The Theatre: New Musical in Manhattan: Dec. 18, 1939

Du Barry Was a Lady (music & lyrics by Cole Porter; produced by B. G. De Sylva). First show in four years to charge $7.70 on opening night (with seats being scalped at $50 and $75 a pair), Du Barry Was a Lady swept into Manhattan last week with a tremendous advance build-up and the virtually golden guarantees of Cole Porter, Bert Lahr, Ethel Merman.

The fanfare was a trifle excessive. Many a musical has been fresher, cleverer, more original; several Cole Porter shows have had wittier lyrics, catchier tunes. But as a splendiferous version of regulation musicomedy Du Barry Was a Lady is all there. Its costumes are gorgeous, its goings-on boisterous. Its wit is almost nil, but its wisecracks are raw as a cannibal sandwich, suggestive as a red light burning in the hall. Bert Lahr is at his best—which is good enough. Ethel Merman is at her best —which is tops.

Du Barry Was a Lady tells of a washroom attendant who wins $75,000 in a sweepstakes and tries to marry a nightclub singer. He drinks a Mickey Finn intended for his rival, and dreams that he is Louis XV and the singer Du Barry. This permits an unsurpassably false picture of court and boudoir high jinks at Versailles which, had they been true, would have considerably speeded up the Revolution.

Bert Lahr is at his best when he goes royal, wrinkling his sub-Bourbon nose and speaking French as though afraid it might bounce back and hit him. As for Ethel Merman, if she is a little less than kin to Du Barry, she is more than kind—makes her, in fact, the most likable royal trollop that ever pranced behind footlights. More of an 18th-Century tomboy than a glamor girl, Merman booms and torches away in her train-announcer's contralto, jouncing her personality all over the stage, giving the King the oo-la-lahr, then (in a glorious whirlwind finish) snapping back to Broadway to sing Friendship and Katie Went to Haiti.