One of the most common entries in the 'goofs' category is anachronism. Though I'm beginning to believe that anachronism and other goofs are more acceptable, even ignored, in very good films, but are found front and center in rotten films. KISS THEM FOR ME is a rotten film and reeks of anachronism, yet when watching it closely, I found almost nothing specifically anachronistic.

The shots of aircraft which bookend the film are certainly out of place. The big 4 engine transport seen after the title "Honolulu 1944" appears to be the post war C-97 Stratofreighter (in MATS colors). The combat planes seen taking off from the carrier at the end are Douglas Skyraiders which entered service after WW2 and were made famous by their service in Vietnam.

But excepting these two pieces of film and, of course, the hairstyles, everything else is very possibly period authentic. It just 'feels' so wrong. I'm an admirer of Stanley Donen, we share the same birthday. In his co directed ON THE TOWN (1949) there is a car chase at the end with the police driving 1949/50 Ford's yet there isn't the slightest feeling that this is out of place in a WW2 period film. In fact, as I reflected later, there isn't anything which says that this is supposed to be a WW2 period film. It just feels that way. Based on a wartime Broadway musical which was based on a ballet (Fancy Free) which may have been based on the work of artist Paul Cadmus (The Fleet's In! 1934) its a great film about sailors on a 24 hour pass in New York and, so heavy with wartime associations, its merely assumed it takes place during the war and yet these contemporary cars do nothing to break the spell.

The first problem is old Cary Grant. Though far too old to represent a Navy SBD dive bomber pilot, it is a Hollywood tradition for stars like Grant, Gary Cooper (Lou Gehrig), Jimmy Stewart (Charles Lindbergh) to play younger. It was the role which he is miscast in, not his age. He plays an operator, as they used to call them. A guy who gets things done and breaks all the rules while doing it yet remains admired and loved for it. A hustler. A wheeler dealer. A de rigueur character in a service comedy. Grant is the comic center of what is after all supposed to be a service comedy which is contra to his comedy style.

Thinking back on the great Grant comic performances like BRINGING UP BABY (1938) or ARSENIC AND OLD LACE (1944) and he is the great reactor whose comedy is to be reduced by his context from dignity to a befuddled puddle of inert jelly. IN KISS THEM he is expected to be the comic spark plug which just isn't him. People had already been exposed to the type, most recently to comic Phil Silvers as Sgt. Bilko on television. The role would be perfected later by James Garner but here Grant just isn't funny and appears to be a bully getting his way by aggressively pushing his Cary Grantness rather than cajoling and finessing.

But the thing which really stinks the place up with anachronism is the lead women. There can be no more echt 50s women than Suzy Parker and Jayne Mansfield. They are unique to the decade. Marilyn Monroe can be placed in a continuum with Carole Lombard and Marie Wilson and any number of dumb blonds, and Grace Kelly was another high class dame (think of Mary Astor), but there never could have been an anatomically exaggerated woman in films like Mansfield. Sure there were the 'sweater girls' (e.g. Lana Turner) of WW2, but Mansfield was stretching the point. Suzy Parker was THE model who revolutionized the model business, who changed the mannequin like poses to become the first natural girl who moved and whose personality was captured by the camera (see FUNNY FACE (1957) also by Stanley Donen).

Of course in high 50s style, there seems to be a lot of gender mixing at 'wild' parties but never even a hint of sex (think of the 50s TV shows Bachelor Father or The Bob Cummings Show where dinner jacketed men returned from 'dates' alone). The original book, which I haven't read, was published during the war and appeared as a play on Broadway at the end of the war and the nuances of the situation must have been inescapable for contemporary readers and audiences, but broken down, bowdlerized and reconstituted a dozen years later and fatally miscast, it remains a once forgotten stain on otherwise exemplary careers until the invention of the VCR and cable television resurrected this petrified turkey.

So the lesson here is whatever the 'goof' it will be ignored in a great film like CITIZEN KANE (who actually hears Charles Foster Kane say 'Rosebud'?), and tolerated in fun dreck like WESTWORLD ( why were the robots given live ammunition in the first place?) but absolutely despised in a rotten film, even if the goofs are really non existent.

Did this review think positively or negatively of the movie?
negative