Idole d'un jour

I never liked Richard Dix, but after seeing It Happened in Hollywood from 1937, I have changed my mind.

The movie also stars Fay Wray. The film concerns a very important part of film history, the arrival of the talkies. Western silent screen star Tim Bart (based probably on Tom Mix) is a huge attraction for young kids everywhere. They belong to his special club, he visits them in hospitals - he is a great hero.

Tim's frequent costar is the beautiful Gloria Gay (Wray). She and Tim are in love, but neither one acknowledges it - it's possible Tim thinks she's too classy for him. Obviously she doesn't feel that way.

When talkies come in, westerns go that-away. Tim is now in formal attire, filming on a set - he's uncomfortable, he can't remember his lines - so the studio gets rid of him and keeps Gloria.

Tim gets into a bar fight at his favorite haunt and is spotted by a director who thinks he would be great as a gangster. He would be - but that would be letting down his kids. When push comes to shove, he won't do it.

One of his fans who was about to have surgery had promised to get well and visit Tim - and he shows up. Tim at this point is no longer a star, and he has no money. The boy falls off of Tim's horse and is put on bedrest - meaning that Tim can't send him back home (which I think is an orphanage or a special hospital).

Tim decides to call in a few favors, and it turns out, everybody is willing to help. He wants to throw a big party for the boy. He borrows his old ranch for the day. His friends provide food and music.

And the guests - the guests are movie star stand-ins and doubles, and some of them are remarkably like the originals: Joan Crawford, Irene Dunne, Loretta Young, W. C. Fields, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, John Barrymore, Greta Garbo, and Mae West, to name a few.

I won't spoil the end, but this is a fun, sweet, feel-good film. Dix is very likeable and natural, and Wray is her usual glamorous and gorgeous self. Enjoy the film, and enjoy those doubles and stand-ins!

This is a most enjoyable film which is of particular interest to film buffs for several reasons. The story commences in 1928, the last year of silent films. The amiable actor Richard Dix plays Tim Dart, a star of silent cowboy films (an idea doubtless inspired by Tom Mix). He is in love with another silent star named Gloria Gay, played by Fay Wray, who is glamorous and alluring but loves her cowboy, and wishes he would take more notice of her. (Who could ignore Fay Wray and be unaware of her devotion? But then cowboys can be ornery critters.) All is going well otherwise, and they are both close friends and top of the bill with their respective successful careers. Dix has nationwide fan clubs of young boys who worship him, and we see him whistle-stopping all over America and giving personal appearances at schools and boys' clubs. Suddenly his tour is interrupted by a telegram summoning him back to Hollywood for a 'talking test'. All the silent stars are being tested on the new sound stages for their ability to speak, which had never previously been necessary. (We need to remember that this film was made only 8 or 9 years after this painful transition, when it was all a fresh trauma in everyone's minds.) Dix is not able to deliver his lines properly, and is upset that he has to wear formal attire and pretend to be in a drawing room where the dialogue is absurd. He flunks the test and is jettisoned by his studio, while Fay Wray is retained. With the advent of sound, cowboy films were discontinued for the first few years because the clunky sound equipment could not be used outdoors! So 'we are only shooting plays now and everything must take place indoors,' he is told by the studio head. Exit the cowboy stars. Dix is forced to sell his huge ranch which he had wanted to turn into a giant boys' home, and moves into a small bungalow, completely broke. He avoids Fay Wray because she is still successful and he does not want to be a burden on her. This is an interesting historical dramatisation of the effects of the 'sound revolution' in films, made near enough to the time to ring true and be convincing. Indeed, despite being keenly interested in film history, I had never realized prior to seeing this film that 'outdoors was out' at the beginning of sound, and that cowboy films were a temporary casualty, until the clumsiness of the sound gear could be reduced. I had never actually seen or heard that mentioned before, and it is a detail which has escaped most people of today. A young boy who hero-worshipped Dix turns up on his doorstep and persuades him not to leave Los Angeles. The boy had been near death in a hospital when they met on Dix's tour, and it was only belief in the fact that Dix cared about him which had pulled the boy through. Touched by this intense and total devotion, Dix regains some faith in himself and decides to 'borrow' his old ranch for a day and throw a big party for the boy, so that he can meet all the other famous Hollywood stars, and still believe that Dix is one himself. At this point, the film contains one of the most remarkable and innovative scenes in films of that time: the party indeed occurs and the famous stars are impersonated by their professional imitators and stand-ins. Some are so convincing that one wonders if they are actually 'real' and came along to pretend to be their own imitators for a lark. Certainly 'Mae West' is an imitator, as she sashays too violently and does not look quite right. W. C. Fields seems to be an imitator, but Charlie Chaplin looks eerily 'real', and so does Harold Lloyd in the background. 'Greta Garbo' appears and tells the boy she has to leave now because she wants to be alone. This is a truly bizarre and surrealistic part of the film, and it is worth watching the film just to see the party full of doubles. Eventually Dix realizes that Fay Wray has also lost her place at the top, and all the talk in the trade papers about her thriving career is just pretence created by her publicist to try to get her back into pictures. So they come together again and express their true love at last. But that is not the end of the film. What will happen to them? Will their careers revive, or will they go to live on a ranch as cowboy and cowgirl? What will happen to the boy? Is there to be a happily-ever-after, or will it all be a bit of a downer? This cannot be revealed, but it is all there in the film for those who have an interest in this kind of thing and are lucky enough to get hold of a copy or see it on TV.

