What Price Hollywood?

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.