Show Girl in Hollywood

Although this 1930 film is clunky and fraught with (what we now know to be) film cliches, it is worth seeing -- if only for the outstanding performance of one-time silent-film great Blanche Sweet. Without realizing who it was, I kept marveling at her poignant, true portrayal of a washed up silent screen star (clearly, almost autobiographical). What a brilliant choice to cast her. Imagine my surprise after the film when we rewound to the credits!

A fine, unjustly overlooked gem of early filmmaking (that has songs, to boot).

An early cautionary tale about the business of Hollywood and what it does to young women, and a film that's a vehicle for both Alice White and Vitaphone technology. It's not going to blow you away with its plot, as it's been done countless times, and much better too. The comedy elements in the script are weak, and you can see events coming long before they happen. However, there were enough other little elements in the film that it held my interest.

Some of those little extras include seeing Hollywood sights of the era, such as the Roosevelt Hotel (which is still there), the Café Montmartre, and the early studio lots. We also get a brief yet fascinating look into the process of making films during this period, with the Vitaphone technology (sound recorded on a separate disk) requiring noisy film cameras to be housed in soundproof booths. That's the main reason early sound films often appear so stagey, with a static camera - they were in these kinds of booths. Lastly, we get a film premier and red carpet cameo appearances from Al Jolson, Ruby Keeler, Loretta Young, and Noah Beery Sr. and Jr.

Unfortunately, as svelte and adorable as Alice White is with her Betty Boop eyes, she's not very strong at delivering her lines. Her best moments come while sashaying out of a giant clown face on stage and singing "I've Got My Eye on You" at about the 40 minute point, otherwise, don't expect much. Easily upstaging her is Blanche Sweet, who is wonderful as the has-been starlet (lol at age 34), looking at the newcomer with a sigh and a warning. She's the only good actor in the cast, and conveys real melancholy through her eyes and the way she moves. As this was her penultimate film after a career spanning 21 years (aside from a small part in 1959's The Five Pennies), there is a special meaning to everything she does here.

Overall, certainly not a great film, and one that could be easily skipped, so I'm probably rounding it up based on my love for the era, and for Blanche Sweet.

In the closing days of the silent era and for a few years into talkies Alice White was a star at First National/Warners. She was most often seen as a wise-cracking blonde kewpie doll of a flapper, and the studio often put her into musicals or films with musical segments.

One of her biggest silent films, GENTLMEN PREFER BLONDES remains among the lost, but it made her a star in 1928. By the end of the year she had made her talkie debut. In SHOW GIRL IN HOLLYWOOD, White plays Dixie Dugan, that intrepid chorine for the second time, having starred in the silent SHOW GIRL in 1928 (a silent film with a Vitaphone synchronized score).

Dixie Dugan started out as a character in in a couple of novels by J.P. McEvoy that followed her exploits as a show girl. They caused a mild sensation and First National snapped up the right. These two films are based on the character in the novels. In 1929 Dixie Dugan popped up in the comic strips and ran until 1966.

The 1928 SHOW GIRL was discovered in an Italian film archive several years ago and has been reassembled with the Vitaphone disks but the film has not yet been released on DVD>

This 1930 film was released in April of 1930 and stars Alice White as Dugan, a lowly chorine in a show that has just flopped on Broadway. Written by her boyfriend (Jack Mulhall), the two go to a nightclub to drown their sorrows. Dixie is asked to sing a number from the show and she launches into "I've Got My Eye on You" which catches the attention of a visiting Hollywood director (John Miljan). He encourages her to look him up when she's in Hollywood.

Dixie immediately heads west and runs into studio interference after she meets the studio head (Ford Sterling) who's just about to fire Miljan. Coincidentally the studio buys the failed Broadway show and sends for Mulhall who insist Dixie get the starring role.

Meanwhile, Dixie is befriended by the down-and-out actress Donnie Hall (Blanche Sweet) who tries to warn Dixie about the perils of Hollywood, but to no avail. After an extended scene where Dixie again sings and dances in a mammoth production number, we see how the scene is filmed and recorded by the studio crew in a sort of documentary manner.

Dixie immediately "goes Hollywood" and starts demanding changes to the movie and is fired. Donnie, who had landed a role in the film, is also fired as the production shuts down. Despondent she accidentally takes too many pills. When Dixie realizes what she has done, she swallows her pride and crawls back to the studio head.

In the final scene, we see a movie premiere where stars like Loretta Young, Al Jolson, Ruby Keeler, Noah Beery and son arrive. Next we see Dixie on screen in another gigantic production number, singing and dancing to "Hang on to a Rainbow" (originally filmed in 2-strip Technicolor). Dixie Dugan has become a star and is introduced by Walter Pidgeon to the cheering audience.

