It's pretty awful but wonderful fun
Alice White's first sound film is tremendous fun and she's absolutely adorable in it. She's also an absolutely terrible actress but nobody cared - that's the character audiences fell in love with and she plays that role brilliantly.
She knew as well as everyone that she could neither act or sing or dance but those minor setbacks were no handicap to the ambitious Alice so for just a couple of years at the dawn of the talkies she became one of Hollywood's biggest and brightest stars. As a character in this film answers when she asks about why the public want her: you are life, you are youth and you are...the sound jumped at that point but it sounded like .... you are bosoms .... which sounds a plausible reason to me. Alice White films, at least the early ones were made to make you smile, nothing more.
Mervyn LeRoy had already made a few films with Alice White so by the time he made this you might wonder why he still hadn't managed to make her even slightly believable. His male actors, although still doing 'silent film acting' seem much more authentic but Alice and her two pals are essentially cartoon characters. This must be deliberate. There were serious pictures being made in 1929 but the talkies were also a novelty so novelty pictures like this were popular. Alice White was a personality rather than an actress so this picture should be viewed in that context - it was simply an excuse to put the lovely Miss White on the big screen.
As a motion picture, something which envelopes you into a story and makes the unbelievable believable, this doesn't even try. As a piece of frivolous fun however this is great.
It's definitely not her best picture, SHOWGIRL IN HOLLYWOOD and PLAYING AROUND are much better - in those she sort of acts but nevertheless this is still thoroughly entertaining. It's got a reasonably interesting plot: showgirl ditches loyal boyfriend for flashy gangster.....ok, that's the exact same plot as PLAYING AROUND but who cares! To quote Dick Powell in DAMES: it's not the story, it's not the acting, it's not the songs - what people want to see is beautiful dames! To use the expression of the era, you'd never find a more beautiful dame than Alice White. She is impossibly pretty and so mesmerising that you can overlook the fact that even with the excuse that this was made in 1929, this is a pretty rubbish film.
She knew as well as everyone that she could neither act or sing or dance but those minor setbacks were no handicap to the ambitious Alice so for just a couple of years at the dawn of the talkies she became one of Hollywood's biggest and brightest stars. As a character in this film answers when she asks about why the public want her: you are life, you are youth and you are...the sound jumped at that point but it sounded like .... you are bosoms .... which sounds a plausible reason to me. Alice White films, at least the early ones were made to make you smile, nothing more.
Mervyn LeRoy had already made a few films with Alice White so by the time he made this you might wonder why he still hadn't managed to make her even slightly believable. His male actors, although still doing 'silent film acting' seem much more authentic but Alice and her two pals are essentially cartoon characters. This must be deliberate. There were serious pictures being made in 1929 but the talkies were also a novelty so novelty pictures like this were popular. Alice White was a personality rather than an actress so this picture should be viewed in that context - it was simply an excuse to put the lovely Miss White on the big screen.
As a motion picture, something which envelopes you into a story and makes the unbelievable believable, this doesn't even try. As a piece of frivolous fun however this is great.
It's definitely not her best picture, SHOWGIRL IN HOLLYWOOD and PLAYING AROUND are much better - in those she sort of acts but nevertheless this is still thoroughly entertaining. It's got a reasonably interesting plot: showgirl ditches loyal boyfriend for flashy gangster.....ok, that's the exact same plot as PLAYING AROUND but who cares! To quote Dick Powell in DAMES: it's not the story, it's not the acting, it's not the songs - what people want to see is beautiful dames! To use the expression of the era, you'd never find a more beautiful dame than Alice White. She is impossibly pretty and so mesmerising that you can overlook the fact that even with the excuse that this was made in 1929, this is a pretty rubbish film.
- 1930s_Time_Machine
- Jul 8, 2023