The Cuban Love Song (1931)

I love this movie so much

Great Film overall

Best movie ever!

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

This is not a particularly enjoyable movie, and that is strange.It tells the story of an American serviceman, Lawrence Tibbett, who gets shore leave in Cuba in 1914 and becomes involved with - I won't say falls in love with - a lively Cuban peanut seller. They spend some fun time together - and, as we learn later, conceive a child - before Tibbett is called back to the U.S. to serve in World War I.Ten years later, by then a married man in the States, Tibbett hears a Cuban song and sets off for Cuba again, in search of the peanut vendor. He discovers that she has died, but also discovers the child he fathered with her. He takes the child back to the U.S. with him and his wife, in the closing scene, agrees to take him back with the boy.In 1931, when this movie was made, this would have been a story about interracial sex - perhaps love. Tibbett's American wife, like Kate Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly, agrees to take the child of her husband with a woman of a different race. There is no chance for a marriage for the Cuban woman and the American man - he shies away when she proposes it - because of what was seen as the racial barrier. He has no problems having a good time with her, but marriage is another issue.Still, he can't forget her. Whether that is just sexual desire, or whether there is also an element of love in there, the movie never makes clear.As a result, Tibbett's character comes off as somewhat exploitative, and therefore unappealing, at least for modern viewers.I guess this could have been a male fantasy back in 1931, but today that is hard to swallow.I will say, though, that Tibbett's singing in his few numbers is very impressive. His recordings, while good, do not capture the sound of his rich voice the way this movie sound track did. He is also a very natural actor, unlike some other operatic singers who tried Hollywood in the 1930s.This is not a good movie, but it is an interesting example of how pre-Code Hollywood treated certain racial issues.

A fabulous pre-code film with the incandescent and beautiful Lupe Velez. The film meanders a bit, but Jimmy Durante is wonderful in comic relief. A few lewd jokes help liven things up: When a baby cries incessantly, fellow marine Ernest Torrence suggests Jimmy Durante quiet the infant by nursing him. So Jimmy obliges by unbuttoning his blouse...and pulls out a pocket watch to distract the wailing youngster. Blooper Mention: Jimmy Durante is accidentally slipped a castor oil filled lemonade by the bartender. He drinks it all, despite wincing at the taste...but we never see what happens afterwards. Did he get violently ill? Wander Havana with brown-stained pants? Find the toilet in the nick of time? Guess the scene was left on the cutting room floor...

Lawrence Tibbett had a varied and distinguished career at the Met. In "Metropolitan," he got to sing operatic arias. The music here is schmaltz, though he delivers it with great beauty.He strides around the sound stage as if on a theatrical stage -- but that's not a problem. The movie itself is fairly silly.Jimmy Durante is somewhat restrained as his military buddy. And, lucky guy! He has romances with two lovely ladies. Karen Morley is the kind woman back home. And that famous Cuban Lupe Velez is the peanut-seller he meets while in the service.Velez is allowed little of the fieriness and tantrums that marked her "Mexican Spitfire" series and most other movies I've seen her in. She appealing.I won't give anything away. (It's far from a work of art or a suspenseful movie, anyway.) However, the plot does seem a Hollywood riff on "Madame Butterfly."

The Cuban Love Song is an early talkie with soaring tunes and a touching performance by Lupe Velez, who struggles, mightily, however, to sing the Herbert Stothart music. Most of the vocal duties are carried by Tibbett, whose excellent voice makes up for somewhat wooden acting that was unfortunately typical of the era. As a plot, the film depends on the old Madame Butterfly story (also used in Miss Saigon) of a military man stationed in the developing world (in this case, Cuba) who falls in love with, then loses, a local girl. Viewed today, the story seems tainted with racism, and Velez does occasionally overdo the cuchi-cuchi stuff. But the scene where Tibbett is called away to fight in WWI, and the Velez character tries to put up a bold front, has true emotional impact. Incidentally, the score contains "The Peanut Song," sung in Spanish, later used as a rousing number in the Judy Garland version of "A Star is Born."