Series Site
Newly preserved by The Museum of Modern Art from a unique nitrate print in the Museum’s collection, the Fox Film Corporation's rollicking pre-Code musical comedy It's Great to Be Alive (1933) is set in a near future when every man on Earth has succumbed to the fatal disease of “masculitis.” As Edna Mae Oliver leads a team of female scientists in a desperate attempt to create an artificial man, one lone male—an aviator, played by the Brazilian star Raúl Roulien—is discovered living on a tropical island. Returned to civilization, he becomes an object of hot contention, claimed by his fiancée (Gloria Stuart) but kidnapped by a gangster (Dorothy Burgess) who plans to auction him off to the highest bidder.—MoMA