Kiss and Make-Up

Dr. Maurice Lamar is a world famous, egotistical, Parisian plastic surgeon. He prides himself on making women slaves to their new beauty. Maintenance, always maintenance. Overt innuendo abounds that his patients, once transformed by his skilled hand, become his conquests. His affairs he refers to as "lovely episodes."

Enamored of his masterpiece, Madame Caron, they soon ditch her husband and marry. We soon see that "Dr. Frankenstein" has married his monster. The moral of the story is that Dr. Lamar discovers that it's no fun to love (Kiss) a woman,when that same woman has become obsessed with her looks, figure and Makeup to the exclusion of all else. Beauty, truly, is in the eye of the beholder.

maybe I'm a fool for silly Depression comedies, but even though "Kiss And Make-Up" is a very minor comedy, and not particularly well written, it does have most of the elements needed for people who love pre-code Depression films to enjoy it.

Everybody knows that Cary Grant's Paramount films were generally weak, and that he was nowhere close to establishing his screen personality during these early years.

I had never seen this film before, and I quite enjoyed it. But, jeez, gang, you haven't lived until you've heard Cary Grant, Helen Mack and Edward Everett Horton attempt to belt out the songs! Absolutely incredible. Some of the worst examples of singing in a film from a major studio.

You will enjoy it too....if you sit back and not expect a "Citizen Kane"-quality screenplay!

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.

Cary Grant, Genevieve Tobin, Helen Mack, and Edward Everett Horton star in "Kiss and Make Up," a 1934 film. Grant plays a popular plastic surgeon, Dr. Maurice Lamar (the film takes place in France). He falls for one of his makeovers (Tobin) who leaves her husband (Horton) and marries Lamar. Despite her looks, Lamar soon realizes he has created a monster. Meanwhile, Lamar's secretary Anne is in love with him and becomes increasingly unhappy as he seems to need her constantly but takes her for granted. Can you guess what happens? This actually is a musical with three songs, and Grant does his own singing. He must have - no one could have dubbed his awful tremolo. Other than that, he actually had a pleasant singing voice.

A very slight comedy, and I was surprised to read that Carole Lombard was supposed to play the role of the secretary but turned it down. Good move. And that casting wouldn't have worked. Lombard was certainly too beautiful to have been ignored by Lamar. Mack was pretty without being an absolute knockout. Genevieve Tobin does a good job as the annoying Eve, and Horton is funny as her husband, who wants his wife's old looks and personality back.

This film was really beneath Grant but he was too new to turn it down. He is perfect for the role of a handsome, dapper womanizer and is very good.

See it for the young Grant, but don't expect too much.

Cary Grant is Dr. Maurice Lamar, a Parisian plastic surgeon and beauty expert with a large fanbase of women, both previous and current clients, who adore him for his work and his looks. Rich husband Marcel (Edward Everett Horton) implores Dr. Lamar to not work on his homely wife, but the doctor does so anyway, and the newly beautified Eve (Genevieve Tobin) leaves her husband for the doctor. Meanwhile, Lamar's secretary Anne (Helen Mack) has secretly been in love with the doctor for a long time, but when he starts seeing Eve, she begins seeing Marcel, with the resulting inter-couple shenanigans. Also featuring Lucien Littlefield, Toby Wing, Mona Maris, Henry Armetta, and the "WAMPAS Baby Stars of 1934", including Julie Bishop, Gigi Parrish, and Helen (daughter of George M.) Cohan. 19-year-old Ann Sheridan also appears in a minor part.

This is a mix of several comedy styles: the European sophistication of an Ernst Lubitsch film, the screwball antics that would shortly become so popular, and even some broad slapstick, with a car-chase finale that seems lifted from a Keystone Kops short. Grant is good here, showing many of the qualities of his well-know screen persona. He sings a song at one point, and his warbling vocal isn't too awful. Mack and Tobin are okay in the female leads, but this may have been better with others in their roles. Horton is reliably funny. This was the final year of the WAMPAS Baby Stars lists of promising young actresses, a promotional endeavor started by the Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers back in 1922. "Baby Star" was another term for "starlet" back then, if the name confused anyone like it did me. While previous lists had included the likes of Joan Crawford, Clara Bow, Ginger Rogers, Mary Astor, and Fay Wray, this final year's roster didn't include any luminaries, with the biggest future name in the pretty-background-girl cast (Ann Sheridan) not on the list. Jean Negulesco is listed as "associate director".