A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court/The Emperor Waltz - Double Feature

One of my most favorite movies that Bing starred in.

This movie "A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court"(1949) takes an amazing book by Samuel Clemens and mixes in Bing Crosby's soothing baritone and style, Rhonda Flemming's... everything, and William Bendix's comedy to create a mood that you just can't shake even hours after the movie is over. Despite some of the musical style being a bit dated and one song in particular (I won't mention which one) that could have been removed from the movie, it couldn't spoil the atmosphere created.Based on Clemens book that was published in 1989, the main character, Hank Martin was moved up in time to a date of 1910 with the on-onslaught of the horseless carriage. This didn't spoil the story, but enhanced the separation of the times presented. The comedy was well played and set a model that other writers use today. The 'special' effects were kept to a minimum and the story was focused on. Unlike the later productions put out by others including Disney, it can stand on its own as a classic.Overall, as I love time travel stories, I found this one to be more entertaining than appealing to my science/fiction inner geek. Of the set, this one was the better movie and has kept in the back of my mind since I saw it as a kid in the 60's."The Emperor Waltz" (1948) was a nice re-introduction to the Bing Crosby personality. The role of Virgil Smith was almost written just for Bing. The overall story was shortened to fit within the time constraints. This made one scene a bit cramped as Joan Fontaine's character, Johanna Augusta Franziska who was very aloof and cold, suddenly melts away in a matter of 30 seconds. If sources are correct, Bing was very heavy-handed in the production of this movie. While it is evident where and how it was manipulated, the humorisk style of Crosby will win out.If allowed to rate separate, "The Emperor Waltz" would have only rated 3 stars. It brought down "A Connecticut Yankee..." from 5 stars.

