Behind the Make-Up

Hap Brown (Hal Skelly) is doing fine when the film begins. His vaudeville act is working well. However, he meets a down and out fellow comic, Gardoni (William Powell) and insists on helping him. For his trouble, Gardoni eventually steals Hap's act and his girlfriend! However, Hap is a sap and just takes it...and continues a successful partnership with Gardoni. But, through the course of the film, Gardoni shows himself to be a sociopath--a man who uses everyone and soon begins cheating on his poor wife with Kitty (Kay Francis). What will come of this jerk or the super-nice guy Hap? It can't go on like this forever.

This film really could have used closed captioning, as William Powell's Italian accent was very, very thick and often difficult to understand. It' also surprising to hear this coming from the actor--as in his later films there wasn't a hint of any particular accent other than his own.

As far as the film itself goes, it's only okay. The biggest problems are Powell's accent (mentioned above) and that Hap was just too nice and too good a guy to be real in the least. Despite being constantly dumped on, he's always...ALWAYS sweet and nicer than nice....making the film a bit bland and unrealistic. Not terrible but not one of the better films of the era.