Hollywood Hobbies

Two movie fans take one of those street-side Movie Tour Guide rides. They track down various movie stars in their 'everyday' appearances. Clark Gable is power-washing his property and the fictional journey begins.

This is part PR for the studio system. It's part stargazing with these movie stars. It's an interesting time capsule of a fictional and real world. It has some 'real' footage mixed in with these fictional tourists. It's a bit quirky. It's also a quiz to test how many of these once-famous people one can recognize.

Sightseers go on a tour to see movie stars. They see them doing things outside their usual routines, like Clark Clark Gable whitewashing his barn and Robert Young's horse riding stable.

It's a very human sort of short subject. Contemporary audiences may have confused the actors and the roles they played; the idea that they might have, like their contemporaries, outside interests, humanized them.

The highlight for me was excerpts from the annual charity baseball game between the leading men and the comedians. Back when he ran his own studio, Buster Keaton's job application form purportedly asked two questions: if the applicant could do anything having to do with movies, and if he could play baseball; a passing grade was 50%.

In an amusing short subject that ends with an all star baseball game, two star struck young women, Sally Payne and Joyce Compton decide to take Billy Benedict's private Hollywood tour in the back seat of his convertible. They get to see Reginald Denny trying to fly his model airplane, follow Clark Gable and watch him give his barn a coat of whitewash. After that it's off to the races where presumably at Hollywood Park they see stable partners Robert Young and Allan Jones give a new colt a name. The real life partner of Allan Jones, Irene Hervey was also present at the birth.

After that it's Hollywood's Wrigley Field where a bunch of stars are playing a charity baseball game. For MGM contract players this was box office duty. But such non-MGM players like James Cagney, Tyrone Power, and Dick Powell were there. What was the trade off that Louis B. Mayer had to give for these walk-ons?

It's an amusing film, a must for stargazers.

The quality of this short is pretty poor. The plot involves two ladies from come to town and go on a tour of the stars' homes and personal lives. The homes part I understand, though when these ladies begin sneaking into celebrities' back yards, the film seems to be promoting stalking!! To make the film, some big-name actors (such as George Murphy and Jimmy Stewart) were recruited to do some scenes with the ladies. However, most of the "meetings" with celebrities are obviously nothing but stock film and publicity films poorly spliced into the movie. It just made the whole thing look cheap and like a big lie. However, for fans of Hollywood's Golden Age, it does provide some nice footage of stars in their spare time doing hobbies and pastimes for the camera that they probably never really did for real!! In other words, it's all a very staged series of photo ops all strung together with a plot that isn't very convincing.

Hollywood Hobbies (1939)

*** (out of 4)

Pretty good "let's show off our stars" short from MGM is cheaply made but we at least get to see countless A-list stars. The film centers on a couple tourists who take a trip across Hollywood where they get to see a few famous faces like Clark Gable and Reginald Denny. The two then go to a charity baseball game where more stars appear including James Stewart, Spencer Tracy, Buster Keaton, Joe E. Brown, Virginia Bruce, Joan Davis, Buddy Ebsen, Mary Pickford, Tyrone Power, Dick Powell, the Ritz Brothers, Cesar Romero and many more. The actual "plot" of this short is pretty silly but that's to be expected as the main goal is to just show as many Hollywood stars as possible and this film certainly does that. A lot of the footage is just edited in from previous films but we do get quite a bit of actual footage including a funny bit with the ladies wanting Stewart's autograph and not realizing that he's sitting in front of them.