Hips, Hips, Hooray!

This one doesn't showcase W&W at their best (see "Diplomaniacs" or "Half Shot at Sunrise" for that). The verbal badinage is generally lame, and the sight gags and slapstick are mainly of the "seen 'em before" variety. This is rather unfortunate, since the flick definitely has a dynamite premise. The boys are street hucksters promoting flavored lipstick, but thanks to ever-vivacious Dorothy Lee, manage to link up with a high-class, publicity-seeking cosmetics emporium.

Despite the middling comedy antics, this is a must-see for pre-code aficionados. The opening number, a live radio studio broadcast featuring naked models in bathtubs (their naughty bits discreetly obscured by hair-do's and foreground objects) is pretty eye-popping, as are the minimal outfits sported by the hot-to-trot sales crew in a risqué scene wherein the boys test the product "in vivo". Thelma Todd and famed songstress Ruth Etting are on hand, and the tunes are catchy enough. If you liked "Roman Scandals" and "Murder at the Vanities", by all means check it out.

This Wheeler&Woolsey film finds the guys selling flavored lipsticks on the street corner to make a buck. People did that sort of stuff in the Depression. They get noticed, first by cops but then by Thelma Todd and one of her salesgirls Dorothy Lee. As usual Lee pairs with Bert while Thelma Todd does some of her best vamping with Bob.

George Meeker works for Todd, but is secretly working for a rival to sabotage her store. When the boys lift some valuable securities accidentally he finds them and sics the cops on them.

The finale is a kind of Grand Prix marathon and Bert and Bob are quite inventive in their methods of overcoming obstacles.

Ruth Etting makes a guest appearance with one song in the beginning, always a treat.

The race and a sequence where they play a on by stealing an office on the fly is similar to what was done in The Sting. Maybe George Roy Hill got the idea from seeing this.

Good fun from W&W.

Two zany scam artists find it's all HIPS, HIPS, HOORAY! when they meet the curvaceous owner of Maiden America Beauty Products and her lovely female employees.

Wheeler & Woolsey (Bert Wheeler is the short guy with curly hair; Robert Woolsey is the bespectacled fellow with the cigar) star in this often hilarious film. The Boys were a perfect comedy duo and their movies are always great fun to watch (here they try to promote flavored lipsticks and get involved in a cross-country auto race, while keeping one jump ahead of the law ). It is indeed a pity that these very talented comics are all but forgotten now.

Cute little Dorothy Lee returns as Wheeler's perennial love interest. The beautiful & tragic Thelma Todd, a very gifted comedienne in her own right, puts the spark in Woolsey's eye.

Movie mavens will spot an unbilled Bobby Watson, who gets one funny line as a Dance Director.

Director Mark Sandrich keeps the plot moving at a frantic pace throughout. Some of the sights & situations push the borders of good taste in this pre-Production Code movie.

The Boys, Miss Lee & Hot Toddy do a wild burlesque of Diaghilev during their performance of `Just Keep On Doing What You're Doing'. Singer Ruth Etting drops by long enough to trill `Keep Romance Alive' at a radio broadcast featuring ungarmented bathing models.

And, yes, those really are frogs climbing out of the race car's radiator...

Ditsy Daisy Maxwell (Dorothy Lee) is warned to sell more lipsticks. She spends her time in her nightie demonstrating lipstick inside the store's window display. It's a hit only for the men. It doesn't help that hustlers, Andy Williams (Bert Wheeler) and Dr. Robert Dudley (Robert Woolsey), are across the street pulling all the attention. Andy falls for Daisy and Daisy falls for the boys' lies. She tells beauty supply owner Miss Frisby (Thelma Todd) who then hires the boys to promote a new flavored lipstick.

This opens with a Ruth Etting song. It is pre-Code by a few months. The girls have some revealing costumes and there are some suggestive humor. Wheeler and Woolsey have faded from cinematic memory. They are a matter of personal taste. They have an old vaudevillian flair which can wear thin quickly. I do find it mildly humorous in a knowing way. This is comedy in an archaeological sense of the word.

Another little gem from the mad 30s boys of RKO as this frenetically paced oddity takes us from flavoured lipsticks to a mad Keystone-like car race in the space of just over an hour. Alongside cigar-chomping Woolsey and irritating little Wheeler we have Dorothy Lee (as per usual) and Thelma Todd playing the cutie romantic interest parts, and a short song right at the beginning from third-billed Ruth Etting (in a rather fetching hat).

Best sequences in this one - "Just Keep On Doin' What You're Doin'", really funny - the whole car race sequence, and the bevy of cuties with flavoured lipsticks ("we've got to guess what flavour" - oh, sure ...). I bet the set cleaners at RKO were knee-deep in bananas by the end of the shoot though :)