Hollywood Hotel (1937)

[moira finnie]

Hollywood Hotel (1937-Busby Berkeley) may have been one of the least well known musicals shown last month on TCM in celebration of Johnny Mercer's musical career. It is currently being shown on TCM On Demand on Time Warner Digital Cable as well. The movie features several songs that Mercer wrote with Richard Whiting, but there are several other musicians' work on hand too. A few of these are particularly great swing numbers.

I wasn't quite prepared for this movie. For me, it was one of the more bizarre movies from that era, with a few phenomenal musical sequences laced together by mostly awful singing by Dick Powell. Except for a well staged "Sing, You Son of a Gun" set in a drive-in restaurant, Dick's singing seems terribly old hat in this movie. As an actor I like his hard-boiled cynical stage much more than his singing years. Btw, Ronald Reagan appears as what he really was at this stage, a radio announcer. Reagan seems really peeved in his one scene with Powell, who has arrived at a movie premiere as arm candy for a star and doesn't seem to realize that "he's nobody" as someone murmurs.

Ronnie and Dick in Hollywood Hotel

Louella Parsons, who looks as though she is wearing the world's most powerful corset is in several scenes and she even has a funny line or two, though it is clear that acting is not second nature to her. Lola Lane appears as a conceited star who thinks she's an artist.

Louella Parsons, looking properly air-brushed and ready for her close up.

Lola Lane's character makes the studio head (Grant Mitchell) shake in his boots with fear and resentment. Lola is saddled with an addle-brained sister (played annoyingly by Mabel Todd) who is constantly in danger of upsetting the apple cart of her sister's fame. I suspect that this plot point was an inside joke based on Bette Davis and her sister Bobby who suffered from mental illness throughout her life. Rosemary Lane appears as Lola's stand in who becomes involved with Powell. She's okay but kind of blah and her sharp little features seem to have been photographed harshly at times--though not as harshly as Glenda Farrell, who appears as Lola's personal assistant. Alan Mowbray is on hand as a pompous ham to be made fun of in a part of the story that parodies the popularity of southern stories after the smash success of Gone With the Wind.

Below: Johnny Scat Davis, who hasn't heard that movies have microphones and he doesn't need to yell.



The film seemed to begin with what might have been a finale, since it was a high point of the movie. The knockout version of "Hooray for Hollywood" featuring Benny Goodman's band (look for Gene Krupa on the drums here and Frances Langford warbling away too). This number had one of the most over-the-top singers I've ever seen, Johnnie "Scat" Davis wailing out that anthem. Davis was also a trumpeter, and appeared in about a dozen movies, including Brother Rat (1938) and Knickerbocker Holiday (1942). He had a band of his own later and hired legendary drummer Buddy Rich, among others. He has to be seen to be believed:
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There was also a great sequence when Benny Goodman's Band did "Sing, Sing Sing!" featuring Krupa and Harry James I bet you can't keep your toes from tapping during this one.
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In this number, you can see Teddy Wilson on piano, Krupa on drums and Lionel Hampton on the xylophone in "I Got A Heartful Of Music".The fact that Goodman on the clarinet and his musicians are photographed so near Lionel Hampton & Teddy Wilson, over in the corner was a nice bit of staging which we tend to take for granted today--but it was radical for the '30s, given unwritten racial rules--since they are so near the bandleader himself.
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The movie got stranger as it went along with a very incidental story centering around boy singer Dick Powell's attempts to break into the movies. The story is short on chorus lines, and those bizarre geometric patterns that Berkeley used in his best known movies, except near the end of the movie, when a sequence totally out of sync with the rest of the proceedings is set in something called the Orchid Room at the fictional Hollywood Hotel. It looks as though a Georgia O'Keefe painting exploded in there. An orchestra led by Raymond Paige and his orchestra (who are these guys?) plays the Russian folk song "Ochi Tchornya" (Dark Eyes). Why, I don't know.
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I still don't know if this could possibly be described as a good movie, though it has its fascinations. I hope you'll add your own thoughts and opinions.

[jdb1]

You know, Moira, hearing Scat Davis' epicene voice singing "Hooray for Hollywood" made me think of a whole lotta Warner Bros. cartoons of the 30s which featured some woodland creature or other singing just like that. Wonder if it was the high-treble Davis singing for them, or some female voice actress just pretending to be him. If you took an old 78 rpm recording of, say, Sophie Tucker, and played it at 120 rpm, it would sound like Scat Davis.

You must admit, it's a very weird voice to hear coming out of a grown man. For years and years I assumed it was a woman singing. Imagine my surprise the first time I saw that sequence of the movie.

(Hmmm, now I'm thinking of "Puberty Love" from Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.)

[JackFavell]

I thought it was possibly the oddest movie I have ever seen, and maybe the worst.

Some of the numbers are very pleasing, like the drive-in one you mentioned, and the super Sing Sing Sing. The best part was watching the quartet doing their wonderful number, my mouth just hung to the floor thinking how radical it was, first for Benny Goodman to integrate his band this way, and then for them to appear in a movie musical. But then you end up with some very messed up stuff too. I wish they had been in a better movie.

All in all, HH made me feel like I was on drugs, but I wasn't.

[moira finnie]

You must admit, it's a very weird voice to hear coming out of a grown man. For years and years I assumed it was a woman singing. Imagine my surprise the first time I saw that sequence of the movie.

Yeah, he does sound like a woman who had a bad sore throat but insisted on singing anyway.

I thought it was possibly the oddest movie I have ever seen, and maybe the worst.

