Great fun if hardly great filmmaking, prolific film scenarist/occasional helmer Rupert Hughes goes behind the screen for a mostly comic look at moviemaking, circa 1923. Packed with cameos for half of Hollywood’s elite (Charles Chaplin to Erich von Stroheim & a score more), major stars of the day take the leads as Eleanor Boardman’s runaway bride leaves Lew Cody, her BlueBeard of a husband, hopping off her honeymoon train in the middle of nowhere. Alone, cold & frightened, she stumbles straight onto a Hollywood location shoot where a desert romance is filming, complete with glamorous sheik (Frank Mayo) and hired camels (camels). From there, merely a step to screen test, slapstick failure (comedy hard!), success as an ingenue (drama easy!). Wooed by all she meets: desert co-star, comic supporting player (Snitz Edwards) , bigtime director (Richard Dix at his most appealing as the love-struck helmer), too bad that erstwhile husband is hunting her down after spending the night with repressed spinster Dale Fuller (!) whom he strangles in the morning. Yikes! (Hitchcock might have blanched at this realistic murder.) Naturally, Cody finds her just as they’re shooting the climax of her new circus themed movie when, wouldn’t you know, a hurricane threatens to blow it all down. Or what’s left after the big tent fire! Hughes, along with superb cinematographer John Mescal (later of many a classic Universal horror pic) come up with thrilling stuff here, if only Hughes had the directing chops to clarify action. No matter, you get the gist of things. Smart & funny about a fast maturing L.A., caught just as it was turning from free-for-all shop into big business. Fascinating & fun. (Look for a TCM restoration with a good new score.)
DOUBLE-BILL: King Vidor’s SHOW PEOPLE/’28, a far better known Marion Davies’ starrer, must have taken a hard look at this for inspiration.
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