Wonderland Burlesque's Let's All Go To The Movies: It's In His Kiss - Part XX

Wonderland Burlesque's

Let's All Go To The Movies:

It's In His Kiss

Part XX

It's in his kiss.

Isn't that where it all begins?

A caress of the lips. A deep longing. Sharing a single breath?

On the silver screen such a kiss can be captured forever, frozen in time.

Or so these films would have us believe.

So, let's kiss and tell and spill the beans on these everlasting smacks, smooches, and snogs.

Yes, things can get pretty heated.

Chapstick exists for a reason, you know!

Grab a seat on the aisle.

Popcorn at the ready.

Pucker up and roll film!

- uptonking from Wonderland Burlesque

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They All Kissed The Bride

(1942)

Margaret Drew runs her trucking company single-mindedly, if not ruthlessly. The only thorn in her side is writer Michael Holmes who is writing a book about her business practices. With no time for men, she finds the effect an attractive stranger has on her at her sister's wedding unnerving. When it turns out this is the hated writer, she starts to lose her bearings and comedy ensues.

This American screwball comedy was directed by Alexander Hall and stars Joan Crawford, Melvyn Douglas, Roland Young and Billie Burke.

The working title for the film was He Kissed the Bride.

They All Kissed the Bride was slated to star Carole Lombard in a follow-up film to the successful To Be or Not to Be. However, she died in a 1942 plane crash after departing Las Vegas on her way back from a bond-selling tour. Joan Crawford, on loan from MGM, was asked to take over Carole Lombard's role. Crawford then donated all of her salary to the Red Cross who found Lombard's body, and promptly fired her agent for taking his usual 10%.

 

"The entire proceeds for Miss Crawford's chore will be turned over to charities. Arrangements have already been completed with the Treasury Dept. Beneficiaries of the $112,500 fee will be the Red Cross, $50,000; Motion Picture Relief Fund, $25,000; Navy Relief Fund, $12,5000; and several others. Now in New York, Joan will return this week for the start of the picture, which will be directed by Alexander Hall, noted for a series of recent comedy smash hits." (Ken Morgan's Hollywood Keyhole, The San Bernardino Daily Sun, San Bernardino, California, Sunday 8 February 1942.)

Producer Edward Kaufman had to rework the script to fit Crawford's style of comedy.

Crawford insisted that Melvyn Douglas (with whom she had appeared in 1938's The Shining Hour and 1941's A Woman's Face) star with her.

Joan Crawford's famous line "When I want a sneak, I'll hire the best and get a Jap," drew the movie's biggest laugh from 1942 audiences. The line is now considered offensive in these politically correct times, and has been cut from most current prints.

You can watch this film in its entirety for free on YouTube.

Joan Crawford

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Lost Kisses

AKA: Besos Perdidos

(1945)

When a man discovers that he has a daughter, which is an absolute surprise to him, he tries to recover lost time and and make up for absent affection.

This Argentine drama was directed by Mario Soffici and stars María Duval and Miguel Faust Rocha.

This film is  considered part of the classical era of Argentine cinema.

The film received positive reviews in El Orden and Critica.

Raúl Manrupe & María Alejandra Portela (who wrote Un Diccionario de Films Argentinos) said of the film: "Poorly filmed, it is one of those missteps by Mario Soffici"; "but, nevertheless, it shows a glimpse of rebellion towards the elders and an unconventional ending for the time".

You can watch this film in its entirety for free on YouTube.

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Kiss Them For Me

(1957)

Three decorated Navy pilots finagle a four-day leave in San Francisco. They procure a posh suite at a hotel and Commander Crewson, a master of procurement, arranges to populate it with party people. This frustrates Lieutenant Wallace, who is trying to get the pilots to make speeches to rally the homefront at shipyard magnate Eddie Turnbill's plants. They're tired of the war and just want to have fun. While Crewson begins falling in love with Turnbill's fiancée Gwinneth Livingston, he tries to ignore the distant call of war.

The play, which ran for 110 performances on Broadway, featured Richard Widmark and Judy Holliday. Widmark, twenty years younger than Grant, was approached to reprise his role but was quickly passed over once Cary Grant expressed interest in the project.

