What Price Hollywood?

"What Price Hollywood?" is one of my favorite films of the 1930s. With loads of drama, glamour to spare, and some romance too, this movie is one of the best behind-the-scenes looks at the old Hollywood studio system that was ever made. Constance Bennett, looking her radiant best, plays the lead role with finesse. Lowell Sherman also turns in a powerful performance as a washed-up director. This movie was the basis for "A Star is Born." All in all, one great 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.

Alcoholic director Max Carey (Lowell Sherman) discovers waitress Mary Evans (Constance Bennett). She becomes a big star and marries handsome Lonny Borden (Neil Hamilton)...but Carey's alcoholism starts to kill him and Lonny can't deal with his wife's stardom....

Very predictable but good. This movie moves VERY quickly; is well-directed by George Cukor; has some sharp pre-Code dialogue and has a good script that gives an interesting look at Hollywood in the 1930s. The church sequence especially is fascinating. It gets a little overly silly at the end but it still works.

Bennett is just great--beautiful and believable; Sherman was good also; Hamilton is just so-so but he's unbelievably handsome so that helps. Gregory Ratoff also gets some laughs as a VERY excitable studio head.

This was (pretty obviously) the inspiration for the later "A Star Is Born" movies but stands on its own merit. I give it an 8.

It's fun to compare "What Price Hollywood," made in 1932, to the more familiar 1937 version of "A Star is Born" (as well as its two later remakes). An important historic event intervened between the two: the Hays Code became rigidly enforced in 1934. The 1932 version is much spicier. Mary, the unknown knockout in in the 1932 version, is a saucy waitress at the legendary Brown Derby restaurant trying to catch the eye of a movie big shot. She's pretty sophisticated and, you believe, would happily do whatever is required to land an acting job. She readily allows herself to be picked up and taken to a premiere by a famous (but fading) director, which launches her great career. In the 1937 version, Esther, the ingenue, is straight off the farm and comes to Hollywood without a clue about the movie biz. She's a goody-two-shoes who would be shocked about what it usually takes to break into the biz. She catches the eye of a famous (but fading and highly alcoholic) actor when she waitresses at a party.

There is one major plot difference: in the 1932 version, Mary marries a rich polo playing socialite who divorces her (while she's pregnant) because he is fed up with movie people. This is highly realistic--movie stars had terrible marital problems. In the 1937 version, Esther marries the actor who was her mentor and is sucked into his hopeless downward spiral. Divorce is a perfectly acceptable solution to marital problems in 1932 but, under the constraints of the Code, was out of the question in 1937.

Both films are well worth seeing. They're loaded with insights about Hollywood and filmmaking (both the creative and the business end), the rapacious movie press, and the fans--an insatiable monster that devours the object of its affection. The declining fortunes of the director (in "What Price Hollywood") and the actor (in "A Star is Born") are quite fascinating. But of the two--the 1932 version is a lot more fun.

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.