The Theater: New Revue In Manhattan, Oct. 16, 1950

Pardon Our French (produced by Ole Olsen & Chic Johnson) isn’t nearly humble enough. Pardon Our Effrontery is the least it should entreat for, and there would be nothing intemperate about Pardon Our Existence. Olsen & Johnson, after achieving the utmost in noise and nuttiness with their Hellzapoppin cycle, have now plunged to the depths of unpalatable boredom. Adopting different and sedater tactics, abandoning the raucous for the merely raw, they have a way of making everything they touch turn to lead.

The milieu of their revue is France—a France where every woman is involved with three lovers, where Marie Antoinette receives in a small park of a bed, and where French Nightclub Singer Denise Darcel talks carefully broken English. There are a good many indistinguishable songs and dances, and now & then there is a refreshing change from sex to seasickness or sanitation. The revue also shows its ancestry at moments by having people climb into boxes or letting feathers fall from the roof. Out of it all emerges one pleasant dance number about snow men, and one entertaining number requiring a palm tree tied to a chair.