On December 31, 1937,
Frank Nugent reviewed the film for
The New York Times: “Deploying its formidable phalanxes of talent…in one of the most pretentious demonstrations of sheer mass and weight since the last Navy games, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer brings forth…"Rosalie".... Eleanor Powell tap dances... among sets entirely divorced from reality, Nelson Eddy sings as well and as inopportunely as could be imagined, and expensive secondary people...try to compensate with personal mannerisms for all the bright things the dialogue and action fail to say or do... Ray Bolger bolges, sometimes amusingly, sometimes not. Frank Morgan, a ventriloquist-king, trots out the whole inventory of Morganantics. Edna May Oliver is more severely regal than any reigning queen would dare to be nowadays. Billy Gilbert is reduced to his most cataclysmic sneezes. Miss Powell dances, smiles, sings... is brought in on the top of a cake, while Mr. Eddy, meanwhile, sings, flies a plane across the Atlantic, returns to West Point..sings, looks handsome in a cadet uniform, and at last marries Miss Powell at a wedding comparable in size and attendance to the last Olympic meet. All this is not to deny to "Rosalie" the purely economic distinction of being a great deal of show for the money; it is, in fact, too much show,.. In sheer length, breadth, weight and thickness, it is wearying, and even if all of it were good (which it isn't) still, there might be some point in protesting at such an unholy surfeit.” In 2005, music historians William H. Young and Nancy K. Young observed that the film "resembles the frothy operettas then so much in vogue, which means that
Rosalie lacks much of a plot ... he [Porter] managed to compose the memorable 'In the Still of the Night' and 'Who Knows?'." The reviewer at allmovie.com calls the film an "overproduced musical extravaganza", and noted, "The flimsy plot all but collapses under the weight of Gibbons' enormous sets and dance director David Gould's ditto choreography." The film was popular, earning $1,946,000 domestically and $933,000 foreign, but because of its high cost, incurred a loss of $175,000. ==Production==