Mark Twain published “A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court” in 1889. There was a silent film version in 1921, and a Broadway musical in 1927 with a score by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, which included the songs “Thou Swell,” “My Heart Stood Still,” and “On a Desert Island With Thee,” and where Merlin sang: “Our noble King is most religious,/And as a churchman he’s prodigious./A heathen horde/Slain by his sword/Is buried ev’ry Monday!/The conscience of our lord and master/Is white and pure as alabaster./It’s free from taint,/For like a saint/He cuts no throats on Sunday.” There was a sound film with Will Rogers in 1931. This Technicolor musical from Paramount (songs by James Van Heusen and Johnny Burke) hit screens in 1949 and followed the basic plot of the novel while excising Twain’s political jibes and his anti-religious commentary. This review will touch on some of the similarities and discrepancies between the novel and the musical.The screenplay was adapted by Edmund Beloin (who adapted “Lady on a Train” for Hitchcock in 1945). It was directed by Tay Garnett (who previously had directed “The Postman Always Rings Twice” and “Bataan,” among others).Movie: It is the year 1912. American Hank Martin (Bing Crosby) joins a group touring Castle Pendragon in England. Hank has a disconcerting knowledge of the exhibits, knows which shield belonged to which ancient knight, and even claims that a hole in a suit of armor was made, not by an iron-tipped arrow (as the guide says), but by a bullet, long before firearms were invented. He is drawn to a painting of Lady Alisande La Carteloise; he even carries a jeweled pendant just like the one she wears in the portrait. All this brings Hank to the attention of Lord Pendragon (Sir Cedric Hardwicke), who is bed-ridden with a cold (he sneezes a lot). Assuring Pendragon he is not balmy, Hank pulls up a chair and tells his tale.Novel: The novel begins with “A Word of Explanation” by Twain in which he writes about visiting Warwick Castle in England and encountering a fellow tourist who knew quite a lot about the Knights of the Round Table. One night in his room, while reading Thomas Mallory’s “Le Morte d’Arthur” (which gets quoted a lot in the book), Twain is visited by the stranger, whose name is Hank Morgan. He says he is from Hartford, Connecticut, and so begins his tale.Movie: Hank is a blacksmith turned auto mechanic and we see him surrounded by a group of awestruck children as he tinkers with a new-fangled car. When the car backfires, a young girl says there must be a dragon inside “just like in King Arthur that spits and shoots out fire.” (This is the writer’s way of putting Arthur into Hank’s mind. Another bit of foreshadowing is Hank having a pocket book titled “Handbook of Mechanics and Almanac.”) Hank sings them a song about persevering: “...don’t give up too soon,/if you stub your toe on the moon.” He still does some blacksmithing and when returning a man’s horse, Tex, during a thunderstorm Hank is thrown to the ground and knocked out. When he comes to, he finds a lance poking his chest and a knight calling him a monster and demanding his surrender. The knight is Sir Sagamore (William Bendix). Being at a disadvantage, Hank yields and is taken as prisoner to Camelot castle. Sagamore informs him this is the year 528. Somehow (perhaps in a delirium), Hank has gone back in time almost 1,400 years. He decides to just go along with it until he wakes.Novel: Hank works in an arms factory in 1879 as a supervisor and claims to be able to fix anything at all, and even invent whatever might be needed (a talent that will soon come in handy). Hank is knocked unconscious at the factory “during a misunderstanding conducted with crowbars” with a workman known as Hercules. (It was probably not a union shop.) When he wakes, Hank is facing an armored knight on horseback who demands he either joust or surrender. Being unarmed and up a tree, Hank submits and goes along as a prisoner to Camelot. Hank then tells Twain he has kept a journal and gives over the many pages of parchment to be read. The rest of the novel is Hank’s first-person account, as related by Twain.Movie: This being a musical, there is entertainment going on in the court of King Arthur (who has a cold and, like Pendragon in 1912, sneezes a lot, and who is also played by Sir Cedric Hardwicke, which suggests to the audience that this is all a dream). Lady Alisande (Rhonda Fleming) is singing and dancing around the room, pausing only when coming face-to-face with Hank (a cinematic case of love-at-first-sight, even though she is betrothed to Sir Lancelot). Sir Sagamore, as in the novel, tells an outrageous story of heroically battling this monster and shape-shifter. This wild tale so disturbs Merlin (Murvyn Vye), and Arthur’s niece Morgan Le Fay (Virginia Field), that they insist Arthur condemn him to the stake as a danger to the realm, which he does. The next day, at the stake, Hank uses the crystal from his watch as a magnifying glass to catch the sun’s rays and “magically” sets fires, which astounds the king enough to not only release him but dub him Sir Boss and give him a blacksmith shop of his own. There he proceeds to “invent” a magnet, a safety pin, and even a pistol and other gadgets from his own time.Novel: Suspecting Hank’s off-the-rack clothes are enchanted, he is stripped “naked as a pair of tongs” and thrown in a dungeon. (One can’t expect Hollywood to go along with that!) Being told Merlin has cast a spell over the dungeon to stop any escape, Hank declares himself to be a superior magician, taking advantage of the superstitions of the time. He just happens to know that an eclipse is due and so predicts it, thus securing his freedom and the title of Sir Boss.Twain had no liking for monarchies, aristocracies, inherited titles, or the public’s veneration of them (he would be agasp at today’s celebrity culture, but would likely make good use of it). So there are quite a few pages in which Twain uses Hank, a born and bred Democrat and believer in equality, to vent these dislikes, none of which got into the movie. In the novel, Hank has Merlin thrown in the dungeon, then blows up Merlin’s tower as another “miracle,” using home-made gunpowder and a lightning rod (as he noted at the start, he’s very handy). Hank’s first official act is to open a patent office, then a school system, and start a newspaper, as