Alice White is sensational and is perfect as the boop-a-doop singer with her tossled hair and big eyes. Sweet is also a standout as the tragic has-been actress. She gets to sing "There's a Tear for Every Smile in Hollywood." Sweet was near the end of her Hollywood career and made only one more film. She was 34 years old and had been a big star in silent films.

Mulhall, Miljan, and Sterling are all fine. Spec O'Donnell plays the reception boy, Virginia Sale is the secretary, and Herman Bing plays a yes man. Natalie Moorhead and Jane Winton have bits as Miljan's dates.

This would be of interest mainly to fans of early sound film. If Avatar is your thing, you probably would not be interested in this one.

The film is actually a sequel of sorts to the 1928 part talkie, "Show Girl, also starring Alice White as Dixie Dugan. Even though Alice had done six films since that one, it was decided to move her story to Hollywood two years later. I have no idea if the original Show Girl still exists, although people on this site are apparently rating it.

The big attractions here are the exhibition of several things you could only see in 1929-1930 motion pictures, in addition to several ironies. The first irony is that Vitaphone is being prominently displayed as the technology of sound film when, by this time, even Warner Brothers knew it was time to move to sound on film rather than sound on disc, which was so limiting in how and where films could be shot. Another irony is that Blanche Sweet is pretty much playing herself here as Donny Harris, the faded star who considers a supporting role to Alice White's Dixie Dugan in "Rainbow Girl" to be her last chance. In real life, 1930 was Blanche Sweet's last year in films. However, Ms. Sweet did get a somewhat happy ending with a long time stage career and a long marriage to another star of the stage, Raymond Hackett, that only ended with his death.

Also of interest is the big bizarre musical number "I've Got My Eye on You" in which Alice White and her accompanying chorus emerge from and disappear into a large clown-like head. During this number you get a good look at the way a Vitaphoned film was shot with three cross-cutting camera booths set up, along with a look at the Vitaphone technicians inside supervising the making of the sound discs.

Finally, note the movie premiere of "Rainbow Girl" shown at the end of the film. Several Warner Brothers stars of note appear at the microphone including Al Jolson, Loretta Young, and Noah Beery. Notice that a very young Noah Beery Jr. (Rockford Files) accompanies his father. Some think that this scene was the basis for the Hollywood premiere scene at the beginning of "Singin in the Rain".

The story is pedestrian, and actually the title says it all, but it is cute and appealing in the way that many of First National's early sound films were. You can definitely see a difference in First National's and Warner Brothers' early sound films even though by this time they had been one company for a year. Warner's early sound films seemed to go for a goofy over-the-top style in 1929 and 1930, while First National seemed to "look for the silver lining" with a feel good flavor.

Highly recommended for those interested in the Dawn of Sound.

"Show Girl in Hollywood," from a novel by satirist J.P. McEvoy, follows the titular showgirl, Dixie Dugan (Alice White), from understudy in a Broadway flop ("Rainbow Girl") to lead in the Hollywood movie version. John Miljan is effective as the unscrupulous film director who has seen the flop several times (in order to steal its plot) and invites Dugan to his studio where he tries but fails to put the make on her. Blanche Sweet makes a memorable appearance as an older star, forgotten by age 32, who befriends Dixie. In the middle of a conversation about the fleeting nature of fame, she breaks – or, more accurately, segues – into song ("For Every Smile There's a Tear in Hollywood"). There is something brazen and bizarre about this moment when the film suddenly switches gears and Sweet half sings and half speaks the mournful lyric.

Later, we get to see a full scale production number ("I've Got My Eye on You") not only from the usual angles but also from the perspective of the camera operators (behind glass screens to drown the whirring camera motors), the sound recordists, the live orchestra and even the performers themselves, with the arc lights and footlights glaring into their/our faces. Before the finale, we are treated to the arrival of top Hollywood stars to the premiere of the fictional film within a film: Al Jolson and Ruby Keeler and a 17-year-old Loretta Young among them. The finale itself, the rousing and catchy "Hang on to a Rainbow," was shot in Technicolor, to judge by the unusually fuzzy quality of the surviving black-and-white version of the scene. It must have been quite something, with rows of chorus members in elaborate feathery costumes which must have been multicolored and the star appearing at the last moments in a sensational spiked headdress festooned with five-pointed stars.

Alice White is saucy and photogenic and moves very well (according to IMDb her singing is dubbed) but has a tongue-in-cheek way of speaking which occasionally works but is just as often inappropriate to the situation. The witlessness of much of the dialogue also hampers her, as she is called upon to deliver too many thudding lines. In almost every scene she wears a cloche hat from the front of which a curlicue of her blonde hair protrudes. A bit much!