Recensione di gerrythree

Between the 1930 release of this short and 1934, most of the talent appearing or mentioned in this short were gone from the Warners lot. Grant Withers divorced Loretta Young and soon after worked elsewhere. Loretta stuck around to 1934 before leaving. Richard Barthelmess, who sent a telegram that he was on location(Warners was great at creating telegrams) left in 1934 when Warners did not renew his contract. Marilyn Miller did not last that long before departing. George Arliss also sent a telegram in lieu of making an appearance. Arliss's last movie for Warners was 1933's Voltaire, directed by John Adolfi, who also directed this short. Adolfi's career and everything else ended in 1933, death from a cerebral hemorrhage. In Arliss's next movie after Voltaire, House of Rothschild, his co-star was Loretta Young and the production boss was Darryl Zanuck, head of 20th Century Pictures. Before he quit Warners in 1933, Zanuck was that studio's production chief.

Samuel Marx said that when Louis B. Mayer ran MGM, he would tell the MGM staff that as long as they did their job well, they had a job for life. And, to a large extent until he was ousted in 1951, Mayer kept his word. The situation at Warners was different, run like a sweatshop, actors constantly put on suspension for refusing to work in pictures they thought would wreck their careers and Jack Warner pinching pennies everywhere except at the racetrack. This short is evidence of the great turnover of talent at Warners. Warners made great pre-code movies in the early thirties, but it was not a nice place to work at, not having much job security. And what happened to Alice White, she starred in 1930's The Widow From Chicago with Edward G. Robinson, who was at the dinner.