Sunkist Stars at Palm Springs

With Edmund Lowe acting as a kind of master of ceremonies Sunkist Stars At Palm Springs has several female dance contest winners one from each of the 48 States and affiliated territories get to do fun in the sun with some film stars. Interesting that of these except for Johnny Weissmuller because of Tarzan were B list players. I guess MGM couldn't do anything involving water without Weissmuller.

I could have done without the live 'microphone' using the voice of Peter Lind Hayes to do some not very good impressions of some personalities of the day. Only Fuzzy Knight at the end of the film and Jackie Coogan and Betty Grable had any kind of sustained numbers.

Not well remembered but Coogan and Grable were married at the time. He was on the way down, she'd be zooming up in the Forties once she went with 20th Century Fox. Shortly after this short subject was made Grable and Coogan split up.

Nothing special here except for stargazers and these were second magnitude stars.

Sunkist Stars at Palm Beach (1936)

*** (out of 4)

Technicolor short from MGM shows off various Hollywood stars vacationing at Palm Springs. Edmund Lowe hosts the short, which features cameos by Dick Foran, Robert Benchley, Jackie Coogan, Betty Grable, Buster Keaton, Claire Trevor and Johnny Weissmuller. Walter Huston also shows up and sucks an egg out of a bottle. No, I'm not joking. It's fun seeing all these stars in color but the film doesn't have much in the way of a plot.

As of now this isn't on DVD but you can catch it playing on Turner Classic Movies. Well worth your time.

There's this weird creepy microphone puppet that has a face and it talks and winks and says creepy things and if this didn't have that I would have given it a higher rating instead of a "5".

It's some dancers (one from each state) and actors hanging around and dancing and enjoying Palm Springs. I tried to figure out what the whole point of this thing existing was and all I could come up with is a travel brochure for Palm Springs. Kind of like an infomercial for Palm Springs. That's the way it struck me anyway. I've actually been there myself and enjoyed it, although not in 1936!

Kind of fun, kind of weird.

...This is a curious series of films. They are not really very good...but they are quaintly interesting. "Sunkist Stars at Palm Springs" is the best of the three or four I have seen. They were made...well, partly to promote Technicolor...partly to give studios a chance to see some of their stars in Technicolor..the films are produced by MGM, from what I hear, profits went to the Motion Picture Relief Fund--so none of the studios complained if/when their stars turned up..and a lot did..Clark Gable, Alice Faye...many others....the sad thing is they are heavy on names and short on having them do anything really delightful. Betty Grable takes off her skirt, revealing shorts and dances with the chorus girls--most of the others just stand there...Johnny Weiss muller frolics in the pool...but curiosities is what they will remain. Even so, at eighteen minutes...you won't get really irritated and you may spot a personal favorite along the way.

During the 1930s, MGM was experimenting with the first true color system from Technicolor. But instead of using it in feature films right away, they made a variety of color shorts--and I assume that is to enable them to hone their craft on these promotional films before attempting bigger and more expensive pictures.

Many of these color films were self-promotion videos directed by Lewis Lewyn. The plots of these shorts were very tenuous and it more an excuse to showcase many of their stars...often the B-list stars in particular.

This particular short is super-bizarre because the emcee is a talking microphone that looks to be part papier mache....and it comes off as very creepy and DEFINITELY weird! It talks with Edmund Lowe as well as narrates! I have no idea who thought this was a good idea but in hindsight, it was NOT!

Like these other shorts, this one features quite a bit of singing and dancing as well as some limp comedy. The most interesting, perhaps, is seeing Betty Grable dance since this was early in her career--before she moved to 20th Century Fox and became a mega-star.

Overall, this is a basically plot less promotional film...with that ultra-creepy mic. Probably mostly of interest to die-hard classic film lovers only.