Some Thoughts
The Cuban Love Song is the story of a selfish man who manages to both have his cake and eat it, yet manages to be enjoyable in spite of this.
This was, as well as being MGM’s last musical for a couple of years, the final film under Lawrence Tibbet’s contract with the studio. He handles himself very well in what is essentially a romance with music. Contemporaries may have smiled at well-known sex pot Lupe Velez playing a virginal peanut vendor, but she pulls it off, and her scenes with Tibbett are very believable, as is her faked bravura when she knows Tibbett has to leave her.
This is a pre-code musical with some pretty blatant out-of-wedlock sex, though the fact that Velez dies might have made Will Hays feel slightly better about it. The man, of course, ends up with a son and in a clinch with Karen Morley, who has little to do in the picture other than be a good egg, but she does it very well.
The optical printer had been in widespread use since 1927, and enabled The Cuban Love Song to achieve its most memorable sequence, when Lawrence Tibbett duets with himself, performing both baritone and tenor vocals. It was his last song in a film for four years, and it is a worthy one.
There are a couple of good Fields-McHugh numbers in the film, but these are augmented by two genuine Cuban songs, one of which is reprised by Cuban artist Ernesto Lecuono, triggering a Proustian moment for our hero. The other is well-performed by Velez and nicely staged by W S Van Dyke, directing the first of the eleven musicals he worked on. Overall, his direction is fluid, with camera movement working in support of the narrative.
Mention must be made, finally, of Jimmy Durante, energetic as always in his supporting role, and playing the most unlikely-looking member of the US Marine Corps.
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