Hollywood Hotel

This is an entertaining enough Warner Bros. musical. It's got some behind-the-scenes Hollywood satire. Lola Lane gives a great comedic performance as a melodramatic Hollywood diva. Her sister Rosemary Lane plays her waitress look-alike, hired to "play" the actress at a public appearance after one of her fits. The hero of the story is Dick Powell as a wide-eyed Hollywood newcomer who falls for the waitress, thinking she is the movie star. Ted Healy plays Powell's "manager", Hugh Herbert plays Lola Lane's daffy father, and Alan Mowbray plays a star with an inflated ego.

Directed by Busby Berkeley, this musical has a few dance sequences, but nothing as out-of-this-world as Berkeley's choreography earlier in the 1930s. The real highlights of this film are the amazing big band performances by the great Benny Goodman and Raymond Paige orchestras. There are some long scenes of great swing music played by excellent musicians, and they are a treat for both the eyes and ears. The legendary drummer Gene Krupa just goes crazy in one set. The songs written for the movie are alright, with none more memorable than the opening tune "Hooray For Hollywood".

"Hollywood Hotel" is a fast-moving, exuberant, wonderfully entertaining musical comedy from Warners which is sadly overlooked. It should be remembered if only for providing the official theme song of Tinseltown -- "Hooray for Hollywood." The score by Richard Whiting and Johnny Mercer has a number of other gems, however, including the charming "I'm Like a Fish Out of Water," and "Silhouetted in the Moonlight." The best musical number is "Let That Be a Lesson to You," in which Dick Powell and company detail the misadventures of people who found themselves "behind the eight-ball," a fate which literally befalls slow-burning Edgar Kennedy at the number's end. The picture celebrates Hollywood glamour and punctures it all at once, as it gets a lot of comic mileage out of pompous and ego-maniacal actors and duplicitous studio executives. The cast includes a gaggle of great character comedians--Allyn Joslyn as a crafty press agent, Ted Healy as Dick Powell's would-be manager, Fritz Feld as an excitable restaurant patron, Glenda Farrell as Mona Marshall's sarcastic Gal Friday, Edgar Kennedy as a put-upon drive-in manager, Mabel Todd as Mona's goofy sister, and Hugh Herbert as her even goofier dad. The "racist" element mentioned in another review here is a ten-second bit where Herbert appears in black-face during a pseudo-"Gone With the Wind" sequence. It's in questionable taste, but it shouldn't prevent you from seeing the other delights in this film, notably the Benny Goodman Quartet (including Teddy Wilson and Lionel Hampton!) in what I believe is the only footage available on this incredible jazz combo. The "Dark Eyes" sequence goes on a bit too long and comes in too late, but otherwise "Hollywood Hotel" is a gem, well worth your time and certainly a film which should be considered for DVD release.

Too bad the high-point comes so early. It's a rousing performance of that zippy tune "Hooray for Hollywood" with Benny Goodman's marching band comin' at ya. The remaining 100 minutes is best taken as a spoof on Hollywood's over-sized ego's and cut-throat film industry, which would work fine except too many of the scenes go on too long, way past the point of diminishing returns. Do we really need 12 minutes of Lola Lane acting the pampered, self-centered movie goddess. But then I gather she was dating the movie's producer, Hal Wallis. Then too, poor Dick Powell gets one of his sappier roles, all wide-eyed grin and much too foolish for even a spoof like this.

The best moments are Goodman's numbers which are nevertheless too few to compensate. They do, however, include a good look at vibraphonist Lional Hampton and premier drummer Gene Krupa, along with a quick peek at jazz trumpeter Harry James. On the other hand, the Raymond Paige version of "Dark Eyes" amounts to a textbook example of gaudy over-orchestration. Still, it gives legendary director Busby Berkeley a chance to swoop his camera around in trademark fashion. The drive-in musical bash is both well staged and unusual, with a few clever touches (the falsetto-voiced thug), but again goes on too long. And of course Berkeley does keep everybody in motion, so if some of the routines get wearisome, at least they never drag. But then he's got to work in a lot of second-rate comedy acts (Herbert, Todd), most of which may raise a chuckle but not much else.

