The Kissing Bandit (1948)

My Review

“The Kissing Bandit” is a western musical comedy about a young man in the 1800’s who finds out that his late father’s hotel was actually a cover for a nefarious business in which he robbed stage coaches and planted a kiss on every female victim. Director Laszlo Benedek (“The Wild One” 1953) put together a film which seems to be a bad version of “Zorro” with mediocre performances, terrible songs, lousy production values, and a poorly written screenplay by Isobel Lennart.

The stars include Frank Sinatra, Kathryn Grayson, J. Carroll Naish, Mildred Natwick, Ricardo Montalban, Ann Miller, Cyd Charisse, and Sally Forrest. “The Kissing Bandit” was a huge bomb at the box office for producer Joe Pasternak and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, despite being filmed in Technicolor. It was filmed in scenic locations in the Sierra Nevada foothills and at the iconic MGM studios in Culver City.