AllMovie

Edmond T. Greville's Princess Tam Tam (1935) is not only a thoroughly enjoyable movie but a fascinating artifact of its era -- a romantic comedy, a sort of Gallic parody of George Bernard Shaw's +Pygmalion, set within the relatively realistic confines of pre-World War II France's Middle Eastern territories. The movie and its exotic plot and setting were themselves a solution to the problem of what to do with an actress/performer like Josephine Baker: vibrant, sexy, alluring, and charismatic -- but also of African descent -- in an era where this was a casting impediment almost anywhere in the world. In Baker's native United States, this question was never asked above a whisper, if at all, and never answered, whereas in France the result was delightful vehicles such as this, which not only gave Baker a vehicle for her talents but put her into a plot involving an interracial romance (that got the movie banned from the U.S., naturally). An artifact of French colonialism as well as of relatively unfettered comedic, musical, and romantic sensibilities, Princess Tam Tam stands unique as entertainment and a window on Baker's unique talent, and remains as enchanting a piece of musical comedy as French cinema released in the 1930s.