The Emperor Waltz (1948) on Netflix
NR19481h 46mComedyMusicRomance
American gramophone salesman Virgil Smith keeps returning to Vienna to persuade Emperor Franz Joseph to buy his machine. There his terrier scuffles with a countess's poodle.
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- Netflix3.3/5
- IMDb6.0/102,128 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes73%
Plot summary
Virgil Smith, an American gramophone salesman, travels to Vienna in the early twentieth century, hoping to sell his machine to Emperor Franz Joseph so the invention will catch on with the Austrian public. The countess Johanna Augusta Franziska von Stolzenberg-Stolzenberg and her father, Baron Holenia, learn that their black poodle Scheherazade has been chosen to mate with the emperor's poodle. On the way out they encounter Virgil and his dog Buttons, and the two animals scuffle. When Scheherazade suffers a nervous breakdown, Dr. Zwieback, a veterinarian who works with Freudian psychology, tells Johanna to make her dog face Buttons again to get rid of the fear. When the dogs are brought together again, their owners begin to spend time in each other's company.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Emperor Waltz (1948)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- While researching a planned film about American soldiers in post-war Europe, Billy Wilder's visits to concentration camps disturbed him so much that he abandoned the project and returned to Hollywood determined to write and direct a musical comedy instead.
- Wilder had read about Valdemar Poulsen, a Danish inventor who demonstrated a magnetic recording device for Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria hoping the Emperor would finance it; Wilder and Charles Brackett used that real episode as the starting point for their screenplay, first titled Viennese Story.
- Bing Crosby tended to alter his dialogue, saying it "as he felt it at the moment", while director Billy Wilder was known for insisting his lines be delivered exactly as written.
- Unhappy with the look of Jasper National Park's native trees, Wilder had pines shipped from California and planted on location at a cost of $20,000, and planted 4,000 white daisies dyed blue so they would photograph better.
- The Emperor Waltz was Billy Wilder's first color film, and he was so dissatisfied with how the exteriors looked in Technicolor that he had much of the local flora hand-painted for a more authentic look.
- Edith Head and Gile Steele were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Color Costume Design but lost to Dorothy Jeakins and Barbara Karinska for Joan of Arc; it was the first year an award in that category was presented.
- The song "Get Yourself a Phonograph", written by Johnny Burke and Jimmy Van Heusen, was not used in the final version of the film.
