Hollywood As a Sun-Fun Town
Hollywood Hotel (1937) Is The Tinseltown Tour To Beat
Sheer delight, if a skosh overlong (109
minutes), so much song and mirth as to make trimming doubtful; you'd not check
out from any room of this Hotel. Warners was most merciless where it came to ribbing
Hollywood, their cartoons not alone for exposing foolishness of the biz. There
was also a line of WB two-reelers where clowns assumed studio charge, a
recurring character, "Nitvitz," played by Fritz
Feld. Hollywood Hotel was directed by Busby Berkeley on a dark side of his
moon, Golddigging glory days gone and him reduced to assignments less worthy of
talent celebrated from 42nd Street in 1932 to a horrific car crash where a drunken BB
took innocent lives. Warner bailing him out made an indentured servant of the
director who'd toe corporate line for a remainder of sentence there. Hollywood
Hotel, however, wears the happy face Buzz would apply to The Gangs All Here at
20th Fox in 1943. Both are among cheeriest of musicals, viewing of either
a pick-me-up on gloomiest otherwise days.
Hollywood Hotel was where the town's signature
song, Hooray For Hollywood, was introduced, that for an opener and fun ramping
up for remainder. Two of the Lane sisters get tried before becoming a pair
among 1938's Four Daughters, Lola best being bitchy as she had the expression
for it, while Rosemary puts over bland sweetness (who's going to write a shared
bio of the Lane family? I'd like reading it). Greatness for Hollywood Hotel is
assured by presence of Great and Good Ted Healy, never so insufferable as here.
The part where he insults Louella Parsons aboard an elevator is for the ages.
What does it say about me that I revere Ted so? Of premature star losses, his
is most keenly felt in these quarters. Hugh Herbert goes woo-wooing in
blackface, posed as a plantation slave to gum up filming of a Civil War epic.
Hollywood Hotel posits the town, and films it
generates, as idiotic --- maybe we need distance of time to better enjoy what
seemed then like fan-fueled junk. There is Dick Powell and chorus for a lengthy
and lovely deco drive-in dance, him in waiter uniform serving malts and ham on
rye. Oh, for a Hollywood
that was still like that, in which event I'd happily fly back out. Dick and
Rosemary visit the H'wood Bowl, and it's the real thing, at night, where they
even demonstrate acoustics. The title hotel's lobby looks like a sultan's
palace; were any Hollywood accommodations so
luxurious? As faraway viewers took much of this for serious, how disillusioning
was it to actually visit filmland and see plainer reality of the place?
I've a crush on Priscilla Lane For decades. Some day I plan to visit her grave to pay my respects at Arlington National Cemetary.
ReplyDeleteI had the pleasure of watching HOLLYWOOD HOTEL again just last week. It's extraordinarily entertaining and I recommend it highly!
ReplyDeleteLove Priscilla Lane in SABOTEUR.
ReplyDeleteFun musical with good tunes (and Benny Goodman, Harry James, Gene Krupa, and Lionel Hampton to boot!)...it never had a great reputation, but it's not bad at all and deserves a look.
ReplyDeleteOnly drawback is Johnny Davis. Little goes a long way.
iTunes has this in HD and it looks terrific.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think there's a lyric in "Hooray for Hollywood" that goes:
ReplyDelete"Come on and try your luck.
You might be Donald Duck."
When the song turns up elsewhere, as in Looney Tunes, it's "Daffy Duck".
I was going to say something about the shanty town of discarded movie sets, but it turns out that was "Thank Your Lucky Stars", where instead of twin sisters you have Eddie Cantor.
Dan Mercer pays heartfelt tribute to Ted Healy:
ReplyDeleteI’ve also enjoyed Ted Healy, perhaps because he is not nice and doesn’t pretend to be.
He was the living embodiment of W. C. Fields’ observation, “This is a terrible world. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll get out of it alive.” Healy had no illusions about the outcome. For him, life was too short to be wasted in disguising his disdain for his fellow man. There is no gloss of consideration or good manners, or even what would pass for good manners today, in avoiding the various taboos regarding what can be said or done. Thus, there is the sense of an honestly ruthless in its stripping away of pretense and hypocrisy.
This is not, however, to make him out to be a mere curmudgeon. Especially in his supporting roles, there is an almost merry appreciation that he's really the show people came to see. Watch him in “San Francisco.” In the foreground, Gable and Jeannette MacDonald may be having the intense conversation appropriate for the big star and his leading lady, but in the background, Healy is tripping down steps and going through all sorts of business. And if someone needs to needle the delicate Jeannette with a snide comment, inevitably it issues from his lips.
It’s curious that he’s given such a lovely death scene in this picture, in which all the hard bitterness is no more, and he radiates a loving kindness for others. Maybe he’s going to get out of this world alive, after all.
I wonder, though, how he played this scene in real life.
One of my faves! Along with its sister epic VARSITY SHOW (that one has Powell, Healy, Davis, Rosemary with Priscilla instead of Lola and, alas, Fred Warring instead of Benny Goodman.) Kinda agree with Dan Mercer as to the cold-hearted appeal of Healy. He did have that W.C. Fields-ish cast to his eyes that reads pure disdain. Kinda disagree with Marc Hampton as I find the creepy hipness/cheeriness of Davis a little fascinating.
ReplyDeleteJohnnie "Scat" Davis strikes me as someone who really enjoyed what he was doing. As such, he's always a bright spot for me in a Warners musical.
ReplyDeleteVance Durgin recalls fun-maker Mabel Todd from HOLLYWOOD HOTEL:
ReplyDeleteHi John,
Mabel Todd, the first wife of Morey Amsterdam, is in the cast and a couple of numbers. Though forgotten today, she was one of those "wacky" types (Martha Raye, Betty Hutton, Virginia O'Brien, etc.) that were a "thing" for a while back then. I guess you had to be there.
Todd also turns up in "Blues in the Night" but just in a number, IIRC. And of course that's Elia Kazan in the group with Jack Carson behind Richard Whorf in the clip. Though she sings in that wacky nasal style, she was actually a good vocalist when using her natural voice.
From what I've read, the divorce from Amsterdam was so bitter few knew he had ever been married previously before marrying his longtime second wife, Kay, as he reportedly never spoke of Todd after the divorce.
Tried to screen this for people the other night, and the crowd simply refused to watch any more within seconds of Johnny Davis first opening his mouth - I'm not sure that we even saw Dick Powell's entrance. It seems Mr. Davis' act now evokes a strong response in some people.
ReplyDelete