| Let's Go Native | |
|---|---|
 Lobby card | |
| Directed by | Leo McCarey |
| Written by | |
| Produced by | Leo McCarey |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Victor Milner |
| Music by | |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 77 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Let's Go Native is a 1930 Americanpre-Code black-and-whitemusicalcomedy film, directed byLeo McCarey and released byParamount Pictures.[1]
The well-received picture anticipated McCarey's success in future comedies, among thesePart-Time Wife (1930),The Kid from Spain (1932) and thescrewball classicThe Awful Truth (1937).[2]
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The story is set in the immediate aftermath of thePanic of 1929. Joan, an unemployed costume designer and her boyfriend Voltaire, a disinherited scion of a wealthy family, embark together on a Caribbean cruise. Voltaire discovers that his childhood sweetheart, Constance, is a passenger on the ship: romantic complications develop.
Themenage-a-trois find themselves shipwrecked on a tropical island. They discover that the paradise is populated by women, with only one male inhabitant, Jerry. Dubbed King of the Island, he quips “"It was one of theVirgin Islands, but it drifted." Further romantic complications ensue. When these are finally resolved, Voltaire's grandfather arrives on a yacht and rescues the castaways. As they depart, the island sinks into the ocean.[3][4]
Paramount initially delayed release of Let's Go Native, concerned that the narrative was too bizarre for audiences and “had not expected it to be quite so free-spirited.”[5]
Let’s Go Native opened simultaneously with theMarx Brothers’Animal Crackers (1930) and was “favorably compared by period critics with this pioneering zany team classic” directed byVictor Heerman.[6]
The film was released on 16 August 1930 but a preview screening had taken place in April or May the same year.[7]
Film historian Wes D. Gehring identifiesLet’s Go Native as a precursor to McCarey's subsequentscrewball comedy classicThe Awful Truth (1937). Let's Go Native not only catapulted the careers of Jack Oakie, Jeanette MacDonald and Kay Fransis, but “helped established McCarey as a viable feature film director.” TheMarx Brothers-like elements of the film earned McCarey the honor of directingDuck Soup (1933).[8]
Film historian Richard Barrios in his A Song in the Dark: The Birth of the Musical Film writes: “Let’s Go Native was sheer [joyful] malarkey, played with bounce and directed by McCarey with some of the affinity toward musical anarchy he later brought toDuck Soup.”[9]