It’s hard to think of this odd Pat Boone film as a must-see musical, but, set as it is in New Orleans during Mardi Gras it features some great costumes and street scenes. The silly plot casts Boone as a self-righteous cadet who falls for a visiting French actress, played with style by Christine Carere, herself a stunning French actress who retired from movies just eight years after this one was made. “I’ll Remember Tonight” is the best song in the film, and “That Man” is amusing and “Bigger Than All of Texas” still resonates. Although the music is overshadowed by the plot, this is a much better film than I expected, and Pat Boone does have a wonderful voice. Best line: “We’ll have old maids all over the world sobbing into their martinis.”
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Mardi Gras
Mardi Gras
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Storyline
Mardi Gras ,A military school cadet Boone wins a date with a French movie goddess (Carère) who happens to be the queen of the “Mardi Gras” parade. They fall in love, but Carère’s movie studio wants to capitalize on this newly found love for publicity.
This is one of the many teen-oriented comedy films of the mid-1950s along with movies like ”Gidget” or ”Bernardine” (with Pat Boone).
”Mardi Gras” is set in a military school with some cadets that try to win a date with the queen of the Mardi Gras parade, and Pat Boone’s character wins it. So he and his fellow buddies follow him to Hollywood and attend the parade. But the studio wants to capitalize the parade queen’s affair with the cadet for having some publicity.
There are some nice songs, few sang by Pat Boone, like ”Bourbon Street Blues”, ”Bigger than Texas” and ”I’ll Remember Tonight”.
This was Edmund Goulding’s last directorial effort, and there is a nice cast of fresh juvenile actors of those years, like Gary Crosby (Bing’s son) and Tommy Sands as Boone’s sidekicks. Also Dick Sargent (here billed Richard) as a fellow cadet and in one of his first movies, dancer Barrie Chase, who has a dancing moment in the movie, Sheree North in her last 20th Century Fox movie, and French movie star Christine Carere in one of her few movies made in America.
It’s not a great movie, but who cares? It’s great fun for all ages!
Boone Is Better Than You Might Think
