"This adaptation of Cole Porter's Broadway musical features Red Skelton, Lucille Ball and Gene Kelly. After winning a Derby, nightclub coat-check boy Louis Blore mistakenly drinks a 'Mickey' that sends him into a fantastic dream. Louis imagines himself as King Louis XV of France, and the cabaret singer he adores as his Madame Du Barry." [MGM Summary] 

RUNNING TIME
    101m's

YEAR OF RELEASE
    1943

STUDIO
    Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

COLOR/BW
    Technicolor

DIRECTOR
    Roy Del Ruth

WRITERS
    Irving Brecher
    Buddy G. DeSylva
    Herbert Fields
    Nancy Hamilton
    Wilkie C. Mahoney

CINEMATOGRAPHER
    Karl Freund

MUSIC
    Burton Lane
    Cole Porter

FILM EDITING
    Blanche Sewell

PRODUCER
    Arthur Freed

ART DIRECTOR
    Cedric Gibbons

SET DECORATOR
    Henry Grace
    Edwin B. Willis 

Du Barry Was a Lady had been a huge hit on Broadway in 1939, starring Ethel Merman and Bert Lahr.  Before Cole Porter turned it into a Broadway musical, however, it had been envisioned as a film for (reportedly) Mae West.  But that idea was dropped and the team of Merman and Lahr gave 408 performances in Lucy and Red's roles.

When negotiations began for the movie rights to Du Barry, Arthur Freed wanted to buy the film, although he wasn't sure who to give the female lead to.  But RKO was also interested in another Cole Porter musical, Panama Hattie.  And so Freed decided to sell the show's producers on a package deal where MGM bought the rights to both Panama Hattie and Du Barry Was a Lady for $200,000.  Panama Hattie was made into a largely unsuccesful 1942 musical starring Ann Sothern.  But for Du Barry, Freed decided he'd have to look outside the MGM lot - and he found Lucille Ball at RKO.

Lucy had been mostly wallowing at RKO for the last seven years, so when Freed's offer to come to MGM, the greatest movie studio in Hollywood, she was ecstatic and immediatley accepted.  She was immediatley put into Du Barry with Lahr's role being played by Red Skelton and Gene Kelly, Rags Ragland, Virginia O'Brien and a young Zero Mostel in supporting roles.

Since the film would by Lucy's first in Technicolor, MGM hairstylist Sidney Guilaroff decided she needed to make a splash.  So he came up with the idea of dying her hair orange, explaining "The hair may be brown, but the soul's on fire."  Lucy's bright orange hair would be her trademark for the rest of her life.

Karl Freund, who did the cinematography for Du Barry, would later film I Love Lucy.

Lucy and Ethel Mertz (Vivian Vance) would later perform "Friendship" in an I Love Lucy episode #69, Lucy and Ethel Buy the Same Dress.  But Lucy sang it here first with Red Skelton.  A recording of that song is available on Disc 6 of Rhino/Turner Classic Movies Music's That's Entertainment! box-set.

The film took ten weeks to shoot, with production ending on November 6, 1942.

When the film finally opened on August 13, 1943, reviewers praised the film and Lucy, and it was one of her biggest film successes.

Du Barry Was a Lady is out of print on videotape from MGM/UA Home Video (#300983).  You can buy the video online from Ted's Lucille Ball Bookstore (in association with Amazon.com). 

"Metro has given it the luster of a million dollars in gold.  They have tossed the juicy dame role to Lucille Ball, who carries it well." [Bosley Crowther]

"Colorful nonsense, missing most of the songs from Cole Porter's Broadway score, though 'Friendship' is used as the finale.  Opens like a vaudeville show, with beautiful chorines and specialty acts, including young Mostel, and Dorsey's band with Buddy Rich on drums doing a sensational 'Well, Git It.' They turn up later in powdered wigs, as do the Pied Pipers, with Dick Haymes (in his film debut) and Jo Stafford." [Leonard Maltin]

"In Du Barry Was a Lady, my first starring role for MGM, they gave me a scarlet, four-cornered mouth and a pastry shop pyramid of orange hair, plus a fifteen-pound white Du Barry pompadour wig.  Red Skelton played a nightclub attendant who is slipped a Mickey Finn and awakens to find himself Louis XV.  I was the nightclub star he admired from afar, who becomes Madame Du Barry in his dream.  Most of the action consisted of Red in satin knee breeches chasing me over and around a big double bed.  We practiced for days on a trampoline, which made me acutely seasick.

We did some spectacular dancing in Du Barry, including a very funny bit to the song 'Friendship.'  There were also a dance scene to the hauntingly lovely 'Do I Love You?'  Cole Porter's songs and Ethel Merman and Bert Lahr had made the show a big hit on Broadway.  I made no attempt to copy Ethel Merman's style -- she's inimitable -- but I was pleased when a New York reviewer commented, 'To her red-headed and later bewigged beauty, Miss Ball adds vivaciousness and excellent comedy timing, proving once again that she is a musical-comedy star of the first magnitude.'" [Love, Lucy] 

"Lucille Ball is beautiful in this movie.  The sets, the Technicolor, the big band music [all] help a weak script." - Anonymous

"I loved when Lucy and Red sang 'Friendship.'" - Anonymous

"Just a really funny movie, where Lucy shines!" - Anonymous