Paris in Spring is a now-obscure movie musical made at Paramount in the mid-1930s—an attempt to capitalize on a short-lived rage for film operettas. Its stars are now virtually forgotten. Ida Lupino, the third lead, is well-remembered—though primarily for her post-1940 acting career and as a groundbreaking woman director in Hollywood. Her stint at Paramount in the 1930s is neglected.
The story of the production of Paris in Spring begins in late 1934 as the teenage Ida Lupino was on a several-month vacation in her native London, taking time-off after an eventful first year in Hollywood. In November 1934, Paramount purchased an unproduced stage play called Two on a Tower as the second film vehicle for opera singer and actress Mary Ellis, who they were attempting to build into a movie star.
With Ellis in Two on a Tower, the studio aimed to replicate Columbia's success with opera singer Grace Moore in One Night of Love (1934). Lewis Milestone (All Quiet on the Western Front 1930, The Front Page 1931) was soon brought in as director. Two on a Tower was planned to be one of the studio's more prominent productions of 1935.
Initially, early-career Cary Grant was considered for the male lead. But Paramount decided to go in a different direction. Shortly after the year began, they signed Tullio Carminati for that role. He had starred opposite Grace Moore in One Night of Love, so this was another building block in replicating that success. Carminati understood he was a key part, as he held out for "plenty of money". Dorothy Parker was brought in to help write dialogue and lyrics for the film. (She did not end up in the final credits.)
At this point Ida Lupino, Paramount's young ingenue star from England, enters the story. She was cast as the second female lead behind Ellis and Carminati. Her first three roles in Hollywood had all been leads, but those were less prestigious productions.
Ida was very young—she would turn 17 in early February. A veteran of prominent roles in several British films, she had signed with Paramount in the summer of 1933 and moved to Hollywood with her mother Connie. She was the most talked-about candidate in the highly-publicized search for the role of Alice in Alice in Wonderland. Ida did not get the part, but the studio nonetheless decided to promote the young actress as an up-and-coming star. They cast her in leading roles in three films released in 1934. Over the summer, Ida had a few scary weeks recovering from an attack of infantile paralysis—polio. The studio delayed production of her next film until she recovered. After that, Ida decided to take time off to visit her father and sister in England. The studio agreed to let her take a leave for a few months.
In mid-January 1935, Ida arrived back in the United States aboard the Olympic with her mother and younger sister Rita, with the press reporting that she would be starting work on Two on a Tower immediately on her arrival in Hollywood a few days later. When she did get back to Hollywood, she was widely reported saying, "Four months abroad impressed me with the fact that I am first a Southern Californian and second an English woman," and expressing a desire for American citizenship.
By late January, work on the picture was underway. New York Daily News columnist Sidney Skolsky visited the set and reported that Ida looked more beautiful than before her trip to England, was as excited as a movie fan to meet Mary Ellis, and somehow had lost her heavy English accent. Ida, already well-known for playing bad-girl roles, said, "It's funny, me getting such a goody, goody role." She also said, "I fell in love, really in love for the first time, while I was in London... And now I'm to get a chance to prove I'm an actress."
The film was a musical comedy with several operetta-style songs—all sung by Mary Ellis, though Carminati chimes in with a few verses in one of them. The original name of Two on a Tower came from the opening scene, where Carminati rides to the top of the Eiffel Tower feigning a desire to leap off of it, as Ellis' character has rebuffed his marriage proposals. At the top, Carminati encounters Ida Lupino's character, who appears to be more seriously attempting the same thing. Their encounter is about as charming as a double-suicide meet-cute can be. Their suicide plans are called off in an embrace, and they commence scheming to win back their true loves. For me, this charming scene is the highlight of the movie.
Soon, the name Two on a Tower had been dropped in favor of the more generic, but presumably more salable, Paris in Spring. The elaborate sets used in the film for the nightclub and the massive French country house indicate that Paramount was not skimping on this production. Press reports said the set was one of the largest at the studio. An item in Variety in June said that of recent Paramount pictures, Paris in Spring had the highest production cost—$800,000.
