Du Barry Was a Lady is a 1943 American musical comedy film directed by Roy Del Ruth, starring Red Skelton, Lucille Ball, Gene Kelly, and Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra.

Nightclub singer May Daly turns the heads of many men, including coatroom attendant Louis Blore and master of ceremonies Alec Howe.

May is Madame Du Barry, Alec is the Robin Hood-like Black Arrow, Willie is the Duc de Rigor, and nightclub waiter Charlie is the Dauphin.

As Louis appears to be losing the sword fight, he awakens from the dream to find himself being comforted by another club singer, Ginny, who has been aggressive in her romantic pursuit of him.

In 1941, RKO and MGM entered into an intense bidding war for the adaption rights to the Broadway play Du Barry Was a Lady.

The play, starring Ethel Merman in the leading role with music from Cole Porter, had been a success on Broadway, as had their subsequent project Panama Hattie.

[4] The studio quickly made a film adaption of the latter starring comedian Red Skelton and Ann Sothern.

Du Barry was initially developed as a reteaming of Skelton and Sothern, with Keenan Wynn in the other role of the trio.

Unlike the play, the dream sequence featured little singing and more physical comedy bits from Ball and Skelton.

Bosley Crowther, in his review for The New York Times, wrote, "they have caught most of the humor of the original, with a lot of Red Skelton's own thrown in.

And they have added Rags Ragland and Zero Mostel to be funny when Mr. Skelton is not... particularly they have given the whole show a Technicolor sheen, an eye-filling opulence and splendor, which is fabulous in these rationed times.