Hollywood Gets A Ribbing

Stand-In (1937) Spoofs The Studio System

Odd duck of a romantic comedy where Leslie Howard is a buttoned-up efficiency expert sent by Eastern bankers to straighten finances of “Colossal Pictures,” a studio run by nitwits making movies for other nitwits. This then was concept most seemed to have of Hollywood and those who kept it ticking. No wonder so many moved out there in belief they could run things better. Maybe the town mocked itself so good naturedly to keep tax collectors and government snoopers away. Trust violation concerns were also no cause for levity. Ones who seemed most like idiots were no doubt getting the fattest. Howard’s “Atterbury Dodd” finds massive waste, plus props being stolen from Colossal by even their chief director, a Euro poseur cut from Stroheim, Sternberg mold. Stand-In was independently produced by Walter Wanger, so satire has a serrated edge, Wanger himself enough of an outsider to have felt snubs deeply where they were inflicted on him. There is even labor vs. capital to juice a third act, too late to be an overriding theme, and far afield of zany comedy so far the emphasis.

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There’s a movie within the movie called Sex and Satan, jungle-set with a girl and gorilla. Made me wish there had actually been a feature called Sex and Satan in 1937, perhaps instead of Stand-In. What compensations there are come with the cast, besides Howard there is Joan Blondell, her character a one-time kid star now a secretary, which I’d guess was circumstance visited upon talent dismissed from bright lights. Did I read of Baby Peggy Montgomery reduced to civilian work around this time? It’s made clear that Colossal is a pawn in the hands of investors 3000 miles off, Atterbury with juice to close the lot down, this a touch of reality studios faced from parent companies that owned them, plus theatres in which their product was shown. There was a late-40’s reissue as humorous as content of the film, in-support Humphrey Bogart elevated to first billing for ads which had, among other things, a gun pointed by an unidentified hand. Leslie Howard’s name was altogether dropped from promotion, a consequence of the actor having died several years before, and distributors not wanting to date their product by mentioning him. Stand-In is mostly forgot thanks to obscure ownership and failure to surface at TCM, although there is a Blu-Ray lately announced.