HOLLYWOOD HOTEL (1937)

Considering how often this film’s ‘Hurrah for Hollywood’ opening is excerpted for Golden Age Hollywood documentaries, the film itself is little known & largely uncelebrated; a situation both understandable and regrettable.  Understandable because it’s a pretty lame comedy: saxophonist Dick Powell backs into a movie career as the secret singing voice of a tonally challenged actor; regrettable because Busby Berkeley stages a fistful of stupendous musical set pieces even without chorines, fantasy stage settings or sexual innuendo; transforming a small town parade, a spiffy Drive-In joint or a radio broadcast into something dynamic solely with movie craft: montage, angles, composition.*  Plus a bonus tour of real Hollywood locations, circa 1937, though that whiz of a Drive-In is a studio set.  And note the expanded Benny Goodman band, shockingly racially integrated (see Lionel Hampton & Ted Wilson) a full year before they’d play Carnegie Hall, tearing it up in a trial run of SING, SING, SING.  The plot, such as it is, follows a mix up between a recalcitrant film diva and substitute lookalike (Rosemary & Lola Lane); a movie premiere (parodying next year’s JEZEBEL); and a radio broadcast from gossip columnist Louella Parsons at the Hollywood Hotel.   Dreary and laugh-free in spite of the cast (watch for an early Ronald Reagan appearance), but worth wading thru for nearly an hour of choice musical highlights.  (Family Friendly label conditioned on a little talk about BlackFace before viewing.*)

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Also without dance steps.  But then, Berkeley choreography hardly needs them.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *BlackFace Warning!  Brief, but appalling.  And another bump, at least at the time, when obnoxious comedian Ted Healy was shot to death just before the film’s release.

DOUBLE-BILL: Dick Powell had aged out of these male ingenue roles and knew it.   See the difference in his super debut, already kidding the type, in BLESSED EVENT/’32 with Lee Tracy.