(1939; b/w) Released the same year as Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, this musical romantic-comedy histrionic adventure takes liberties from the classic Dumas story of D’Artagnan (Don Ameche) and his three Musketeer comrades (the Ritz Brothers) at no expense to our enjoyment.

With a song on his lips, a cheerful though boastful nature with Shakespeare for quips, and an impetuous urge to put others of whom he disapproves at the tip of his sword, D’Artagnan makes his way to Paris from his home in Gascony to become a cadet in King Louis XIII’s Musketeers. When Athos, Porthos, and Aramis arrive at a tavern, each complaining of an insolent young man they’ve encountered who has challenged each individually to a dual, they order the three cooks (the Ritz Brothers – slapstick comedians similar to the Three Stooges) to bring out flagons of liquor and challenge the trio from the kitchen to drink tankard for tankard toasts to the king, beginning with King Louis the First. By the time they reach Louis XIII, the Musketeers are on the floor and out of the picture. The cooks put the three Musketeers to bed and put on their garb and rapiers only to discover that a new proclamation by the king declares a penalty of death to anyone impersonating a Musketeer. D’Artagnan shows up for his duals only to be interrupted by Cardinal Richelieu’s guardsmen. The cooks caper about as D’Artagnan makes mincemeat of the guards.

Soon after the new Musketeer becomes enthralled with the beautiful Constance (Pauline Moore), the queen’s lady, and thus entangled with the affair between the French queen (Gloria Stuart) and England’s prime minister, the Duke of Buckingham (Lester Matthews), who are conspiring to make war between their two countries. This time the queen has given Buckingham – “Take this in remembrance of what can never be” – an emerald brooch, a gift from the people of France, which D’Artagnan must retrieve to win the heart of his lady and save the queen from serious political embarrassment devised by Richelieu (Miles Mander). D’Artagnan and the cooks three (packed into a trunk) arrive at the port city Calais where the Musketeer finds Milady De Winter (Binnie Barnes) having just returned from England with the brooch. She, however, takes him as her captive and a coach with her prisoner to Chateau de Ambers where Richelieu has Constance as his prisoner. But the tables are turned again when the cooks overtake Milady’s coach, freeing D’Artagnan, with whom they enter the chateau disguised as four minstrels and by means of comedic entertainment and more disguises rescue Constance and return to Paris with the queen’s jewel just in time.

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Copyright © 2007 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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