Kiss and Make-Up

A year before Kiss And Make Up came out from Paramount, Sam Goldwyn produced Roman Scandals for Eddie Cantor in which Cantor sang the song Keep Young And Beautiful. While watching this film, it occurred to me that rather than any of the songs that Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger wrote for this film, Keep Young And Beautiful could have served better as the theme for Kiss And Make Up.

Not only that Eddie Cantor should have played the part that Cary Grant did in this film. A few more sight gags and the kind of humor that Cantor did would have served this film better.

With only a few establishing shots to make us believe this is Paris in the film, Cary Grant plays a noted French plastic surgeon who has become a celebrity of sorts with his success rate in turning out women who rate being called a 10. He guarantees doubling their rating value. One woman, Genevieve Tobin is pleased with his work, but her husband Edward Everett Horton is not. Finally Cary has a secretary in his office played by Helen Mack who sees him as a human being and not a celebrity beauty queen maker.

When MGM's compilation film That's Entertainment was released audiences were treated to a clip from Suzy which came out two years later than Kiss And Make Up and had Cary Grant singing Did I Remember. He sings here some songs that surely have been served better had they been done by Paramount's singing star Bing Crosby. In Suzy Grant did the number for laughs, here someone thought maybe he could be a musical star. Big mistake. In fact Edward Everett Horton and Helen Mack singing an ode to that St. Patrick's Day delicacy Corned Beef And Cabbage was the musical highlight.

Not the best Cary Grant film though the wild taxi chase in the end does liven the film up somewhat.

I liked this movie more than I had expected. It is a light comedy that kept me entertained throughout. At one moment we see an American couple going to a traditional Italian restaurant (chequered tablecloths, vines overhead and all) ordering corned beef and cabbage. As if this weren't enough, they break out in song: I love - cooorned beef and cabbage! It's disarmingly silly. Dark haired lead actress Helen Mack is cute and funny, a kind of an early Holly Hunter.

Kiss and Make-Up delivers mainly eye candy. At the center of its story is a beauty parlor in Paris which is also a gym and a clinic with the general aim to improve the physical appearance of the female. Cary Grant is the owner and boss of the outfit and supposed to be a kind of a health guru who helps nature along with creams and ointments etc. which he also markets through radio programs and books (a kind of Dr Lovell?).

A great many beautiful girls and bare legs are on display, and the whole set up of the parlor is just as good and elegant as one designed by famous set designer Cedric Gibbons for the later made, more famous movie The Women. Also very notable is some of the set design during the middle part of the movie which takes place in a Mediterranean holiday resort. It is clearly inspired by the Italian version of Art Deco, with curved walls and furniture, circular windows, slender railings and discreet floor patterns. The hotel suite of the couple played by Grant and Genevieve Tobin features a kind of a gallery on very slender chromium pillars in front of a huge window which leads to a big terrace with a view of a historical Italian town on a sea or a lake shore. It's just great to imagine those smart people sitting in a Hollywood bungalow leafing through the latest issues of Italian architectural magazines like Casabella or Domus.

Kiss and Make-Up (1934)

** (out of 4)

Maurice Lamar (Cary Grant) is a famous plastic surgeon living in Paris where he works on making women beautiful all day long. His secretary Anne (Helen Mack) is secretly in love with him but the doctor decides to head off with the married Eve (Genevieve Tobin) who he feels is his masterpiece work. Eve's husband Marcel (Edward Everett Horton) ends up striking up a relationship with Anne and soon all four are on a crash course.

KISS AND MAKE-UP is without question one of the strangest films from this era of Hollywood. It got into theaters before the Hayes Office started to come down on sexuality and the Pre-Code nature of the film is something that would probably attract people to it. I will admit that the free sexuality running through the first half of the picture was quite good and seeing Grant kiss a married woman isn't something that too many movies did back in the day.

With that said, this is without a doubt a pretty bad movie on many levels. It remains slightly entertaining simply because of how weird the thing is. The first twenty-five minutes basically take place in the plastic surgeon office where we see several of the beautiful women as well as some of the ugly ones hoping to look better. Seeing Grant flirt and talk his way through the people was mildly entertaining but there's so much here that happens for no apparent reason including a meeting with an old college friend that never pays off. The blatant sexuality is a plus but things just get stranger.

