Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

Too Many Kisses (1925)

Rich playboy Richard Dix must swear off women for six months to inherit half his father’s millions in this feature comedy from Famous Players-Lasky directed by Paul Sloane. The solution is to travel to the Basque country of Spain to investigate the discovery of a rare ore that may be of great value to the family company. His father’s scheme is threatened however when Richard Gaylord Jr. (Dix) meets the lovely señorita Yvonne Hurja (Frances Howard).

Gaylord’s attentions draw the ire of self-imagined suitor Don Julio (William Powell), who cannot capture Yvonne’s heart himself. He vows death to the American interloper but just can’t seem to follow through.

Dix is surprisingly light-hearted in this role given many of his other surviving and often terse characterizations. But, this film is best remembered as the film debut of Harpo Marx, who appears in a supporting role as the town’s mischievous imp. For years this was thought to be a lost film until 1971 when Robert S. Birchard discovered that a 16mm reduction print struck from the original camera negative had survived in the collection of director Irvin V. Willat. That being said, I have one remaining question though: Do Basques truly wear berets? In this film, they do.

— Carl Bennett

This Blu-ray Disc edition has been mastered from a very-good 35mm duplicate negative copied from a 16mm reduction print struck from the original 35mm camera negative. The source material quality is very-good to excellent after restoration work. Defects have been removed, the image stabilized and color tints added.

The film is accompanied by a music score composed and performed on piano by Bill Marx (Harpo’s son).

The supplementary material includes a D.W. Griffith Biograph short, an early Paramount sound promotional film, a brief documentary on The Biograph Project and the Film Preservation Society, and a 16-page insert booklet including the articles “Harpo Marx and Too Many Kisses” by Robert S. Bader, “Richard Dix” by Kevin Brownlow, “William Powell” by D. Christian Anderson, “The House That Shadows Built” by Robert S. Bader, and “The Biograph Project: ‘A Child’s Impulse’” by Tracy Goessel.

As this is the only known home video edition of this film, we heartily recommend it to collectors.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region 0 Blu-ray Disc edition is also available directly from . . .