Jolly Fellows (Russian: Весёлые ребята Vesyolye rebyata), also translated Happy-Go-Lucky Guys and Moscow Laughs, is a 1934 Soviet musical film, directed by Grigori Aleksandrov and starring his wife Lyubov Orlova, a gifted singer and the first recognized star of Soviet cinema.
The script was written by Aleksandrov, Vladimir Mass, and Nikolai Erdman (whose father briefly appears on screen as a German music teacher). It features several songs which instantly became classics across the Soviet Union. The most famous song — "Kak mnogo devushek khoroshikh" (Such a lot of nice girls) — enjoyed international fame, covered as "Serdtse" (Heart) by Pyotr Leshchenko. Music was by Isaak Dunayevsky, the lyrics were written by the Soviet poet Vasily Lebedev-Kumach.
Both Orlova and her co-star, the jazz singer and comic actor Leonid Utyosov, were propelled to stardom after this movie.
Famous quotes containing the words jolly and/or fellows:
“[Panurge] spent everything in a thousand little banquets and joyous feasts open to all comers, particularly jolly companions, young lasses, and delightful wenches, and in clearing his lands, burning the big logs to sell the ashes, taking money in advance, buying dear, selling cheap, and eating his wheat in the blade.”
—François Rabelais (1494–1553)
“How could it be so fair, and you away?
How could the Trees be beauteous, Flowers so gay?
Could they remember but last year,
How you did Them, They you delight,
The sprouting leaves which saw you here,
And call’d their Fellows to the sight,
Would, looking round for the same sight in vain,
Creep back into their silent Barks again.”
—Abraham Cowley (1618–1667)