Um Ano em Hollywood

This a quite an enjoyable early Faye effort. At 19, she's quite the trouper and gives a convincing, compelling performance. The big production number of "Yes, To You" is a real show-stopper and I think this is one of Faye's best songs. She gives a playful, comic touch to her impersonations of a Dutch girl, French Chanteuse, and exotic Asian doll. The plot is pure make-believe and everyone seems to be having fun with it. Jimmy Dunn is good and well as such stand-bys as Grant Mitchell. The comic duo Mitchell and Durant are tolerable at best. It's good someone saved this film from obscurity -- it's good entertainment -- now when can they do the same for NOW I'LL TELL? The Faye/ Spencer Tracy Fox film needs the same treatment.

James Dunn plays a down and out film director. While he's won the Oscar in the past, currently he's unwanted in Hollywood and goes to work for a fly-by-night acting school run by Grant Mitchell. However, when a genuinely talented lady (Alice Faye) enrolls, Dunn is in a bind when his boss wants him to con her out of money. You see, the angle is to pretend to make a movie with her and take her money--but Dunn can't bring himself to do this and plans on REALLY making a movie with Faye. Will his scheme work?

As for the quality of this film, it's pretty obvious that Faye was yet to become an A-list star for Fox Studio. The writing is rather pedestrian, the two idiots provided for comedy relief were (to put it bluntly) just awful and the film very, very uneven. A few of the groan-inducing moments included the Tarzan/Mae West bit as well as anything involving the two idiots. As a result, this film is one mostly of interest to die-hard Alice Faye fans. Not terrible but also not very good.

This is one of the earliest Alice Faye musicals I have seen and it's strictly for us, her fans and, perhaps, the connoisseurs of early musicals. While Not among Faye's best musicals, I thought "365 Nights in Hollywood", directed by George Marshall, was above-average musical: likable, pleasing, unpretentious effort that just passes the time. Ms. Faye - very young and looking exactly like Jean Harlow - plays an aspiring, talented movie star that joins a bogus film school, run by Grant Mitchell, and through the help of a has-been director, played by James Dunn, whom she ultimately falls in love, she succeeds and becomes a rising musical star. The songs and production numbers are well mounted and pleasing throughout.

If you like this one, I recommend "George White's 1935 Scandals"(1935), again with Faye and Dunn.

An early star-making vehicle for the under-appreciated Alice Faye, this movie spends too much time on the behind-the-scenes rigmarole that goes into the process of turning an aspiring singer into a marketable commodity. Favorite line "Go back to Peoria, learn to cook, and raise a family!" While Faye is given ample opportunity to imitate Jean Harlow, she is given too little to sing; nevertheless, the fabulous production number casting her in a variety of worldwide stereotypes is a hoot. Some of the sexual innuendo is obviously free of the censorship brought on by the Hays Code.

If you're a film buff, "365 Nights in Hollywood" is well worth watching. It's hokey, frenetic and plot-wise doesn't always make sense. But you won't find a better example of where movies were at just a few years after the introduction of sound. Alice Faye, in her second screen role, plays a star-struck kid from Peoria who's conned into signing up with a phony Hollywood talent school. Back when "365 Nights..." was made by Fox (sans Twentieth Century,) she was just hitting her stride as an actress. But she nails the production numbers -- as a succession of singing sirens in one sequence and a chorus of Alice Fayes in another. James Dunn co-stars as the down-on-his-luck movie director, fronting for the school, who sets out to outwit his employer and give her a shot at stardom. And before the fun is finished, he returns to his hoofing days to join Faye in a climactic song-and-dance routine that's a pleasure to watch.