Other songs include "The Mounties", snippets of "Tosca" and "Romeo et Juliette" and the title song. The music is good, the costumes are stunning, and the secenery is, well, scenic. Jeanette and Nelson have great chemistry as always, and there are plenty of light moments to offset the angst. We also get to see a very young Jimmy Stewart and a huge Indian tribal dance number. What more could you want?

If you like "Rose Marie", be sure to check out "Naughty Marietta" (my favorite Nelson/MacDonald) and the tragic "Maytime". Jeanette and Eddy made a total of eight films together, most of them wildly popular. Watch "Rose Marie" and know why. GRADE: A-

Nelson and Jeannette have the ability to be very spontaneous in dialogue and work very well together, even depsite the fact that Nelson can be rather stiff at times - his singing more than makes up for it.

One thing I found particuarly striking was the scene toward the end when Jeannette is singing "Tosca": she is literally cracking up. We can hear what she hears - Nelson's Indian love call - and feel the discord between it and the words she must sing on stage. It reaches a pitch and then she faints.

I also felt that for a lightweight piece of "fluff" the character development wasn't half-bad, either - Right from the beginning it's well-established that as far as Jeannette is concerned the entire world revolves around her, so as the movie progresses it's good to see how Jeannette turns from a selfish, slave-driving diva to a sprightly, energetic, loving human being. Not everyone has the opportunity to cross the Canadian mountains with a mountie (unfortunately!), but I'm sure that figuratively there is something like that in each person's life, some backwoods experience that creates real character because of the necessity of facing adversity, learning what sacrifice and love are all about, and that life isn't all "me", and sometimes we have to eat bacon...

I found the totem pole dance scene rather amusing as well. I was very into Indians for a long time as a child, and learnt quite a bit about them, so it struck me funny that this tribe had it all - the totem poles of the Pacific Northwest, the feathered headdresses and tipis of the Plains... Still, it was an interesting sequence, despite the fact that it was very 1930's Hollywood and far from authentic.

James Stewart's small role as Jeannette's brother was fine as well - it was interesting how he really was only on screen for a few minutes, but all through the film, you were seeing the wanted posters and thinking about him to a point where he was really a main character.

I recommend this film very much, along with The Chocolate Soldier, which is another truly delightful musical.

Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy were, therefore, a unique aberration in the history of cinema history, the only operatic partnership in Hollywood, ever. They were the operatic equivalent of Astaire and Rogers, and if their films never achieved the polish or brilliance of those two, they nonetheless managed to make some very fine films. ROSE MARIE is probably their most famous, and perhaps their finest.

The various renderings of "Indian Love Call" in the film are what the film is best known for, but upon reviewing the film last night with my daughter (who loved it, although she found many moments so embarrassing that she had to hide her head under a pillow, especially during the movie's closing moments), I was amazed at how enjoyable the movie is as a whole. The movie is delightful from beginning to end, gorgeous to look at (filmed, unfortunately, at Lake Tahoe, instead of the Canadian Rockies), and infinitely less dated than one might expect from an operatically driven 1936 comedy. The movie was also enhanced from a barrage of excellent supporting players. Reginald Owen, David Niven, Alan Mowbray, Una O'Connor, the aforementioned Allan Jones, and Jimmy Conlin (familiar to anyone who has seen many Preston Sturges comedies) provide a deep cast. Jimmy Stewart has a smallish role in the last film he made before becoming a lead actor.

One of the more intriguing segments was filmed at an actual Indian camp. Visually, it is a stunning sequence, but unfortunately MGM in the best Hollywood fashion marred the scene with added orchestral music and choreography. And no, this is not the film that breaks the mould by having an actual Native American play a Native American. George Regas, who made a career out of playing Indians, was actually born in Greece.