Es tut sich was in Hollywood

A young lady from Georgia (Marion Davies) goes to Hollywood in the hopes of becoming an actress.

"Show People" offers an entertaining inside look at 1920s Hollywood and reflects on the actual acting career of starlet Marion Davies. Though one of the great comic talents of her day, featured in many of the decade's successful comedies, such as "Tillie the Toiler" (1927), she too often appeared in extravagant, costly period romance films at the behest of her newspaper tycoon lover William Randolph Hearst, who supposedly enjoyed seeing his mistress in fancy costume.

This is a great semi-fictional look at 1920s Hollywood, with some great cameos. I especially love the encounter with Charlie Chaplin, because I can relate to the Davies character. It took me many years to be able to recognize him when not in his tramp disguise, and I suspect this is what prompted the scene -- how was one to know what he looked like (or sounded like) at the time without the mustache?

The great and underrated Marion Davies shows her stuff in this late (1928) silent comedy that also showcases the wonderful William Haines. Davies plays a hick from Georgia who crashes Hollywood with help from Haines. They appear in cheap comedies until Marion is "discovered" and becomes a big dramatic star. A great lampoon on Hollywood and its pretentions. Davies & Haines are a wonderful team (too bad they never made a talkie together) and the guest shots from the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, William S. Hart, John Gilbert, Elinor Glynn, and Marion Davies (you have to see it) are a hoot. A must for any serious film buff or for anyone interested in the still-maligned Marion Davies!

Another superb production from King Vidor (The Big Parade, The Crowd, The Citadel, The Champ, War and Peace, Northwest Passage, Our Daily Bread). Vidor's movies are always well directed (the way the camera tells the story can not be faulted), but sometimes the performances are not good (in Our Daily Bread, for example), or the movie as a whole is not good. But this is one of Vidor's really great ones. Remembered as one of the only occasions Marion Davies was allowed to play comedy by sugar-daddy and executive producer William Randolph Hearst (a.k.a Citizen Kane), also known as her best movie. She plays comedy wonderfully - which makes it a shame that Hearst thought that to be a "serious actress" meant costume dramas.

Which is actually what this movie is about. It has so many elements of Davies' own story, also told in rather comic-book fashion through Susan Alexander in Citizen Kane. Here, Peggy Pepper (Marion Davies) is brought to Hollywood by her fat, seemingly rich, hick father, in order to become a serious movie actress. She gets signed by a certain studio, without knowing they are a comedy studio similar to Mack Sennet's pie-throwing studio, and sort of falls into getting known as a comic actress, as well as falling in love with a kind clown named Billy Boone (William Haines). As in Vidor' The Citadel, she starts off doing the ideal thing (having fun and playing comedy), and gets seduced from this path by others. She is signed by the "High Arts" studio, where she is encouraged to act hoity-toity and associate with the "Hollywood elite," thereby ignoring all her old friends, including Billy Boone.

Show People is a really great comedy - really fun, really well made, well acted, written, and has the delightful value of featuring cameos from many silent legends including Chaplin, Fairbanks, Gilbert, cowboy William S Hart and others. Cameo value is also added by Vidor himself, who pokes fun at himself as a director of war movies when he appears doing just that in the final sequence, and as a director of "high art." At one point Peggy and Billy are at the movies having just seen their latest movie, which is to be followed by Vidor's production "Bardley's the Magnificent" (a real Vidor film from 2 years before). Peggy wants to stay and watch it, and Billy says in not so many words: what would you want to watch such pretensious rubbish for?

Updated from a previous comment. The great and underrated Marion Davies shows her comedic stuff in this late (1928) silent comedy that also showcases the wonderful William Haines. Davies plays a hick from Georgia who crashes Hollywood with help from Haines, a bit player in crude comedies. They appear together in cheap comedies until Marion is "discovered" and becomes a big dramatic star.

Among the greats scenes are Marion's introduction to films (where she gets a big surprise), Marion's departure from the comedy troupe, and Marion's wedding-day comeuppance.

A great lampoon on Hollywood and its pretensions. Davies & Haines are a wonderful team, and the guest shots from the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, William S. Hart, John Gilbert, Elinor Glyn, Norma Talmadge, Mae Murray, Rod LaRocque, Leatrice Joy, Dorothy Sebastian, Estelle Taylor, Louella Parsons, Renee Adoree, Aileen Pringle, Lew Cody, King Vidor, and Marion Davies (you have to see it) are a hoot. A must for any serious film buff or for anyone interested in the still-maligned Marion Davies! Dell Henderson plays the father. Harry Gribbon is the comedy director, Polly Moran is a maid. Paul Ralli is the slimy leading man.

SHOW PEOPLE was said to have used the career of Gloria Swanson as its model (I think Mae Murray is closer). Davies and Swanson were friends. But this film's story does parallel the rise of Swanson from one-reel Mack Sennett comedies with Charlie Chaplin to STAR in Cecil B. DeMille films of the late teens and early 20s.

Davies and Haines were huge MGM stars and friends. Odd that MGM never teamed them up in a talkie. They're great together! A sweet romance and delightful spoof of early Hollywood. Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo, Bebe Daniels, Pola Negri, Mary Pickford, Harold Lloyd, Alla Nazimova are mentioned but do not appear.

There are two versions of this silent classic on DVD. One has the original synchronized score (which features the song "Crossroads") and a British version by Kevin Brownlow (which features a new score by Carl Davis).

Marion Davies and William Haines are great in this film, not to be missed!

This for me was a wonderful introduction to the talents and beauty of Marion Davies. She is not only gorgeous but hilarious in this film. (I believe that Lucille Ball may have modeled her later career on Davies' style, that could be termed "zany beauty".) Vidor's direction is light but sure-handed, the story is a chestnut of course but the acting is marvelously contemporary, and the star-watching element for fans of the silent era, with many cameos, adds to the overall fun. It combines the elements of slapstick with adult drama and good old timeless romance quite well. For all movie fans who have a knee-jerk reaction to watching silent films, sit through this one and it may change your attitude.