Rumors of a potential romance between Ida and director Lewis Milestone hit the papers in February—they were seen together many nights at various night spots. Both denied anything more than friendship. Ida was reportedly also dating actor Richard Cromwell. On March 9, Louella Parsons published an item: "Cary Grant, the object of many women's attention, beauing Ida Lupino."
Ida's January comments about becoming more Californian than English must have caused a stir in her native country, as in March, she was doing damage control: "[Ida Lupino] feels extremely grateful for the opportunities afforded her in this country but would consider renouncing her rights as an Englishwoman in the same way most people would think of desertion from the army."
Shooting on Paris in Spring was completed in the last week of March. All three leads came through with gifts for the crew, which was unusual enough to merit press attention. Mary Ellis then sailed for England to appear in a play, planning to return to Paramount late in the year for another musical. Carminati gave Ida a small watch for "being a good little girl".
Around this same time, Ida started spending time with the famous millionaire, film producer, and aviator, Howard Hughes. In early April, they were photographed in Palm Springs together, and by mid-April, Ida had to issue a denial of impending marriage: "We are very, very, VERY good friends, but that is all." Her dates with Hughes, all chaperoned by her mother according to Ida's later recollections, appear to have ceased not long after.
In early May, Ida was invited by Jackie Coogan, the child star of Charlie Chaplin's The Kid on a weekend outing but declined. The trip resulted in a horrendous automobile accident that killed four people in the car, including teenage actor Trent "Junior" Durkin, and severely injured Coogan, the only survivor.
After this tragedy, she was back working in her next pictures at Paramount: Peter Ibbetson, another supporting role in a prestigious production—this one starring Gary Cooper and Ann Harding; and Smart Girl, a comic-drama programmer where she was the lead.
The first public preview of Paris in Spring was held in San Bernardino on May 20. Ida and Lewis Milestone attended along with numerous other representatives from Paramount; Carminati and Ellis are not mentioned. (Of course Ellis was in England by this point.) The official release of the film was a week later, and it generally received favorable, though lukewarm, reviews.
The vast majority of reviewers' attention, almost all quite positive, was focused on Mary Ellis. Ida Lupino was not mentioned in depth by many. One reviewer for the New York Daily News, after a glowing discussion of Ellis, wrote: "Ida Lupino, who has obviously been to a new beauty parlor as well as to a new school of dramatics, where in the first she has acquired a superior pulchritude and in the second a bigger and better acting sense." A Los Angeles Times reviewer wrote that "It is Ida Lupino who offers the surprise performance, however. She plays with humor and charm and projects personality for the first time." (This seems overly harsh on Ida's earlier performances, especially in Ready for Love (1934) and her British films of 1933.) Modern Screen magazine wrote about the supporting players, "The lad [James Blakeley] can act. So can Ida Lupino." They added, "Ida Lupino's about as interesting a movie starlet as you'll find out there."
At the box office, the appeal of Paris in Spring appears to have been limited, though I haven't found any concrete evidence of how it performed. Despite the mixed-to-positive reviews, a handful of exhibitor comments in the Motion Picture Herald in the second half of 1935 are mostly negative. One of the harsher ones said, "Many of our patrons decided they did not care to visit 'Paris in Spring'". The film had started its descent into obscurity.
As for the players, Mary Ellis returned to Paramount later in 1935 and did only one more film there, Fatal Lady (1936). She continued her long career on the London stage afterwards. She lived to the age of 105, dying in 2003. Her autobiography, Those Dancing Years, was published in 1982. In the book, she refers to Paris in Spring as Paris Love Song, and says "working in it was one of the most enjoyable times I ever had".
Tullio Carminati did a substantial number of films in Europe over the rest his career. His subsequent Hollywood film appearances after Paris in Spring were rare, but he did have a supporting role in the well-known romantic comedy Roman Holiday in 1953.
Ida Lupino continued at Paramount for a few more years—growing increasingly unsatisfied with the types of roles she was getting—before abruptly leaving the studio in late 1937. After a career crisis, she broke into stardom at Warner Bros. in 1940, spending most of the next decade as an acting star before transitioning to writing, producing, and directing films—and later television.
In Ida Lupino's brief memoir, edited and published posthumously by Mary Ann Anderson, there is no mention of Paris in Spring.
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