What Price Hollywood?

Pre-Code insider's look at Hollywood, a precursor to all those STAR IS BORN films.

Constance Bennett is a waitress at Hollywood's famed Brown Derby restaurant specifically for the chance of meeting the right contact to help her break into films. In walks Lowell Sherman, a tipsy but famous director. They take a shine to each other and he wakes up the next morning to find her asleep on his living room couch. He invites her to test for a small part in a film, but she's terrible.

She works all night on her little scene and finally gets it right. Of course she makes a hit and becomes a big star. She's never romantically involved with Sherman, who's more interested in the bottle. She has everything she ever wanted and marries a stuffy rich boy (Neil Hamilton) who never fits in.

Eventually Bennett loses the husband and also loses Sherman as his career slips away because of his drinking. The years go by. One night she gets a call to come get Sherman out of jail where he's been locked up for be drunk and for skipping out on a bar bill. She takes him home and cleans him up, but it's too late.

Hard-hitting story stunned a lot of viewers who wanted to believe that the lives of the Hollywood stars was a bed of roses. Bennett and Sherman are superb. Hamilton is fine as the rich husband. Also good are Gregory Ratoff as the producer and Louise Beavers as the devoted maid.

There were insider Hollywood stories before this. Marion Davies' comedy SHOW PEOPLE showed how fame can go to an actress' head. The following STAR IS BORN films borrowed heavily from this one but the heroines in these (Janet Gaynor, Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, and the 2018 version) were all married to the tragic figure.

Perhaps a bigger studio than RKO could have secured the Oscar nominations Lowell Sherman and Constance Bennett deserved for this film.

Another film that deserves a wider viewership and a DVD release, "What Price Hollywood?" looks at the toll Hollywood takes on the people who make it possible.

Adela Rogers St John wrote the Oscar-nominated story of a fading genius of a director, destroyed by drink, who launches one last discovery into the world. Lowell Sherman, himself both a director and an alcoholic, played the sad role that had been modeled, in part, on his own life. (Sherman's brother-in-law, John Barrymore, was also a model, as was the silent film director Marshall Neilan.) The divinely beautiful Constance Bennett plays the ambitious Brown Derby waitress who grabs her chance. Neil Hamilton, paired to great effect with Bennett that same year in "Two Against the World," plays the east-coast polo-playing millionaire who captures Bennett's heart without ever understanding her world.

George Cukor directed the film for RKO, and already the seeds of his directorial genius can be seen. Wonderful montages and double exposures chart Bennett's rise and fall as "America's Pal," and I've rarely seen anything as moving as the way Cukor presented Sherman's death scene, using quick shot editing, exaggerated sound effects and a slow motion shot. As startling as it looks today, one can only imagine the reaction it must have caused over 70 years earlier, before audiences had become accustomed to such techniques.

While the romantic leads are solid--Bennett, as always, especially so--and Gregory Ratoff is mesmerizing as the producer, hats must be doffed to Lowell Sherman for his Oscar-calibre performance. The slide from charming drunk to dissolute bum is presented warts and all, and a late scene in which the director examines his drink-ravaged face in the mirror is powerful indeed. It's hard to imagine what it must have been like for Sherman to play such a role and it was, in fact, one of the last roles he took for the screen, before concentrating on directing--then dying two years later of pneumonia.

When David O. Selznick made "A Star is Born" for United Artists five years later, four years after leaving RKO, the RKO lawyers prepared a point-by-point comparison of the stories, recommending a plagiarism suit--which was never filed. The later movie never credited Adela Rogers St John or any of the source material of "What Price Hollywood?" for its own screenplay, which was written by Dorothy Parker from, supposedly, an idea of Selznick's.

"What Price Hollywood?" is a great source for behind-the-scenes tidbits--Cukor fills the screen with images of on-set action (or inaction), with various crew waiting about as they watch the film-in-a-film action being filmed. This movie works as history and as innovation, but it also works on the most important level, as a well-told story.

What that lady needed was a good script and a fine director. She had both in "Our Betters." And she had it here. And this one will break your heart.

The on-the-set ambiance is very plausible. Lowell Sherman is excellent as the tippling director who discovers waitress Bennett and becomes a heavier drinker. Gregory Ratoff is superb as the initially brusque but increasingly sympathetic producer Saxe.

Conusance Bennett is likable as the ambitious waitress. She gets us to smile as she starts out as a crummy actress but works hard at it. And she is directed to a superb performance when things for Sherman, her, and her husband Neil Hamilton get tough.

One of George Cukor's better films, featuring Lowell Sherman, as an alcoholic director, Gregory Ratoff as a Sam Goldwyn like producer, and Constance Bennett playing the starstruck waitress at the Brown Derby. The film also includes Eddie "Rochester" Anderson as Sherman's sly butler. An early RKO film, it shows the working of the studio, somewhat satirically but lovingly. Also, a world premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theater. It should be better known .

The direction of George Cukor for this film is excellent. The three lead characters have three charming, yet completely different personalities. The great talent of George Cukor doesn't allow the energy of any of his characters to wane. The performance of Lowell Sherman only adds to the wonderful script, and only the innocence of Constance Bennett is able to carry the role of an aspiring starlet that makes it so believable. Neil Hamilton (later to play the 'Commissioner' on the "Batman" TV series of the mid-1960's) is excellent as the 'love interest'. But it is Lowell Sherman who steals nearly every scene in the wonderful jewel of a film. The story of this film is like many real-life stories of almost everyone who has ever worked in Hollywood - either in front of the camera or behind the lens. To me, this IS the original "A Star is Born", and that is why it is one of my favorite films of all time. From the appearance of Eddie "Rochester" Anderson to the Brown Derby to the scenes of the night life of the early days of Hollywood, "What Price Hollywood?" will always be a memorable film for me.