The Blue Angel (1959, May Britt, Curt Jurgens) – Classic Movie Review 13,819  

Edward Dmytryk remakes The Blue Angel in the US in 1959 with Curt Jurgens and miscast Swedish sexpot May Britt. It is a farcical folly with an absurd, obviously wrong new tacked-on ending.

Director Edward Dmytryk’s much-criticised 1959 Color by Deluxe and CinemaScope widescreen American romantic drama film The Blue Angel unwisely remakes the 1930 Marlene Dietrich classic, updating it to a modern German setting, and stars Curt Jurgens and May Britt.

This time it’s Swedish sexpot May Britt’s turn to impersonate cabaret singer Lola-Lola Frohlich and tempt stuffy, fussy but infatuated Professor Immanuel Rath (Curt Jurgens). Edward Dmytryk can do little with this modernised, literal version of Heinrich Mann’s 1905 novel Professor Unrat, especially with an absurd, obviously wrong new ending tacked on that negates the whole meaning of the piece.

Jurgens isn’t bad in Emil Jannings’s old role, but a miscast Britt is inadequate in Marlene Dietrich’s. The care and money lavished by 20th Century Fox on the production are the only reasons to be tempted by this farcical folly.

Nigel Balchin based his script on the 1930 screenplay by Robert Liebmann, Karl Zuckmayer, Karl Vollmoeller.

Cast: Curt Jurgens [Curd Jürgens] as Professor Immanuel Rath, May Britt as Lola-Lola, Theodore Bikel as Klepert, John Banner as Principal Harter, Fabrizio Mioni as Rolf, Ludwig Stössel as Dr Fritz Heine, Wolfe Barzell, Ina Anders, Richard Tyler, Ken Walken, Del Erickson.

The studio acquired the rights to remake the original film as a vehicle for Marilyn Monroe and Spencer Tracy, who turned it down. Monroe even posed as Lola-Lola for a Life Magazine pictorial shot by Richard Avedon.

Josef von Sternberg, the director of the 1930 film The Blue Angel, sued 20th Century Fox for $1 million, claiming that he owned the rights to a remake and that Fox had made a film ‘so inferior that it decreased the value of the original’. Fox settled out of court.

Variety called the film a ‘disaster’ at the box office, costing $1.7 million and taking $1.4 million in North America.

May Britt

Swedish–American actress Maj-Britt Wilkens (22 March 1934 – 11 December 2025), was known professionally as May Britt.

Britt was discovered as a teenager by Italian producer Carlo Ponti in 1951 and worked on some ten Cinecittà productions. She relocated to Hollywood in the late 1950s after signing with 20th Century Fox.

She starred in Jolanda, the Daughter of the Black Corsair (1953), War and Peace (1956), The Young Lions (1958), The Hunters (1958), Murder, Inc (1960) and The Blue Angel (1959).

She met Sammy Davis Jr in 1959 and married on 13 November 1960, then retired from films. 

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,819

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