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Perfect cast and a good story

Excellent adaptation.

Absolutely brilliant

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Grace Moore stars as a feisty younger daughter of the eccentric Duke of Bavaria (Walter Connolly) whose oldest daughter is off to Vienna to marry the Emperor (Franchot Tone). Moore follows along, masquerading as a dressmaker. The arranged royal marriage when Tone spies Moore and is smitten. The masquerade continues in a merry mix-up until the finale.Moore is good here, light and comic, but the songs are all rather bland. Tone is handsome as the Emperor, and Connolly steals the show as the beer-guzzling duke. Co-stars include the wonderful Herman Bing as proprietor of the inn, Elisabeth Risdon as the Empress, Nana Bryant as the mother, Frieda Inescort as Helena, Victor Jory as Palfi, Eve Southern as the fortune teller, and Johnny Arthur as the inept chief of police. Others include Thurston Hall, Raymond Walburn, Al Shean, E.E. Clive, William Hopper, and George Hassell.Moore had a hit-or-miss 9-film career in the 30s, She flopped badly in her 1930 debut in A LADY'S MORALS but had a big hit and an Oscar nomination for ONE NIGHT OF LOVE in 1934.And yes, Broadway Superstar Gwen Verdon made her film debut here as a ballerina. She was 11 years old.

Supporting players Walter Connolly and Elizabeth Risdon steal the show with their portrayals in this 1936 comedy.Lovely to watch Grace Moore in a real flighty role for her; a sister who goes with her father to break up the forthcoming nuptials of her sister, Frieda Inescort to Emperor Franchot Tone. Naturally, we can go who falls in love with whom. Moore sings to the right notes and we have some very humorous moments at the carnival honoring the Emperor's birthday.A delightful comedy with a superior cast. The typical 1930s comedy with the odd twists.

This one is tough to honestly evaluate. On the one hand you have Grace Moore and her wonderful voice, able and adequate supporting roles, notably by the always reliable and graceful Frieda Inescort, Franchot Tone and Walter Connoly, and of course Sternberg's direction. For me at least that's reason enough to watch any movie, even this one which in some ways is an utter disaster. On the other there's just too much silliness, foolishness and Herman Bing. He can be aggravating enough even in small doses but he does way too much of that trademark tongue rolling and quaking of his for my taste.And then there's the ages of the real Sisi (Moore's character, Elisabeth of Bavaria) and Franz Josef (Tone's character). When Sisi married Franz Josef she was 16 and he 24, not 40 and 30, the ages of Moore and Tone respectively. Even given the generous poetic license the producers took with the real story which is nothing if not tragic, there's only one way to look at this movie. It is nothing more than a vehicle for Grace Moore. And maybe that's reason enough to watch it.

One of the truisms of Hollywood was that Josef Von Sternberg lost his muse when he and Marlene Dietrich parted creative company after The Devil Is A Woman. With Crime and Punishment between them, this next film is considered to be the biggest flop in his career. Mainly because Von Sternberg took on a light and airy Viennese operetta, the kind he probably grew up on in Europe.I don't think the film flopped because it was so bad, it's dated, but other operettas and more well known ones date even more. However The King Steps Out made a mistake because too many people remembered Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary for good and for ill him dying exactly 20 years earlier. And about 20 years earlier his wife Empress Elizabeth also died and she was also remembered by a few.What people remembered that beneath all this Viennese schmaltz, this was a story that did not have a happy ending. What we see in the film concerning Franz Josef and Elizabeth of Bavaria is true as far as it goes. It was a whirlwind courtship of sorts and the young Emperor did wind up marrying the younger sister after the Dowager Empress his mother arranged for the older sister. In real life though after the honeymoon and Elizabeth presenting the Hapsburg Emperor with a son and seemingly settling the succession, the woman would not settle down. When you see the vivacious Elizabeth that Grace Moore gives us on the screen, that was the real Sissi. She would not settle down though and eventually the couple split and lived apart for the rest of their lives with Elizabeth leading a gay and carefree life at the various resorts and spas of 19th century Europe. She was assassinated by an anarchist. The reaction to her death was very much like that for Princess Diana, in fact there are a lot of parallels between Lady Diana Spencer and Elizabeth of Bavaria.The image we have of Franz Joseph is that solemn man with the muttonchop whiskers and a stern countenance, the father of his people. Franz Joseph was always in fact a serious minded man. The character that Franchot Tone gives us just isn't the case, he was hardly that charming in real life. The Emperor certainly did get his battery plenty charged when Sissi was around and they were young and in love.Grace Moore of course is in fine voice in the third of her films for Columbia and the first that didn't quite measure up to Harry Cohn's expectations. The score was written by violin virtuoso Fritz Kreisler and Dorothy Fields and two of the songs Stars In My Eyes and The Old Refrain became concert standards for Grace Moore. Harry Cohn gave Von Sternberg a wonderful cast of known supporting players to work with. Out of the group I liked Herman Bing, the only authentic German in the bunch. He gets a lot of laughs out of playing the flustered innkeeper whom everyone, royalty included, takes advantage of.No happily ever after endings for Franz Joseph and Sissi and sad to say the audience knew it.