Hips, Hips, Hooray!

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...

Traveling hucksters Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey sell Dr. Dudley's Flavored Lipsticks from the back of their truck. Thelma Todd and Dorothy Lee also sell lipstick, with the rather more respectable firm of Maiden America Beauty Products.

Through what may be called a misunderstanding, the two businesses merge. A bag of lipstick samples is accidentally switched with a banker's bag of treasury bonds. A couple of detectives set out after Wheeler and Woolsey, who flee and eventually find themselves driving a fast car in a cross country auto race. It never really make sense but the wild climactic car chase is fun.

Wheeler and Woolsey are their usual comic selves - Wheeler more mild-mannered and romantic, Woolsey the cigar smoking blowhard. Their frequent costar Dorothy Lee is fine as the girl who finds goofy Wheeler irresistible. Thelma Todd mostly plays it straight as manager of the lipstick firm - unfortunately her role offers little opportunity for Thelma to show her comic skills.

Fast moving and very silly but the hectic pace does not always equal hilarity.

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.

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.

As an art deco dream, this risqué pre code silliness is an RKO deluxe farce with their in house duo W&W. It all depends on your taste for their shyster/naive antics and you might find their style grating if unaware what to expect. If you know W&W then settle in for the usual gay romp except this time the RKO art direction and set design is a major star as well...esp in the first half. As a story line, well there almost isn't one apart from them trying to get laid and sell flavored lipsticks in a skyscraper. The second half is a ridiculous car chase with cartoon style stunts and yelling. The film opens with a delicious beauty plea by Ruth Etting as the RKO showgirls lounge nude in bubble baths with strategically placed perfume bottles. One later scene is a demolition derby to music of someone's gorgeous deco office... and yet another taste test lip locking surprise features some really rude gags. The costumes on the showgirls out rival the S&M look of LULLABY OF Broadway a year later. Made a year before the censorship code of 1934, HIPS HIPS HOORAY is about as rude and funny as it could be for the time... but today the real star of the film is the RKO set and design department.