKO musical comedy starring Bebe Daniels and John Boles along with the comedy team of Wheeler & Woolsey.^[2] The film is based on the 1927 stage musical produced by Florenz Ziegfeld, which originally united Wheeler and Woolsey as a team and made them famous. The film was the biggest and most expensive RKO production of 1929 as well as the studio's biggest box office hit until King Kong (1933).^[3] Its finale was photographed in two-color Technicolor. Rio Rita was chosen as one of the ten best films of 1929 by Film Daily.

Plot

Bert Wheeler plays Chick Bean, a New York bootlegger who comes to the Mexican town of San Lucas to get a divorce so he can marry Dolly (Dorothy Lee). After the wedding, Ned Levitt (Robert Woolsey), Chick's lawyer, informs Chick the divorce was invalid, and advises Wheeler to stay away from his bride.

The Wheeler-Woolsey plot is actually a subplot of the film, and the main story features Bebe Daniels (in her first "talkie") as Rita Ferguson, a south-of-the-border beauty pursued by both Texas Ranger Jim Stewart (John Boles) and local warlord General Ravenoff (Georges Renavent). Ranger Jim is pursuing the notorious bandit Kinkajou along the Rio Grande, but is reluctant to openly accuse Rita's brother, Roberto (Don Alvarado), as the Kinkajou because he is in love with Rita.

Ravenoff successfully convinces Rita to spurn Ranger Jim on the pretext that Jim will arrest Roberto. Rita unhappily agrees to marry Ravenoff to prevent him from exposing Roberto as the Kinkajou. Meanwhile, Wheeler's first wife, Katie (Helen Kaiser), shows up to accuse him of bigamy, but conveniently falls in love with Woolsey.

At this point, the film switches into Technicolor. During the wedding ceremony aboard Ravenoff's private barge, Ranger Jim cuts the craft's ropes so that it drifts north of the Rio Grande. The Texas Rangers storm the barge, arrest Ravenoff as the real Kinkajou just in time to prevent the wedding, and Roberto is revealed to be a member of the Mexican Secret Service. Jim takes Rita's hand in marriage and Roberto escorts Ravenoff back to Mexico for trial.

Principal cast

• Bebe Daniels as Rita Ferguson
• John Boles as Capt. Jim Stewart
• Bert Wheeler as Chick Bean
• Robert Woolsey as Ned Lovett
• Dorothy Lee as Dolly Bean
• Don Alvarado as Roberto Ferguson
• Georges Renavent as General Ravinoff

Production notes

• Wheeler and Woolsey were the only principals from the stage version to appear in the film. Based on the success of this film, Wheeler & Woolsey were also given contracts to star in a series of comedies for Radio Pictures.
• The film re-launched Bebe Daniels and John Boles into stardom and both of them starred in a number of musicals in the years following. They proved to be so popular with audiences of the day that they were both hired by RCA Victor to make a number of phonograph records.
• The 1929 Rio Rita is a faithful rendering of the stage version of the show. It is one of the few films personally supervised by legendary showman Florenz Ziegfeld, who also produced the musical onstage. It is very likely that the film gives an accurate impression of what a Ziegfeld stage presentation was like.
• The choreography for the grand finale on the barge was created by Pearl Eaton.^[4]
• The 1942 Abbott & Costello "remake" has little in common with this version. Two songs, "Rio Rita" and "The Ranger's Song", made an appearance, but the story line was so different, that the screenplay was credited as an original piece.^[5]
• A version for television was produced by NBC in 1950.^[5]

Songs

• "You're Always in My Arms (But Only in My Dreams)"
• "Sweetheart We Need Each Other"
• "Following the Sun Around"
• "Rio Rita"
• "If You're in Love You'll Waltz"
• "The Kinkajou"
• "The Rangers' Song"

Release

Rio Rita was a box-office success. Earning an estimated profit of $935,000,^[1] it was RKO's biggest grossing film of 1929.^[4]

It was generally well received by critics. Photoplay praised it as nearly "the finest of the screen musicals" and judged that director Reed had done well with a "difficult assignment".^[6] Mordaunt Hall of the New York Times was more overtly disappointed in Reed: "(He) has contented himself in making virtually an audible animated photographic conception of the successful Ziegfeld show," wrote Hall, and noted that Daniels, though capable, was "not up to the standard set by Ethlin Terry in the stage version". Hall was otherwise appreciative of the lavish, if thinly-plotted, production.^[2]

Preservation

Five reels of the film are believed to be lost. The print currently circulating (103 minutes) is the re-release version from 1932, which was edited significantly, taking the original length of fifteen reels down to only ten reels. This is the print that is currently being broadcast on cable by Turner Classic Movies, which is missing about forty minutes of footage. New York's Museum of Modern Art used to have a print of the original full-length version, but this print seems to have been lost or stolen from their archives. The entire soundtrack for the original roadshow version of the film survives on Vitaphone disks. Both picture and sound for at least two musical numbers from the long version are also known to survive ("When You're In Love, You'll Waltz" and "The Kinkajou").

See also

• List of early color feature films
• List of incomplete or partially lost films

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Rio Rita (1929 film).

• Rio Rita at the Internet Movie Database
• Rio Rita at AllMovie