Six Lessons from Madame La Zonga

Once a song made it onto the Lucky Strike Hit Parade listing, the odds were high that Universal or Republic would buy the title and try to find a screenplay to fit. As a song, "Six Lessons From Madame La Zonga" made the Hit Parade only once---at the mumber seven position in the week of August 17, 1940---and then promptly fell out, but that was either enough for Universal or they bought it on the assumption that it would go even higher and be a hot commodity when the film was released. The wonder is that it even made the Hit Parade in any position, and it was a non-evergreen memory from the past by the time Universal released this film in January of 1941. But the top-billed and above-the-title names of Lupe Velez and Leon Errol was a nice move on their part to cash in on the popularity of RKO's "Mexican Spitfire" series starring Velez and Errol, and some people most likely bought their tickets expecting just that. Other than missing the insufferable Dennis character from the RKO films, there wasn't all that much difference to be seen anyway. Al Capp ran a parody episode in his "Li'l Abner" comic strip, based on the song title, stretching into several weeks in 1941 called Six Lessons From Adam LaZonga, featuring a sawed-off little shrimp that looked like George Bernard Shaw who gave lessons in making love. The Capp work holds up better than the original song or the film.