Mervyn LeRoy directed Rose Marie, a western operetta, adapted from the 1924 operetta of the same name, starring Ann Blyth, Howard Keel and Fernando Lamas.
It is the third to be filmed by MGM, following a 1928 silent movie and the best-known of the three, the 1936 Jeanette MacDonald-Nelson Eddy version.
This version was shot in the Canadian Rockies in CinemaScope.
It was MGM’s first US produced film in the new widescreen (having been preceded by the British-made Knights of the Round Table).
The first movie musical of any studio to be released in this format, Rose Marie was part of a revival of a cycle of large-budget operettas produced in the mid-1950s, like “The Student Prince.”
The story adheres closely to that of the original libretto, unlike the 1936 version.
It is somewhat altered by a tomboy-to-lady conversion for the title character.
