Move over Titanic, here comes the ORIGINAL disaster musical!
A long-suffering wife, a two-timing husband, a doxie on the side, a ballet electrique, a masked ball, an auction of beautiful women, a doomed dirigible, women dressed as wind-up alarm clocks beating themselves about the head with mallets - this movie has everything!
It's a Viennese operetta! It's a drawing-room comedy/drama! It's a disaster epic! - no, it's ALL THREE!!! - as only can be delivered by that master showman, Cecil B. DeMille.
WHAT WERE THEY THINKING??????????!!!!!!!
This page is a celebration of one of the more singular motion picture events, Cecil B. DeMille's one (and thankfully) only crack at a musical. Produced by MGM at the tail end of the initial film musical blitz of 1929-30, Madam Satan is the musical tale of a timid society matron who attempts to recapture her errant husband's affections the only way she knows how - by appearing as her alter-ego, Madam Satan. (Hell must be somewhere in France as she sports a french accent more bizarre and inappropriate than John Cleese's in Monty Python & The Holy Grail.) To give away more of the plot would be to rob the uninitiated of two of the most bizarre hours in film history.
What follows are some links, quotes, images, and (hopefully - eventually) WAV files of some of the more priceless moments. If you like what you see, want more, or have other information/suggestions, contact me at cconnelly@mindspring.com ... or check out my personal web page.