Some of the numbers are very pleasing, like the drive-in one you mentioned, and the super Sing Sing Sing. The best part was watching the quartet doing their wonderful number, my mouth just hung to the floor thinking how radical it was, first for Benny Goodman to integrate his band this way, and then for them to appear in a movie musical. But then you end up with some very messed up stuff too. I wish they had been in a better movie.

All in all, HH made me feel like I was on drugs, but I wasn't.

I don't think it was you on drugs, but this movie made me think that they had acid in LA long before the rest of the world. I think I'm going to have to read more about this strange movie. I suspect that this may have been made at a time of great stress in Berkeley's life and career.

Btw, was anyone else fascinating by the scene set in the empty Hollywood Bowl? That was one of the real world settings that actually seemed to work, though the shouting of the Rosemary Lane and Dick Powell was annoying. I was dying to see more of that then relatively new landmark. Lane and Powell were not as annoying as the alleged comic actors Hugh Herbert and Ted Healy each time they appeared, but a bit irritating. I always wonder if Herbert and Healy had some kind of dirt on the studio heads. They appeared in so many movies, and ruined whatever scene they were in. Maybe their vaudevillian cheapness made filmmakers nostalgic for the type of comedy that was "fresh"--well, maybe not fresh, but newer--when they were young?

[JackFavell]

I don't think it was you on drugs, but this movie made me think that they had acid in LA long before the rest of the world. I think I'm going to have to read more about this strange movie. I suspect that this may have been made at a time of great stress in Berkeley's life and career.

I wonder if this was after the terrible accident Berkeley had while driving drunk, and if he had a doctor who prescribed LSD for some reason? Because that was the distinct impression I got too, Moira.

I like Dick Powell. Compared to the other boy singers,for instance the awful Kenny Baker, he really is something special. The fact that he was able to transform his career three times over is really amazing. Maybe he was annoying, but not as much as Ted Healy. Hugh Herbert is not my cuppa tea, but I do see how he might have pleased people back in the day.

[jdb1]

Lane and Powell were not as annoying as the alleged comic actors Hugh Herbert and Ted Healy each time they appeared, but a bit irritating. I always wonder if Herbert and Healy had some kind of dirt on the studio heads. They appeared in so many movies, and ruined whatever scene they were in. Maybe their vaudevillian cheapness made filmmakers nostalgic for the type of comedy that was "fresh"--well, maybe not fresh, but newer--when they were young?

Moira, I think the vaudeville connection is the key. Since both Herbert and Healy were popular vaudeville performers who were willing to be in movies, they were probably intended to draw in those vaudeville-loving holdouts who still had their doubts about going to see a movie. Same reason they now stick rappers and American Idol runners-up into other genres. They think it will make audiences see the other genres as cool.

Or, maybe some studio head got a kick out of Herbert and Healy, and wanted his favorites in every movie he made. De gustibus, and all that.

Personally, I can take Herbert in small doses, but Healy makes me feel absolutely murderous. Funny as a crutch, as they used to say. It's no wonder his Stooges made a break for it.

[moira finnie]

Moira, I think the vaudeville connection is the key. Since both Herbert and Healy were popular vaudeville performers who were willing to be in movies, they were probably intended to draw in those vaudeville-loving holdouts who still had their doubts about going to see a movie. Same reason they now stick rappers and American Idol runners-up into other genres. They think it will make audiences see the other genres as cool.

Or, maybe some studio head got a kick out of Herbert and Healy, and wanted his favorites in every movie he made. De gustibus, and all that.

Personally, I can take Herbert in small doses, but Healy makes me feel absolutely murderous. Funny as a crutch, as they used to say. It's no wonder his Stooges made a break for it.

I think you described Ted Healy's awfulness quite well. Don't you just hate it when he shows up in Mad Love and San Francisco? Maybe his bits in these movies were intended to give people a few moments to get popcorn or visit the lavatory.

[moira finnie]

I wonder if this was after the terrible accident Berkeley had while driving drunk, and if he had a doctor who prescribed LSD for some reason? Because that was the distinct impression I got too, Moira.

I like Dick Powell. Compared to the other boy singers,for instance the awful Kenny Baker, he really is something special. The fact that he was able to transform his career three times over is really amazing. Maybe he was annoying, but not as much as Ted Healy. Hugh Herbert is not my cuppa tea, but I do see how he might have pleased people back in the day.

Kenny Baker always seemed to have been hired primarily because of his similarity to Powell. He was pretty icky, especially in those vehicles like The Goldwyn Follies that were supposed to make him a star.

That triple manslaughter trial in which the drunken director Busby Berkeley had killed three people was in the Fall of 1935. The go-to guy, attorney Jerry Giesler got him off by casting aspersions on the abilities of the other (dead) driver and blaming faulty tires for the crack-up. He also had Berkeley brought into court on a stretcher to gain the court's sympathy (see below). Onward and upward with justice for all. While I realize that Berkeley went on to work in many more films, I don't think that it was ever quite the same for him after this tragedy.

[knitwit45]

The only film I think I've seen of Kenny Baker's is The Harvey Girls, and I quite liked him in that one. What else was he in?

[JackFavell]

He was in the previously mentioned Goldwyn Follies, and The Marx Bros. At the Circus, in which I find him particularly annoying. It may be that I just cannot abide love interest in Marx movies, they take away too much time from the boys.

He also had quite a good radio career, I believe.

Now that you mention it, he isn't bad in The Harvey Girls.

[moira finnie]

I thought Baker was at his least offensive in The Harvey Girls too. He probably needed some decent guidance on screen and finally got it at MGM. Too bad it was too late for his career as a boy singer.