Betty Grable, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. & Cesar Romero in "Ernst Lubitsch's "That Lady in Ermine" (1948)

In 1861, Countess Angelina (Betty Grable), ruler of Bergamo in North Italy near the Swiss border, marries Mario (Cesar Romero), a baron she has known since childhood. When the castle is threatened by Hungarian hussars led by Colonel Teglash (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) on their wedding night, Mario flees. At midnight, the paintings in the ancestral gallery come to life, and their subjects ask Francesca (Betty Grable), Angelina's great-great-great-great-grandmother who looks exactly like Countess Angelina, to save the castle just as she did in the 16th century. Through a spyglass, Francesca observes Teglash leading the advancing army and finds herself attracted to him. When he sees her portrait, Teglash is puzzled by the fact she is wearing an ermine coat but no shoes. Angelina's servant Luigi (Harry Davenport), seeing how smitten the colonel is with his mistress, tells Teglash how three hundred years earlier, Francesca retained control of the castle when a tyrannical duke attempted to seize it. Luigi tells the colonel that she killed the duke because she feared she was falling in love with him. Disguised as a gypsy, Mario returns to the castle, and is captured, Teglash, unaware of his identity but impressed by his musical ability, decides to spare Mario's life and make him his personal gypsy. Francesca visits Teglash while he is asleep, prompting a dream in which Angelina joins him for dinner and demands a kiss. While she embraces him, she removes a knife from a roast pig and throws it at the clock, effectively stopping time. The two acknowledge their love and, as the gallery portraits look on, they fly up and crash through the roof. The following morning, Teglash awakens to find the knife still in the pig and the clock ticking. Angelina arrives, and Teglash tells her he is freeing her husband and then describes his dream, touching her with his obvious deep feelings for her. When Mario arrives, she assures him she had nothing to do with the colonel. Time passes, but Teglash still mourns the loss of Angelina. One night, while he is asleep, she arrives and falls asleep in a chair near his bed. Teglash revisits his prior dream, but this time the knife falls from the clock and Angelina stabs him with it. He awakens with a start and finds Angelina, who tells him Mario has left her and proposes they wed. That night at midnight, the portraits come to life once again to celebrate their union with song and dance. A 1948 American Technicolor musical film (aka "Lady in Ermine" and "This Is the Moment") produced & directed by Ernst Lubitsch, screenplay by Samson Raphaelson, based on the 1919 operetta Die Frau im Hermelin by Rudolph Schanzer & Ernst Welisch, cinematography by Leon Shamroy, starring Betty Grable, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Cesar Romero,, Harry Davenport, Walter Abel, Reginald Gardiner, Virginia Campbell, and Harry Cording. Released by 20th Century Fox. Although Lubitsch received sole credit as director, he died of a heart attack after only eight days of filming, and the project was completed by Otto Preminger, who had completed "A Royal Scandal" (1945) when Lubitsch was forced to withdraw due to illness in 1944. Preminger got the job because he was a contract director with the studio and not making a film at the time. The project he had been preparing had stalled because of the blacklisting - and subsequent imprisonment - of his screenwriter, Ring Lardner Jr. Preminger had no interest in this, but he agreed to complete it on condition that he received no credit at all for his contribution. In 1942, 20th Century Fox purchased the screen rights to the 1919 operetta Die Frau im Hermelin, which had served as the basis of the 1922 stage musical "Lady in Ermine" by Al Goodman, Harry Graham, and Cyrus Wood. The operetta previously had been filmed twice, as "The Lady in Ermine" (1927), and as "Bride of the Regiment' (1930). The Production Code Administration deemed an early draft of the screenplay "unacceptable" because of "adultery and suspicion of adultery treated for comedy without any compensating moral values." The ending of the movie had to be changed to get the Hays Seal of Approval. In the original operetta and two movie versions, the Baron and Baroness are happily reunited, but in this version, they divorce and she marries the bandit chieftain. The change was made to avoid condoning extramarital romance. Friedrich Hollaender and Leo Robin composed the five musical numbers performed in the film, and were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song for "This Is the Moment," but lost to Jay Livingston and Ray Evans for "Buttons and Bows" from The Paleface. Samson Raphaelson was nominated for the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Written American Musical. A bright and beguiling swatch of nonsense cut straight from the rich, gold-braided cloth of best-grade Graustarkian romance and done in a nimble, playful style. Wrapped up in Technicolor, which complements the trappings and costumes.