Kiss Me Again is a 1931 American pre-Code musical operetta film filmed entirely in Technicolor. It was originally released in the United States as Toast of the Legion late in 1930, but was quickly withdrawn when Warner Bros. Pictures realized that the public had grown weary of musicals. The Warner Bros. believed that this attitude would only last for a few months, but, when the public proved obstinate, they reluctantly re-released the film early in 1931 after making a few cuts to the film.
Like the 1926 silent First National film Mademoiselle Modiste, Kiss Me Again is based on a popular 1905 operetta on Broadway, Mlle. Modiste, by Victor Herbert and Henry Martyn Blossom.
Contents
Plot
A French shopgirl obeys her parents by leaving her lover to become an opera star.
Cast
Bernice Claire as Mademoiselle Fifi
Edward Everett Horton as Rene
Walter Pidgeon as Paul de St. Cyr
June Collyer as Marie
Frank McHugh as Francois
Claude Gillingwater as Count de St. Cyr
Judith Vosselli as Mademoiselle Cecile
Albert Gran as General de Villafranche
Music
When the film was re-released in 1931, most of Walter Pidgeon's songs were cut from the film. Only a small abbreviated version of one of his songs is heard on the existing print.
Songs
Ah! But in Dreams So Fair
Alas! To Part, How Great the Sorrow
I Want What I Want When I Want It
If I Were On the Stage
Kiss Me Again
The Mascot of the Troop
Clothes Parade
A Make Believe Ladies Man
Pan Americana
Ballet Medley
Air de Ballet
The Time, the Place and the Girl
Preservation
Only a black-and-white copy of the cut print released in 1931 in the United States seems to have survived. The complete film was released intact in countries outside the United States under the title of Toast of the Legion where a backlash against musicals never occurred. It is unknown whether a copy of this full version still exists.