GOING HOLLYWOOD (1933)

In decline and nearing the end of personal bungalow parking privileges @ M-G-M, thirty-something Marion Davies sought commercial insurance borrowing Paramount’s Gary Cooper as co-star on next year’s OPERATOR 13, and fast-rising Bing Crosby for this lightly satirical near-musical.  It wasn’t much help, the two films ending her M-G-M association and Marion showing the effects of drinking in the bungalow between those long breaks on set.  (Note the tricky striated makeup shadings dividing Face, Jaw-line, Neck.)  And a scattershot story as M-G-M (unlike R.K.O. with Fred & Ginger; Warners with Busby Berkeley; Paramount with Lubitsch & Mamoulian) had yet to figure out just what their kind of musical should be.  Here, Davies upends her life teaching French at a private all-girls school after swooning to Crosby crooning on the radio;  an epiphany that has her trailing him all the way to Hollywood.  Donald Ogden Stewart’s original script packs in a few gags about the movies; the irritating Fifi D’Orsay gets jealous and trades French barbs with Davies; Ned Sparks & Patsy Kelly crack wise in comic relief; Bing sings a handful of Nacio Herb Brown/Arthur Freed tunes (TEMPTATION; BEAUTIFUL GIRL) impressively recorded live on set; Davies replaces D’Orsay in Crosby’s heart and in front of the camera; but there’s no style (or stylistic unity) connecting the pieces.  Even within scenes, it’s all bumpy arbitrary shots, as if the editor had nothing to work with.  A likely scenario since once you subtract two reels worth of tunes, running time is under an hour.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: In spite of Crosby, this one shows up irregularly, probably because Davies shows up in BlackFace.  And not the usual heavily stylized BlackFace caricature, but in realistic dark makeup as an extra on set.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  Marion’s silent success with King Vidor, SHOW PEOPLE/’28, also about an outsider gone Hollywood, the likely template.

READ ALL ABOUT IT: In his fanciful auto-bio (EACH MAN IN HIS TIME), Raoul Walsh, specifically requested by Davies’ life-partner William Randolph Hearst to direct, shows little interest describing the film, but does recall a post-premiere weekend up at San Simeon where the guest list included Hollywood contingent Hedy Lamaar, Norma Shearer, Joan Bennett, Howard Hughes, Will Rogers, John Barrymore, Gloria Swanson & Ginger Rogers; and non-Hollywood types like Somerset Maugham, Winston Churchill , General Douglas MacArthur, J. Edgar Hoover (escorting Ginger!),  Irene Castle, top Hearst gal reporter Adela Rogers S. John & Ernest Hemingway.