he tries to civilize Camelot into looking more like Connecticut, none of which happen in the film. Also not in the film is Twain’s aversion to “established religion” and Hank’s comment in Chapter 10: “I was afraid of a united Church; it makes a mighty power, the mightiest conceivable, and then when it by and by gets into selfish hands, as it is always bound to do, it means death to human liberty and paralysis to human thought.” Or this in chapter 16: “Any Established Church is an established crime, an established slave-pen.” Nope: the overseers of Hollywood’s Production Code, aka the Hays Office, would never allow such opinions in a film. Also worth noting here: there is no Queen Guenevere in the film at all, though, as is tradition, she and Lancelot are having an affair in the book that everyone but the king knows about. (Rodgers and Hart even had a gossipy song about it titled “I Blush.”) And Morgan le Fay does not live at Camelot in the book; she doesn’t even show up until Chapter 16.Movie: At a ball, Hank teaches some modern rhythms to the court musicians (modern even for 1912 standards), thereby inventing early jazz. He shortens Alisande’s name to Sandy (as in the book) and tells her of Shakespeare, “He’s a new boy coming up later. Very clever fellow.” He then serenades her with “Once and For Always.” (In the book, Alisande is a common peasant girl, not the king’s niece.) Merlin and Morgan spy on them and plot against them, sending for Lancelot (Henry Wilcoxon). Lancelot challenges Hank to a joust, the winner to get Alisande. Unable to handle the heavy armor, Hank chooses to do without and rides the cow pony, Tex, against Lancelot, subduing and hogtying him with a lasso, only to see Alisande run to help untie Lancelot. Says the king to a perplexed Hank, “Hast thou not learned there are no rules where women are concerned?”(Coincidence? About 59 minutes into the film, Hank tells Lancelot, “Perhaps we ought to think this over in the cool of the evening,” a phrase that would become an Oscar-winning song, “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening,” in Crosby’s 1951 musical, “Here Comes the Groom.”)Book: Along comes Alisande, seeking a champion to do battle with monsters who are holding many princesses captive in a castle. The king dispatches Hank the magician to the rescue. He and Sandy set off, astride a single horse. (Hank is reluctant to bring along a woman as he is engaged to marry Puss Flanagan back in his time, but needs a guide to this castle.) They meet up with knights who wear advertisement sandwich boards, a novelty Hank has introduced to the Round Table to make the knights useful. (While not used in the musical, Rodgers and Hart noted this in a song titled “The Sandwich Men”: “We once wore crests/On our manly breasts,/And now they’re spread with dope/For Fairy soap....Brave Sir Lancelot/Once would prance a lot,/Now he’s advertising the Victrola./Bold Sir Bedavere/Tramps ahead of here,/Telling all the world of Coca-Cola!”)The duo travel through Britain much the way Huck and Jim travel the Mississippi, observing social disparities and injustices along the way. Among their adventures is meeting up with Morgan le Fay and the captives she has tortured in her dungeons: “All her ways were wicked, all her instincts devilish. She was loaded to the eye-lids with cold malice.” Hank sees Morgan kill a servant without emotion. He witnesses a man racked. Hank finds a couple jailed on their wedding day because the commoner bride had refused to have relations with the lord of the manor before her husband (a practice known as “le droit du Seigneur”). Hank sets free 47 of Morgan’s prisoners. He and Sandy join a procession of pilgrims straight out of Chaucer going to the Valley of Holiness, bordering the Cuckoo Kingdom and see, as well, a procession of slaves and witness a woman flogged, view bodies hanging from trees. Comments Hank: “There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race and finish the farce.” Hank exposes a fraud through the use of one of his recent inventions, a telephone. Hank uses dynamite to blow up two knights and their horses. These are tough times. None of that makes it into the musical.Back in Camelot, he talks the king into disguising himself as a peasant to go and see how the other half live in Britain. They are mistaken for slaves and soon shackled to be sold, for no one believes this vagabond could be their actual king. They see others warm themselves at a witch burning, and a man boiled alive in London for counterfeiting.Movie: After seeing how peasants live in disease-ridden hovels, Hank talks Arthur into taking a tour of the kingdom in disguise, just them and Sir Sagamore (whose first name is Clarence, a name taken from a character in the book who does not appear in the film). The horrors seen in the book are not seen in the movie, though Merlin and Morgan contrive to have the disguised trio captured, sold into slavery, then scheduled for a beheading, which would leave the throne to Morgan. Here is where Hank’s handy almanac comes to the rescue as he predicts an eclipse from the scaffold. This event so frightens the people, they are convinced he is the magician Sir Boss and let him and the king go free (Sagamore had escaped earlier and gone for help but arrived after the nick of time, and Sandy, who had joined them only to be captured, is now a prisoner in Merlin’s castle). Hank jumps on Tex and rides off to rescue her.Book: Hank and the king are saved from execution by the knights of the Round Table, who arrive not on horses but on bicycles “invented” by Hank. (This would have made for some laughs had it been kept for the film, but it wasn’t.) A lot of time and a great deal of mayhem follow in which Hank uses a lasso to defeat some knights, then has to shoot a bunch of them before the rest run away. Then the book skips ahead three years. Hank has married Sandy, had a daughter (named “Hello, Central” by Sandy, misunderstanding the use of Hank’s telephone), and he has invented more stuff, like a typewriter, a record player, sewing machines, steam engines, and has wired Camelot for electricity. His stated first goal in Chapter 40 is “to overthrow the Catholic Church and set up the Protestant faith on its ruin—not as an Established Church, but a go-as-you-please one.” His second goal, to come after Arthur’s death, is to replace the monarchy with a voting republic. He also organizes