No, in my book, it's a disappointing movie, both patchy and undistinguished, except for the knock-out title tune and a winsome Rosemary Lane. Then again, what other film of the day provided a role for movieland's queen of gossip, Louella Parsons, with a cheerless smile that never seems to fade. Somehow, that seems fitting.

When we talk Hollywood Hotel we could be talking about one of three things, the actual hotel, the radio program, and this film which was partially inspired by the first two. Dick Powell was the host of the Hollywood Hotel program on CBS radio network in which Louella Parsons dished out the weekly scoop on the stars.

Powell and Parsons debuted the Hollywood Hotel program in 1934 so by 1937 it had its fair share of the radio audience. Powell hosted, sang, and kibitzed with Louella and her movie star guests. With the power she had with her column, she was able to get the various stars to go on and plug their latest films for nothing.

Then the American Federation of Radio Artists stepped in and demanded she pay wages accordingly and they won the case. That ended the Hollywood Hotel program in 1938. Of course both Powell and Louella went on to other radio venues. The whole story is covered in the Tony Thomas book, The Films Of Dick Powell.

But before the plug was pulled this film came out from Powell's home studio of Warner Brothers inspired by the radio program. Powell plays a singer/saxophonist with the Benny Goodman band who gets signed to a Hollywood contract. But when he gets out to Hollywood he gets himself tangled up with an egotistical film star Lola Lane, her lookalike double real life sister Rosemary Lane, and a ham actor in Alan Mowbray.

When Mowbray is called upon to sing in a Civil War epic he's making with Lola Lane, it's Powell's voice they use. Then Mowbray develops a Lina Lamont problem when he's asked to go on the Hollywood Hotel radio program, broadcast from the Hollywood Hotel. That's got the studio in a tizzy. Let's say the problem isn't solved the way it is Singing In The Rain, but Powell's manager Ted Healy proves to be resourceful.

Richard Whiting and Johnny Mercer provide a really nice score for the film. The big hit song comes right at the beginning as the Benny Goodman band with scat singing Johnnie Davis sing Hollywood's anthem, Hooray for Hollywood. My favorite however is Powell and Rosemary Lane singing, I'm Like A Fish Out Of Water. Just listening to Johnny Mercer's lyrics about Ginger Rogers running the Brooklyn Dodgers or Sally Rand without her fan, it's a compendium of American popular culture in the Thirties.

Busby Berkeley does the choreography here and while the film doesn't have the soaring imaginary stuff that his earlier work with Warner Brothers has, the numbers are well staged. Berkeley's big moment is in a drive-in eatery where Powell and Healy have been forced to take jobs. The number starts with Benny Goodman broadcasting from the Hollywood Hotel doing Let That Be A Lesson To You and then at the drive-in Powell, Lane and the entire place start joining in song to the exasperation of owner Edgar Kennedy. And you know what you can expect from Edgar Kennedy exasperation.

Benny Goodman gets to show why he was named the King Of Swing when the band with drummer Gene Krupa and xylophonist Lionel Hampton as part of his ensemble. That together with Frances Langford singing as well. And possibly the last surviving cast member of the group was a fellow who had a small bit as a radio announcer. He died in 2004, but not before he became the 40th President of the United States. Ronald Reagan always credited Dick Powell and Pat O'Brien as being the two guys on Warner Brothers who were the most helpful to an eager young player looking to make his mark.

Hollywood Hotel is one delightful and entertaining motion picture, dated, but charmingly so.

Directed by Busby Berkeley, the movie is about a saxophonist in Benny Goodman's band who wins a talent contest and gets a 10-week contract with a film studio. Lots of misunderstandings lead to the opportunity for Dick Powell and Rosemary Lane to put on a great show. The film is best remembered for the featured song "Hooray for Hollywood" by Johnny Mercer and Richard A. Whiting, sung by Johnnie Davis and Frances Langford, with Goodman and His Orchestra. Ironically, the satirical song became a standard part of Tinsel Town glamour and is still hauled out regularly for award shows and celebrations, even though Mercer's lyrics contain numerous references to the phoniness of the movie industry and film stardom. This is one of the best Warner Bros. musicals of the 1930s. --Musicals on the Silver Screen, American Library Association, 2013