Kiss and Make-Up

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!

An underrated picture of veritable wackiness, KISS AND MAKE UP is a forerunner to the classic screwball comedies of the late-thirties and early-forties. The storyline of a progressive plastic surgeon (Cary Grant) who becomes involved with his greatest creation (Genevieve Tobin) has a great FRANKENSTEIN-esquire aura that contains some surprisingly dark overtones for a film comedy of this era – a darkness which is present, but not really explored. The film is benefited greatly by Cary Grant, who gets an early chance to display his grand prowess at farce, which is one of the many qualities that inevitably made him a huge Hollywood star. The rest of the cast is also rounded out acceptably, with Tobin, Helen Mack, and Edward Everett Horton all turning in fine work.

On the downside, the film is extremely episodic, which is not inherently a problem in many cases, but here it prevents the picture from gelling into the knockabout farce it intended to be. Also somewhat detrimental is director Harlan Thompson's approach to the material, which often lacks energy or pizazz; make no mistake, Thompson's work is perfectly acceptable, but I could not help but imagine how truly dynamic the film could have been with Howard Hawks or (later) Peter Bogdanovich in the director's chair. Thompson earns major points for the frantic final chase scene, however, which concludes the film with a thunderous, side-splitting, wig-ripping bang! The movie as a whole is solidly enjoyable, but this terrific end sequence alone raises it's rating by at least a notch or two.

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.

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.

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.