Sweethearts (1938 film)

Sweethearts is a 1938 Technicolor musical romance directed by W.S. Van Dyke, starring Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. The screenplay, by Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell, uses the play within a play device a contemporary Broadway production of the 1913 Victor Herbert operetta is the setting for another pair of sweethearts, the stars of the show. This was the first color film for Nelson or Jeanette as well as MGMs first three strip Technicolor feature.

The couples attempts to rest and be together are repeatedly thwarted by professional and personal demands made on their time, talents and money by Lehman and their own theatrical families who also live with them. Frustrated beyond endurance and seduced by Trumpetts idyllic and false description of working conditions in Hollywood, they decide to quit the show and take the Hollywood offer. In guise of buying a new wardrobe for the trip Jeanette MacDonald models fashions of 1938.This spells the end for the Broadway production, news so devastating that constantly feuding playwright Leo Kronk Mischa Auer and composer Oscar Engel Herman Bing stop fighting long enough for Lehman, Kronk and company to hatch a counterplot. By convincing Marlow that Lane is having an affair with his pretty secretary Kay Jordan Florence Rice they splitup the happy couple, putting an end to the Hollywood deal and allowing Lehman to mount two separate touring companies of the show, each with one star and one understudy. ........

Source: Wikipedia