An adaptation of the 1945 Broadway play of the same name which was based on Frederic Wakeman Sr.'s 1944 novel Shore Leave, this American romantic comedy was directed by Stanley Donen in CinemaScope and stars Cary Grant, Jayne Mansfield, Suzy Parker, Ray Walston, Werner Klemperer, Leif Erickson, and Larry Blyden.

When Cary Grant expressed concerns that, at age 53, he was too old to convincingly play a U. S. Navy flier, producer Jerry Wald encouraged him to take the part because his charisma and popularity with the American public far outweighed concerns about his age.

Cary Grant specifically asked that Stanley Donen be hired to direct the film. He had never met or spoken to Donen prior to their collaboration on this film, but he had been extremely impressed by Donen's work on films such as Royal Wedding (1951), Singin' in the Rain (1952), and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954). Grant felt that Donen's light and comedic touch on those films fit the tone of the screenplay for this film. Donen had no say in casting decisions and did not like the script for the film. He reportedly agreed to stay attached to the film because "you don't turn down Cary Grant." It marked the first of four films Cary Grant and Stanley Donen would undertake. The subsequent films were Indiscreet (1958), The Grass Is Greener (1960), and Charade (1963).

Cary Grant turned down Journey To the Center Of the Earth (1957) to make this film.

Model-turned-actress Suzy Parker appears here in her first film role. Her speaking voice was partially dubbed by Deborah Kerr.

This served as Ray Walston's first theatrically released film.

In October 1958 Wald reported the film made a loss of $400,000. It was one of Wald's few financial failures around this time.

You can watch this film in its entirety for free on YouTube.

Suzy Parker

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The Kiss of Her Flesh

(1968)

A weapons expert who murdered his unfaithful stripper wife and her lover goes on a killing spree, bumping off exotic dancers and hookers, while plotting the demise of his wife's swinging bisexual sister and her kinky boyfriend.

This American sexploitation horror/thriller was directed by Michael Findlay and stars Uta Erickson, Janet Banzet and Michael Findlay.

This is the third of a trilogy of such films directed by Michael Findlay and written by Findlay and his wife Roberta. The others are: The Touch of Her Flesh (1967) and The Curse of Her Flesh (1968).

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Jenny Kissed Me

(1986)

A woman moves away from her boyfriend because she suspects his feelings towards her pre-teen daughter. He tries to find them in the sordid side of Melbourne.

Inspired by the poem of the same name by Leigh Hunt, this Australian drama was directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith and stars Ivar Kants, Deborra-Lee Furness, Tasmin West, Paula Duncan and Steve Grives.

 Trenchard-Smith wanted to make Jenny Kissed Me "less arthouse and more commercial, in the vein of a Douglas Sirk tearjerker" which the director felt would reach a wider audience. He also wanted to "give the story more style" and "make the characters more sophisticated and the feeling more upmarket." The original screenwriter refused to make the changes so the director brought in someone else to rewrite the script. Trenchard-Smith then cut six pages, rewrote some scenes and wrote two new scenes of his own. The director later said, "I am fond of the picture, a little florid and melodramatic perhaps, but I wanted to push the conventions of the 'weepie'."

The film was funded by the Nilsen Premiere, a subsidiary of the diversified industrial company Oliver J. Nilsen, based in Melbourne. Continental Commercial Securities underwrote the budget which was originally reported as $1.3 million. Hoyts signed on as distributor. The film's commercial prospects were "torpedoed" when the film was heckled at a disastrous screening for the AFI Awards. This was reported in The Sydney Morning Herald which claimed the film "was greeted with boos and hisses". Trenchard Smith says this report "had the effect of killing any enthusiasm Hoyts Theatres may have had for the movie." It was screened in one theatre in Melbourne for a week, as per Hoyts' contractual obligations, then it was released to video and shown on television.

Neil Jillet, critic for The Age, wrote the film "is good for plenty of laughs though tears might have been what its makers had in mind. With its relentless concentration of bathos and banality, it achieves a certain pureness of style." While critic Adrian Martin said, "Beyond its crisp and efficient direction (Trenchard-Smith is deft at cutting on movement), what makes the film intriguing, even fascinating, is precisely the vein of B-movie melodrama... there is virtually no conventional or legible psychology; only a series of action-packed, sometimes barely motivated, behavioural “moves” by characters maintained, for the most part, as walking stereotypes."

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And that's all for now, folks!

Tune in next time...

Same place, same channel.

Kiss Them For Me - Movie Trailer

(1957)

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