richard-1787 This is not a particularly enjoyable movie, and that is strange.It tells the story of an American serviceman, Lawrence Tibbett, who gets shore leave in Cuba in 1914 and becomes involved with - I won't say falls in love with - a lively Cuban peanut seller. They spend some fun time together - and, as we learn later, conceive a child - before Tibbett is called back to the U.S. to serve in World War I.Ten years later, by then a married man in the States, Tibbett hears a Cuban song and sets off for Cuba again, in search of the peanut vendor. He discovers that she has died, but also discovers the child he fathered with her. He takes the child back to the U.S. with him and his wife, in the closing scene, agrees to take him back with the boy.In 1931, when this movie was made, this would have been a story about interracial sex - perhaps love. Tibbett's American wife, like Kate Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly, agrees to take the child of her husband with a woman of a different race. There is no chance for a marriage for the Cuban woman and the American man - he shies away when she proposes it - because of what was seen as the racial barrier. He has no problems having a good time with her, but marriage is another issue.Still, he can't forget her. Whether that is just sexual desire, or whether there is also an element of love in there, the movie never makes clear.As a result, Tibbett's character comes off as somewhat exploitative, and therefore unappealing, at least for modern viewers.I guess this could have been a male fantasy back in 1931, but today that is hard to swallow.I will say, though, that Tibbett's singing in his few numbers is very impressive. His recordings, while good, do not capture the sound of his rich voice the way this movie sound track did. He is also a very natural actor, unlike some other operatic singers who tried Hollywood in the 1930s.This is not a good movie, but it is an interesting example of how pre-Code Hollywood treated certain racial issues.

perseus577 A fabulous pre-code film with the incandescent and beautiful Lupe Velez. The film meanders a bit, but Jimmy Durante is wonderful in comic relief. A few lewd jokes help liven things up: When a baby cries incessantly, fellow marine Ernest Torrence suggests Jimmy Durante quiet the infant by nursing him. So Jimmy obliges by unbuttoning his blouse...and pulls out a pocket watch to distract the wailing youngster. Blooper Mention: Jimmy Durante is accidentally slipped a castor oil filled lemonade by the bartender. He drinks it all, despite wincing at the taste...but we never see what happens afterwards. Did he get violently ill? Wander Havana with brown-stained pants? Find the toilet in the nick of time? Guess the scene was left on the cutting room floor...

David (Handlinghandel) Lawrence Tibbett had a varied and distinguished career at the Met. In "Metropolitan," he got to sing operatic arias. The music here is schmaltz, though he delivers it with great beauty.He strides around the sound stage as if on a theatrical stage -- but that's not a problem. The movie itself is fairly silly.Jimmy Durante is somewhat restrained as his military buddy. And, lucky guy! He has romances with two lovely ladies. Karen Morley is the kind woman back home. And that famous Cuban Lupe Velez is the peanut-seller he meets while in the service.Velez is allowed little of the fieriness and tantrums that marked her "Mexican Spitfire" series and most other movies I've seen her in. She appealing.I won't give anything away. (It's far from a work of art or a suspenseful movie, anyway.) However, the plot does seem a Hollywood riff on "Madame Butterfly."

bkoganbing One of these fine days when Fidel Castro can no longer fog a mirror and the President of the United States no longer has a brother who's Governor of Florida and dependent on exiled Cuban votes, we'll be back to visiting Cuba as before and updated versions of Cuban Love Song will be made again.Probably not with a transplanted opera singer like Lawrence Tibbett though. In Cuban Love Song he's Terry Burke, devil may care, upper middle class average Joe who just has to get some wild oats sowed before settling down to married life with Karen Morley. He joins the Marines to do it and the ship he's stationed on, puts into Havana for liberty shortly before American entry into World War I.He sure finds his wild oats in Lupe Velez, Havana peanut vendor, grows them and sells them. They get one wild liberty together before Tibbett has to go to war. So the question is, who will Tibbett eventually settle down with? Remember this film is before the code so the answer isn't obvious. In fact those oats had some consequences.Tibbett got good reviews for Cuban Love Song and a couple of hit songs came out of it. The title song sold a few records and the Peanut Vendor Song started a rhumba craze during the Depression. As sidekicks to Tibbett, Ernest Torrance and Jimmy Durante provide the same comic relief as Laurel and Hardy did for him in his debut in The Rogue Song. Lawrence Tibbett had a magnificent baritone voice and opera lovers should not miss any chance to hear it.