The Rogue Song | |
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Lobby card
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Directed by |
Lionel Barrymore Hal Roach (uncredited) |
Produced by | Irving Thalberg |
Screenplay by |
John Colton Frances Marion Wells Root (suggested by) |
Based on |
Gipsy Love by Franz Lehár |
Starring | Lawrence Tibbett |
Music by |
Herbert Stothart Franz Lehár Clifford Grey Dimitri Tiomkin (ballet) |
Cinematography | Percy Hilburn Charles Edgar Schoenbaum (Technicolor) |
Edited by | Margaret Booth |
Production
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Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
Release date
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Running time
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104 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $646,000 (final negative cost) |
Box office | $1,610,000 (worldwide) |
The Rogue Song is a 1930 romantic musical film which tells the story of a Russian bandit who falls in love with a princess, but takes his revenge on her when her brother rapes and kills his sister. The Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer production was directed by Lionel Barrymore and released in two versions, with and without sound. Hal Roach wrote and directed the Laurel and Hardy sequences and was not credited. The film stars Metropolitan Opera singer Lawrence Tibbett—who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance—and Catherine Dale Owen. Laurel and Hardy were third-billed; their sequences were filmed at the last minute and interspersed throughout the film in an attempt to boost its potential box office appeal.
This film, which was MGM's first all-talking Technicolor film, is partially lost, as there are no known complete prints of this film. Fragments do exist.
The story takes place in Russia in the year 1910. Yegor (Lawrence Tibbett), a dashing (as well as singing) bandit leader meets Princess Vera (Catherine Dale Owen) at a mountain inn. They fall in love, but the relationship is shattered when Yegor kills Vera's brother, Prince Serge, for raping his sister, Nadja, and driving her to suicide. Yegor kidnaps Vera, forcing her to live a life of lowly servitude among the bandits. Vera manages to outwit Yegor, who is captured by soldiers and flogged. Vera begs Yegor's forgiveness. Although still in love with each other, they realize they cannot be together, at least for the time being.