In Gay Madrid is a strange title for a film that is almost entirely set in Santiago, over 300 miles from Madrid, typical of MGM’s cavalier attitude to naming its earliest musicals. It is a campus musical with a Spanish setting, like Good News with duelling.
The film reunited Ramon Novarro and Dorothy Jordan immediately after Devil-May-Care (they would work together once more in Call of the Flesh). Novarro was by now proving himself a very competent actor in talking pictures, though his accent sometimes throws off his line readings. His early scene with Claude King, playing his father, is nicely underplayed to comedic effect.
Jordan’s performance is less satisfying, all played on one note and with long pauses. But then most of her scenes are stolen by the much lovelier performances of Novarro and Beryl Mercer, playing her aunt.
The worst piece of casting is Lottice Howell as Goyita. Howell’s voice is okay, but she is nobody’s idea of a seductive nightclub singer. It is unsurprising that this was her last musical outing for MGM.
Robert Z Leonard’s direction is much more confident than it was in Marianne, with a less static camera. He continues the tendency, begun in Devil-My-Care, for Ramon Novarro’s musical films to be integrated. With the exception of Lotice Howell’s opening nightclub number, all of the songs are performed in non-theatrical settings to non-diegetic music, and arise naturally from the actions of the characters. All have lyrics that reflect on or develop the narrative.
One of the best sequences is the garden scene where Ricardo helps his friend (a large young man with the unlikely name of Corpulento) to serenade a girl. The action takes place within a large three-dimensional space and Leonard’s camera placement ensures that we always know where we are and whose point of view we are seeing.
The Ahlert-Turk and Stothart-Grey partnerships provided the words and music, with the latter pair being joined by Xavier Cugat, who would later make a successful series of appearances in front of the camera.
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