baseball teams, though the knights insist on playing in armor (another funny visual left out of the movie).Hank and Sandy leave Camelot for a time and when they return they find it virtually in ruins. There has been a terrible war after Arthur found out about Guenevere and Lancelot and into this breech stepped the Church to “snuff out all my beautiful civilization.” The Church even banned electric lights. Clarence says to Hank, “Did you think you had educated the superstition out of those people?” Hank tries to fight the Church for control of the country and there follows quite a slaughter of knights who fall into Hank’s mine field trap and electrified fences: Hank and a handful of loyalists manage to kill 25,000 knights in chapter 43. It’s all for naught, however, as Merlin casts a spell on Hank that puts him into a trance that lasts thirteen centuries, which is why he is still alive when Twain visits the castle at the start. (Where he actually was while in this trance is not explained. Did no one ever notice this guy idly sleeping for centuries?)Movie: None of those great battles or inventions take place. After the eclipse helps him escape the headsman, Hank gallops into Merlin’s castle to rescue Sandy, who is tied to a stake as bait. Sir Logris (Joseph Vitale), in league with Merlin, wounds Hank with a lance. As he wheels about to make another run at him, Hank uses his pistol to shoot the knight off his horse (which is the bullet hole noted in a suit of armor at the start). As Hank seems to be succumbing to his wound, clutching Sandy’s pendant necklace, the scene fades out and we are back in Pendragon Castle.Taken by the tale, Lord Pendragon suggests to Hank that before he leaves he should see the view from the east parapet, where his niece often walks. When Hank goes there, he finds that the niece is the spitting image of his lost Alisande, and has the same name! Music swells. The End.(This ending is very much like that of a musical released the year before, “One Touch of Venus.” In that, the hero (Robert Walker) believes he has lost forever the goddess Venus (Ava Gardner) only to find another woman who looks just like her and who is also named Venus.)The musical is entertaining despite all the material cut from the book. Crosby is his usual charming self and croons a couple of forgettable songs. Rhonda Fleming has a mass of cascading red hair and is an alluring love interest, though her singing voice may have been dubbed. The film would have benefited from using the Rodgers and Hart songs from Broadway. Neither the book nor the movie explain how Hank can get knocked out in Connecticut and wake up in England. And if it was all a dream, as suggested in the film, how does Hank still have Sandy’s pendant when he wakes? The DVD has no extras beyond the theatrical trailer.A similar plot, a modern man knocked unconscious and waking up in medieval times, is “The Black Knight” (2001), with Martin Lawrence.Emperor Waltz: the hills are alive with the sound of Crosby.This DVD has two Crosby musicals, made a year apart. Take away the fancy costumes, the lavish palace sets, and the lush Viennese waltzes and scenery, and “Emperor Waltz” has the thinnest and most predictable of romantic plots. Two plots, actually. Lower-class traveling salesman and his lower-class mongrel dog both fall hopelessly in love with a high-born countess and her pedigree poodle.Released a year before “A Connecticut Yankee,” this one finds Vigil Smith (Bing Crosby) peddling his wares—phonographs—in the high society of 1908 Austria. He figures that if he can sell one to the Emperor (Richard Haydn), he can use that endorsement to sell hundreds, even thousands more to the rest of the populace. But the Emperor does not deal with mere tradesmen, and his guards suspect that the black box holding the phonograph is actually a time bomb (an impression not helped by Virgil’s American slang when he says what’s in the box will kill the old boy).In any case, the Emperor is busy negotiating a romantic liaison between his dog and a large black poodle named Scheherazade, owned by his niece, the Countess Johanna von Stolzenberg-Stolzenberg (Joan Fontaine). On her way out of the palace, assignation between the two pooches arranged, the poodle grapples with Virgil’s dog, Buttons. As Hollywood romances go, fighting at first means love in the end. Soon Scheherazade is pining for Buttons, while their respective owners are so at odds that Johanna has ordered Virgil out of the country. The poodle’s vet, Dr. Zweiback (Sig Rumann) is a student of Freud and feels that Scheherazade has a mental block and needs to get over her fear of Buttons by bringing them together. Naturally, this also brings the quarreling owners together. It’s unclear what the poodle sees in the mutt, but Johanna falls fast for Virgil’s crooning (“I Kiss Your Hand, Madame”), despite their class differences. (Though one upper-crust dowager calls it “a cheap bathroom yowl.”)It isn’t long before Virgil wants to marry Johanna and live in New Jersey, even though that means she has to give up grand balls and opera first-nighters for taffy pulls and bowling nights. Johanna’s father, a Baron, says of Virgil: “I’m not narrow-minded. I could even forgive him being an American, if he belonged to one of those Vander, Astor, uh, Rocker families.” The Emperor also has his doubts, feeling that once someone from the upper-class leaves with someone of the lower, they soon yearn for what they used to have. He convinces Virgil that giving up Johanna is for her own good, and for giving her up the Emperor will endorse the phonograph. This, of course, creates a riff between them.Buttons works faster than Virgil and soon Scheherazade gives birth to three white-and-tan puppies. Oops. (The Baron calls her a Jezebel.) Virgil saves the pups from being drowned, tells off the Emperor (who falls for the pups), and reconciles with Johanna as they go waltzing away to Strauss’s “Emperor Waltz” (with words by Johnny Burke).The script, surprisingly, was by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, both of whom are known for much sharper stories (they teamed to win the screenplay Oscar in 1945 for “The Lost Weekend” and Wilder won for Best Director). Wilder also directed this one. It’s thin but enjoyable. Victor Young was nominated for a scoring Oscar, but lost to Johnny Green and Roger Edens for “Easter Parade.” And one gets to hear Bing Crosby yodel!

