Copacabana (1947) on Netflix
Lionel Q. Devereaux, a vaudeville agent, sells his girlfriend Carmen Navarro to a nightclub twice: as a singer and as a veiled Parisian named Mlle. Fifi. Costume changes keep the two apart.
- Netflix2.0/5
- IMDb6.1/101,483 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes20%
Trailer
Plot summary
Lionel Q. Devereaux has been engaged to Carmen Navarro for ten years, and the vaudeville act they share is failing, since Lionel has no talent of his own. Their New York theatrical hotel gives them twenty-four hours to settle the bill. Lionel makes Carmen the act and himself her agent, pushes his way into the Copacabana nightclub and presses producer Steve Hunt to audition her. Asked for his other clients, Lionel reads a name off a racing form: Mlle. Fifi. Carmen auditions behind a veil as the Parisian Mlle. Fifi, and Steve hires both women. Carmen races through costume changes to keep the two apart. Steve is drawn to both, so Lionel says he is engaged to Carmen, and Steve asks Fifi out instead. Steve's secretary Anne Stuart loves him and resents the date.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Copacabana (1947)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Copacabana was the first time Groucho Marx appeared in his own person, without his traditional greasepaint mustache and swallow-tail coat, and his first significant film appearance as a solo act, without brothers Harpo and Chico.
- In mid-February 1947, after letters from Brazilian fans saying they preferred Carmen Miranda as a brunette, Sam Coslow considered reshooting her blonde-haired scenes for prints released only in South America.
- Coslow thought the rough cut ran too long, so editor Philip Cahn trimmed Copacabana to 92 minutes, cutting a specialty number by the DeCastro Sisters, who are billed ninth out of 20 but appear only in the finale singing a fragment of "Let's Do the Copacabana."
- Writer Howard Harris caught the spirit and pace of Groucho Marx's wisecracks so well that he went on to write material for Groucho's You Bet Your Life television series.
- Sam Coslow wrote seven original songs for Copacabana, but Groucho Marx insisted on a song by his usual tunesmiths Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby and sang their "Go West, Young Man", composed in 1936.
- Screenwriter Allen Boretz, who had co-written the hit play Room Service, later adapted as a Marx Brothers film, reused its premise for Copacabana: an unsuccessful theatrical entrepreneur using desperate means to land a lucrative contract.
- A June 1944 Hollywood Reporter report said independent producer Jack H. Skirball was originally set to make Copacabana with Monte Proser's assistance; around the same time George Raft was announced as a potential lead.
