Kissing Time

I love watching old Vitaphone shorts and have seen at least a couple hundred. However, I must admit that it was a major chore to finish this one, as it's not nearly as much fun nor as entertaining as usual.

"Kissing Time" is set in some fictional South or Central American country. And, in this place, on San Marcos Day, everyone sings and dances like they are on Broadway. There's also a plot involving revolutionaries and federal troops...but who really cares?

This film is very stagy and dull....there, I cut right to the chase. If you like stagy and dull, then by all means give it a view. Otherwise, you could do much better.

A Vitaphone Short Subject

A handsome South American lieutenant has his KISSING TIME with a beautiful American traveler rudely interrupted by his uncouth general, who wants the lady for himself...

Although this short film can boast little beyond its ludicrous lovemaking, the songs are sung nicely, and the characters of the obese general and fey Englishman are slightly humorous. The unusually dense plot, with its ghostly, bell ringing hermit & unhappy ending, makes this musical somewhat atypical for its time.

Operettas were idea subject matter for early talky two-reelers. They were swiftly paced, colorful (even in black & white) and rather cheap to produce, utilizing as they did the sets & costumes of the feature films. Their brief length negated any need for character exposition and the stories were easy to follow, even when sung by heavily accented voices. Best of all, they were full of Sound, and that was still enough of a novelty to keep most audiences from becoming overly critical or expectant of anything smacking of real art.

The happy peasants are celebrating Saint Marco Day, with a carefully directed fiesta aimed straight at the center of the audience's front row. In march General Don Zelaya and Lieutenant Georges Metaxa. Both ogle Jane Froman, but she prefers the younger man's kisses.

If you like nonsensical plots and the sort of music that was popular on Broadway in the 1920s, this may be the short subject for you. Miss Froman can certainly sing the mannered torch songs of the period; that's probably why she wound up singing the songs for Susan Hayward in WITH A SONG IN MY HEART.

Kissing Time with five songs by composer Cliff Hess packed into its 20 or so minute running time is a miniature operetta where an American girl on vacation in the mythical Republic of San Marcos in South America falls in a quick courtship for a young lieutenant in the revolutionary army trying to seize the country. The problem is that the fat and definitely unappealing would be dictator and head of the revolution gets some eyes for the girl himself.

The girl, the lieutenant, and the would be dictator are played by Jane Froman, Georges Metaxa, and Don Pelayo. Both Froman and Metaxa were better known as nightclub, radio, and Broadway performers, hence the generic title for these short subjects, Broadway Brevities.

Of course Froman was immortalized by her struggle for a show business comeback and for a while, life itself, so eloquently dramatized in With A Song In My Heart. Susan Hayward with Jane Froman's voice has given Froman her image for now and all time in that film. Froman was quite a beautiful woman herself and sang divinely.

Metaxa had some success on Broadway and did some films, but was never any kind of big star on the cinema. He's best known on Broadway for playing the lead in The Cat And The Fiddle, the Jerome Kern-Otto Harbach musical where Ramon Novarro did Metaxa's part opposite Jeanette MacDonald over at MGM.

Both Froman and Metaxa are shown to good advantage and Don Pelayo is funny as the amorous would be dictator. A couple of fine performers preserved in this short subject, Kissing Time.

Kissing Time (1933)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

An American woman (Jane Froman) visits a small South American town where she quickly falls for a charming lieutenant (Georges Metaxa) but their romance is threatened by an evil dictator who wants the girl for himself and will kill the other if he has to. This operetta clocks in at 22-minutes and is fairly entertaining. I guess it should go without saying but a longer running time probably would have helped things because there's so much packed into the running time that you can't help but somewhat feel like nothing get expanded to a point that's needed to really make the love story work. I thought both Froman and Metaxa handled the songs extremely well and it's easy to see why they were both quite successful in their time. Froman has pretty much been forgotten except for those who remember Susan Hayward playing her in WITH A SONG IN MY HEART. This two-reeler features some fairly funny stuff involving the dictator but there's no question the real highlight here are the songs that are performed. None of them are overly memorable but each is good enough to help carry the film.