MOVIE OF THE DAY: "TOO MANY KISSES" (1925)

Richard Gaylord, Jr. has been shipped overseas to the Basque region by his rich businessman father. It seems Jr. keeps getting in trouble with the ladies, a hobby Daddy finds expensive after each break-up. Jr. has been assigned to find the valuable mineral turidium. If he stays away from the dames for six months, he gets 50% ownership of the company. Who needs sex when you're the turidium king?

When was the last time the phrase
"Breach of promise" was heard in a courtroom?

 

 

Enter stage left Yvonne Hurja, the beautiful daughter of the Spanish guy that Jr. is working with. Enter stage right, the cruel Captain of the Guards, Don Julio, who has his eyes on Yvonne. And if this what made the movie interesting, it would be exit off the couch for the viewer right then and there.

Made in late 1924, released in 1925, lost until 1971, and restored in 2020, Too Many Kisses is six reels of silliness mixed with romantic comedy and melodrama. It likely would have remained forgotten had it not been for one unlikely piece of casting. For despite the presence of Richard Dix and William Powell as Jr. and Don Julio respectively, Too Many Kisses is known only for the screen debut of Harpo Marx.

Harpo celebrates breaking into movies
before his brothers.

 

What Harpo had over his siblings regarding silent movies was his own silence -- even if, in Too Many Kisses, he has two lines of dialogue (via subtitles). Yet if you watch closely, he stands with his mouth agape in typical Harpo-style when he's supposed to be talking. My guess is that he had become so used to almost 20 years of doing a dumb act that talking just didn't  come naturally in performance. Or maybe he forgot what he was supposed to say.

Laddero Marx.

It's nice to see that Harpo's persona was fully-formed by now. His first appearance, sound asleep and snoring so hard that he's moving straw back and forth, wouldn't have been out of place in any of his subsequent movies. And while there's no chance (or need) for him to play his usual instrument, Harpo does get another Harpoesque moment when he's accompanying Don Julio's musical wooing of Yvonne by "playing" a ladder like a guitar. (His character is billed in the credits as "The Village Peter Pan", which I suppose is nicer than "Village Idiot".)

It would take almost a century for Harpo (right)
to be considered stealing a scene from
William Powell.

Harpo stays primarily in the background for most of the movie; he might not have been even noticed in many scenes by moviegoers who weren't familiar with his stage work. But he's there enough, particularly in the second half, so that a Marx fan doesn't go away entirely disappointed.

More observant (i.e., boring) people like me will notice that not only does he walk like the Harpo we've always known, but that he's playing more like his overly-sympathetic MGM character rather than the earlier, anarchic style at Paramount. Ironic, then, that Too Many Kisses is a Paramount picture.

Richard Dix would lose that silly look in his noirish 1940s dramas, while William Powell
wouldn't be caught dead in an outfit like that again.

 

So what of Too Many Kisses' real stars? Being more familiar with their sound movies, I could "hear" Richard Dix and William Powell speaking their subtitles. But either they improved by the end of silents, or director Paul Sloane instructed them to overact whenever possible. Dix's reaction to sitting next Frances Howard (as Yvonne) is strictly Jerry Lewis. Powell is more subtle, yet appears to be the template for every sneering villain of the time.

Despite being beautifully restored with its original tints -- and a lovely piano score by Harpo's son Bill -- Too Many Kisses is strictly for the diehard Marx Brothers fans who need to see everything they ever did, whether it's worth watching or not. And after they see this the first time, they can rewatch it to see if, as rumor has it, Zeppo Marx really is an in-joke extra. It'll take their mind off the rest of the movie.  

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To read about how good Richard Dix could be, click his name below.