I thought both of them were very entertaining, there isn’t much that Bing Crosby hasn’t done well

I consider Bing Crosby not only a singer with a pleasant voice but also a man with a childlike sense of humor who frequently welcomes fun and joy in his adventurous acting.On top of that we have pretty Rhonda Fleming as his sidekick who besides singing and dancing has the innate ability to be also funny.Let's face it this movie based on Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee's best seller book is not that interesting, however I have come to understand the book itself actually is remarkable yet, like when with Bob Hope on the On the Road movies, Crosby fun loving presence, acting and singing abilities usually compensate for the shortcomings in the story itself.Regarding the second part on this DVD Emperor Waltz ranks, in my opinion, even better than Connecticut Yankee perhaps due to the nice presence of a cute well-trained little dog and of course the charisma of a supporting talented actress like Joan Fontaine.These two Crosby movies in one DVD are recommended.

One of my favorite Crosby musicals. Glad to add it to my collection.

DVD would not play, returned for a refund

This DVD is obviously for the NTSC market and will not play on PAL system. I am returning nit. Shame as it is a good Film.

\i saw both thesenfilms many years ago and enjoyed them immensely, I have just played them again it is nice to watch films with the good feel factor

Would not play

I LIKE THE FILM THE SOUND WAS ALL OVER THE PLACE