From here we get the weird love story with the two couples basically trading off partners for whatever reason. None of these segment, clocking in around thirty-minutes total, adds up to anything entertaining and in fact it's just downright boring. Even worse if the final five-minutes where it seems director Harlan Thompson was trying to pay homage to the Keystone Kops and it just doesn't work. To date this here was Grant's biggest role and he's fun to watch but there's no question that there's not much else. Mack and Tobin are decent in their roles but but characters are poorly written.

KISS AND MAKE-UP is weird enough to where it's worth watching if you're a film buff but there's no doubt that it was Grant's worst picture up to this point in his career. With that said, he does sing a song!

I prefer to watch the classics of the 30's 40's & 50's over any of the mindless garbage todays writers come up with.

KISS AND MAKE-UP (Paramount, 1934), directed by Harlan Thompson, gives promise as being some sort of domestic comedy about troubled marriage, but in fact is a very silly, virtually plot less comedy dealing with cosmetics. Starring Cary Grant, the story is set in Paris, France, where he plays Maurice LaMarr, a doctor in charge of a modernistic beauty salon in which women come to be made beautiful and glamorous. He is loved by Annie Hensen (Helen Mack), his loyal secretary, however, after encountering Eve (Genevieve Tobin), the wife of Marcel Caron (Edward Everett Horton), whom he has made more beautiful than the rest, he falls madly in love with her. After Marcel divorces his Eve, it leaves her free to marry Maurice, who soon realizes his mistake after he finds that she isn't really beautiful after all. During their honeymoon after Maurice sings a song looking towards the waves at the beach, Eve approaches him in saying, "Kiss me." Getting a full view of a face full of cosmetics, he replies in a frightful way, "No, NO!" As for Annie, who feels she has lost the man she loves, decides to run off and marry Marcel.

With Grant in the role that appears to be Maurice Chevalier influenced, the film's introductory opening goes at great lengths in not only showcasing the facial clips of the major lead actors and their character roles, but a list of young starlets billed as "The Wampas Baby Stars of 1934" including some now obscure names as Lucille Lund, Jacqueline Wells (both of Universal's "The Black Cat" fame); Jean Gale, Hazel Hayes, Gigi Parrish, and much more. Look fast for future film star Ann Sheridan as one of the models who asks, "Doctor, what is that terrible noise?" in regards to some hammering. The supporting actors who partake in the story are Mona Maris as Countess Rita; Lucien Littlefield as Max Pascal; Toby Wing as Consuelo Claghorne; and Rafael Storm as Rolando.

A Paramount gag comedy that makes little sense, and getting plenty of laughs, includes several key elements where a woman customer comes to the shop to be made beautiful only to come out completely bald; and a chase climax, reminiscent to Laurel and Hardy's COUNTY HOSPITAL (1932), having Grant, becoming dizzy and confused while under either, going on a merry mad chase after Annie and Marcel in a taxi down a very crowded street.

Aside from comedy, which this movie has plenty to offer, contains two songs, the campy "Cornbeaf and Cabbage - I Love You" (sung by Helen Mack and Edward Everett Horton) and "Love Divided By Two" (sung twice by Cary Grant), by Ralph Rainger and Leo Robin, the latter used frequently through underscoring. In spite of Grant's reputation as a debonair leading man of screwball comedies, and a fine actor when it comes to heavy dramatics, he demonstrates how well he can sing, and how sparingly he's done so in his long career. Genevieve Tobin, on loan from Warner Brothers, is showcased in the usual manner as a free-spirited woman far from being loyal to the men who love her; Edward Everett Horton, with curly hair and red lips, as the jealous ex-husband to be; and Helen Mack (best known for her performance in RKO's THE SON OF KONG, 1933) satisfactory as the good but sensible girl. Grant and Mack would share another movie, the better known comedy of HIS GIRL Friday (Columbia, 1940), with Grant and Rosalind Russell in the leads, and Miss Mack in a smaller but notable performance.

KISS AND MAKE UP is harmless fun, enjoyable by those who appreciate this sort of material where writers tend to throw in anything to stretch out the story to feature length 70 minutes. Interestingly, of all the movies from the Paramount library that were broadcast on New York City's WPIX, Channel 11 (1965-1974), KISS AND MAKE-UP survived the longest, making its final air date on that station in mid 1975 before drifting to obscurity.

KISS AND MAKE UP may not be top-of-the-line Cary Grant, but no disaster by any means either. It's a sort of offbeat film Grant might have looked back and asking himself, "Did I really do this?" Distributed to DVD in 2006, on the double-bill with another Grant comedy, THIRTY DAY PRINCESS (1934), KISS AND MAKE-UP is a worthy re-discovery. (***)