Hips, Hips Hooray
                              
Director: Mark Sandrich
Year: 1934
Rating: 6.5
This is short and sweet coming in at 66 minutes and having a full supply of gags, songs and silliness to carry you through. It is Wheeler and Woolsey, a now nearly forgotten comedy team, along with their mascot Dorothy Lee who appeared in most of their films and always gave them a shot of energy and adorableness. This just beat the Code and is classified as a pre-code film and considering the outfits that the women have to wear that barely cover their naughty bits and leave the men hoping for a strong wind, I don't know if it would have been approved in a few months' time. Don't get your hopes up - nothing really seen but leaving your imagination working overtime.

 

This is the third film starring this three-some that I have seen - the others being Hook, Line and Sinker and Half Shot at Sunrise - and I have to admit I find them fairly amusing. Anything and everything goes with these guys. Nothing is too idiotic for them - they take some of their act form the Marx Brothers, some from Laurel and Hardy and probably a lot from vaudeville where they were for years.  Woolsey plays the cigar smoking con man with the gift for patter and Wheeler is the low-key one who always gets sucked into Wheeler's plans. Fairly typical of comedy teams in the old days - one smart and one less so. Then there is Dorothy playing a different character in all of these with less than a full deck. She was sort of like that in real life it seems - married six times and each one fell apart because she could not stay away from show business.

 

Ruth Etting - a big singing star back then - begins the film with Keep Romance Alive - on a radio show with oodles of models in baths or wearing flimsy clothes that you would never allow your daughter to go out wearing. They look to be cloth toilet seat covers over their breasts and below the waist. Etting unfortunately disappears after her number - maybe she realized this was a Wheeler-Woolsey film. The radio show is sponsored by a fashion and make-up company owned by Thelma Todd. Thelma was a big comedy star in the silent days and when talkies came along, she did a series of comedy shorts with Zasu Pitts that were well received. She is perhaps most famous now though for her mysterious death. She was found dead in the garage of a friend in 1935 at the age of 29 after a party hosted by Ida Lupino - called suicide or accident with carbon monoxide but many people thought it was murder. It is a fascinating story that the press jumped on with its connections to the mob (Luciano), an ex-lover, his wife, drugs and other actresses.  I am sure I have read a detective novel based on much of this, but the title won't come to me. Will drive me nuts.

 

Dorothy is a salesperson of lipstick who works in the picture window for people walking by, but they all leave to watch W&W sell flavored lipstick across the street. They con Dorothy and Thelma into thinking they are big operators - their little con gets funny when they trick a businessman into leaving his office. "Call him up and tell him some bad news so he has to go home", "I'll tell him his wife left him", "That's not bad news". They end up telling him his house is on fire and they occupy the office when the two women come by. Lots of innuendos and flirtations but the big play is a wonderful song - Just keep doing what you are doing, though it is leading me to ruin - and turns into a nutty dance that is delightful. Later they get a foothold in the company to sell their flavored lipstick but first they have to test them. They line up six lovely women who put lipstick on and two of them have to tell the flavor by kissing the girls. The film is filled with gorgeous women - all supplied by RKO. This is directed by Mark Sandrich who was to direct another W&W before he moved on to a classier duo - Astaire and Rogers - directing five of their films.