Down Argentine Way

Down Argentine Way is a 1940 American musical film made in Technicolor by Twentieth Century Fox. It made a star of Betty Grable in her first leading role for the studio, and introduced American audiences to Carmen Miranda. The film also starred Don Ameche, The Nicholas Brothers, Charlotte Greenwood, and J. Carrol Naish. The film was directed by Irving Cummings and produced by Darryl F. Zanuck from a screenplay by Karl Tunberg and Darrell Ware, based on a story by Rian James and Ralph Spence. The cinematography was by Leon Shamroy and Ray Rennahan and the costume design by Travis Banton. The American-composed music was by Harry Warren and Jimmy McHugh, lyrics by Mack Gordon and Al Dubin. In a shooting period which lasted for 10 months, members of the film's crew traveled about 35,000 miles. A second unit was sent to Buenos Aires for location establishing shots, returning with about 20,000 feet of film, while another group flew to New York City filming Carmen Miranda for over a month. Miranda was performing South American songs in the Broadway production The Streets of Paris, and thus was a prominent participant in this film without spending any time in Hollywood. In 2014, Down Argentine Way was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.