Richard Dix stars as Tim Bart, a real-life cowboy who becomes a big silent western star who is particularly loved and idolized by children. Then the talkies come along and the fact that cameras must be static and locked down in soundproof booths at the dawn of sound makes it impossible for westerns to be made for a couple of years.

Bart is blind-sided by the sudden change and initially is given a screen test in the romantic scene of a modern dress drawing room drama wearing formal attire and given ridiculous flowery dialogue to recite. Being completely unaccustomed to dialogue at all, he flunks his screen test and is dismissed from the studio. The rest of the film has to do with how he handles being made obsolete overnight by these technological advances and changing tastes.

This is different from most other films on the subject of big stars being "washed up" because Dix's Bart has such a positive outlook and a generous spirit. He always figures he'll get by, and so there is no bitterness or turning to drink or any other such tropes that you find in the riches to rags stories of forgotten stars. Only when someone else who he cares about needs cash urgently does he even think about making a wrong turn.

Dix's powerful, vivid performance seems inspired by his own image and also knits fact and fiction together for a spot-on replication of many silent movie actors and Western talkie movie actors of that era. An inspired party scene, where doppelgangers for Charlie Chaplin, W. C. Fields, Mae West, Great Garbo, Joan Crawford, and other actors mingle with real-life prominent characters actors creates an eerie mirror image of Hollywood.

I will note that Dix didn't have any such experience in Hollywood even though he was a silent actor for quite a few years before the dawn of sound. Dix was already a "modern dress" actor during the silent era, so not much changed for him. He actually first did more westerns after the movies could begin filming outdoors again, in the early 30s.

This was a real surprise and is a fun film especially for anybody who is interested in this transitional period in filmmaking.

There haven't been many movies on the subject of THE most fascinating and terrifying era of Hollywood history - the chaotic and brutal transition from Silents to Talkies (that period ended WAY more Hollywood careers than the McCarthy blacklist era). The best known, of course, are "Singin' In The Rain" (the most complete treatment of the subject, and DAZZLINGLY funny), and "Sunset Blvd" (oh-so-dark, and with razor-sharp teeth), and they were both 20+ years after the fact. Here's one that's less than 10 years removed, when the wounds of the victims were still pretty fresh and oozing, and it's flawed but TERRIBLY fascinating in that light. This page categorizes it as COMEDY, but I didn't detect any (intentional) laughs, except perhaps in the bizarre (and tacked-on-feeling) party sequence near the end featuring actual stand-ins for many major stars of the day. One suspects that Dix played a major role in bringing this story to the screen, and that it might have represented his own story (his thinly-fictionalized character fails to make the switch to talkies because of a mild drawl, and because, supposedly, Westerns are finished due to the inability to take the new technology outdoors). As I studied his filmography on this site, I'm seeing that he was never unemployed during that era, but that he DID go from making 5 or 6 films a year in the mid-'20s to 1 or 2 a year in the early thirties, so I guess that might have been a sufficient jolt to his lifestyle to embitter him a bit. REALLY interesting stuff, and Fay Wray is GORGEOUS and memorable (as always). Absolutely recommendable to any Hollywood history buff.

It Happened in Hollywood (1938)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Richard Dix plays a silent screen cowboy who gets kicked out of Hollywood once sound pictures come into play. He loses all his money, which causes him to lose his ranch, which he was hoping to make a boy's home. He gets a chance at a comeback playing a gangster but can't stand letting down his fans by playing a bad guy. Since this was nearly twenty-years before Singin in the Rain it's rather interesting seeing a film take on the transition from silent to sound. This Columbia movie has been pretty much forgotten today but I think film buffs will find the story interesting and there's some more unique things here. There's a big subplot with Dix wanting to make good to a kid he made a promise to so he decides to throw him a Hollywood party. Greta Garbo, W.C. Fields, Charles Chaplin, Loretta Young, Mae West and Bing Crosby among others show up but it's their stand-ins doing the work. The whole point is to fool the kid into thinking he's surrounded by real stars but we see them as stand-ins, which is interesting as we're seeing the actual people who worked for the stars. I had heard about Eugene DeVerdi's take on Chaplin and must admit that it's pretty good. Fay Wray plays Dix's love interest and does a pretty good job even though her role is pretty much a throw away. Dix is his usual self and fans of his will enjoy his role here. This movie could have been a lot better but it's clear it was meant to be a "B" picture and on that level it works. I think silent buffs will get a kick out of its story while movie buffs will enjoy seeing the real star's stand-ins. Future director Samuel Fuller is credited as one of the three screenwriters.