Paris is a black-and-white musical comedy film with Technicolor

Technicolor

Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...

 sequences: four of ten reels were originally photographed in Technicolor. Paris was the fourth color movie released by Warner Bros.; the first three were The Desert Song

The Desert Song (1929 film)

The Desert Song is a musical operetta film photographed partly in two-color Technicolor. This was the first movie released by Warner Bros. to be in color. Although some of the songs from the show have been omitted, the film is otherwise virtually a duplicate of the stage production...

, On With the Show and Gold Diggers of Broadway, all released in 1929. The film was adapted from the Cole Porter

Cole Porter

Cole Albert Porter was an American composer and songwriter. Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, he defied the wishes of his domineering grandfather and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn towards musical theatre...

 Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 musical of the same name. The musical was Porter's first Broadway hit. No film elements of Paris are known to exist, although the complete soundtrack survives on Vitaphone

Vitaphone

Vitaphone was a sound film process used on feature films and nearly 1,000 short subjects produced by Warner Bros. and its sister studio First National from 1926 to 1930. Vitaphone was the last, but most successful, of the sound-on-disc processes...

 disks.

Paris was the fourth movie Warner Brothers had made with their Technicolor contract. Paris used a color (Technicolor) process of red and green, at the time it was the third process of Technicolor.

Plot

Irene Bordoni

Irène Bordoni

Irène Bordoni was a French singer and a Broadway and film actress.-Early years:Born in Ajaccio, France, from an Italian family, she had been a child actor, performing in Paris on stage and in silent films for a few years, having signed with theatrical agent André Charlot...

 is cast as Vivienne Rolland, a Parisian chorus girl in love with Massachusetts boy Andrew Sabbot (Jason Robards Sr.) Andrew's snobbish mother Cora (Louise Closser Hale

Louise Closser Hale

Louise Closser Hale was an American actress, playwright and novelist.Louise Closser was born either in Springfield, Massachusetts or Chicago, Illinois . Her father was Joseph A. Closser, a wealthy grain dealer and her mother was Louise M. Closser...

) tries to break up the romance, and it is her scenes which give the film what little life it has. Jack Buchanan

Jack Buchanan

Walter John "Jack" Buchanan was a British theatre and film actor, singer, producer and director. He was known for three decades as the embodiment of the debonair man-about-town in the tradition of George Grossmith Jr., and was described by The Times as "the last of the knuts." He is best known in...

 likewise makes his talking-picture debut as Guy Pennell, the leading man in Vivienne's revue.

Production

Warner Bros. paid the celebrated French music hall star and Broadway chanteuse Irene Bordoni

Irène Bordoni

Irène Bordoni was a French singer and a Broadway and film actress.-Early years:Born in Ajaccio, France, from an Italian family, she had been a child actor, performing in Paris on stage and in silent films for a few years, having signed with theatrical agent André Charlot...

 $10,000 a week to star in this film, playing the role she had originated on Broadway, introducing the enduring Porter standard "Let's Do It, Let's Fall in Love

Let's Do It, Let's Fall in Love

"Let's Do It, Let's Fall in Love" is a popular song written in 1928 by Cole Porter. It was introduced in Porter's first Broadway success, the musical Paris by French chanteuse Irène Bordoni for whom Porter had written the musical as a starring vehicle...

". While this film was being shot, the studio was in the process of completing their all-star revue The Show of Shows (1929), so they had Bordoni film a number for the revue. Their initial intention was to have Bordoni star in two musical features, but due to the poor box-office reception of Paris, they decided not to make any more films with her.

Songs

"My Lover" "Paris" "Somebody Mighty Like You" "An' Furthermore" "Wob-a-ly Walk" "Don't Look at Me That Way" "Crystal Girl" "I'm a Little Negative" "I Wonder What is Really on his Mind" "Miss Wonderful" "Among My Souvenirs" "The Land of Going to Be"

Advertisement

Paris utilized advertisements of a type which were common for its time, featuring the talking in the film and Irene Bordoni

Irène Bordoni

Irène Bordoni was a French singer and a Broadway and film actress.-Early years:Born in Ajaccio, France, from an Italian family, she had been a child actor, performing in Paris on stage and in silent films for a few years, having signed with theatrical agent André Charlot...

starring. One ad for Paris said "See the talking picture of the future".