The Wild Party (1929)

User Rating:

6.1/10   

Director:

Dorothy Arzner

Writers:

Samuel Hopkins Adams (story)
E. Lloyd Sheldon (adaptation)

Release Date:

6 April 1929 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama

Tagline:

The life of the party and HOW!

Plot:

Wild girls at a college pay more attention to parties than their classes. But when one party girl, Stella Ames...

Plot Keywords:

Professor | Anthropology | Roadhouse | Self Sacrifice | College Life

Cast

Clara Bow	...	Stella Ames
Fredric March	...	James 'Gil' Gilmore
Marceline Day	...	Faith Morgan
Shirley O'Hara	...	Helen Owens
Adrienne Dore	...	Babs (as Adrienne Doré)
Joyce Compton	...	Eva 'Evie' Tutt
Jack Oakie	...	Al
Jack Luden	...	George
Phillips Holmes	...	Phil

Runtime:

77 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.20 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric System)

Certification:

USA:Approved

Filming Locations:

Paramount Studios - 5555 Melrose Avenue, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Paramount Pictures

Trivia:

One of the earliest of over 700 Paramount Productions, filmed between 1929 and 1949, which were sold to MCA/Universal in 1958 for television distribution, and have been owned and controlled by MCA ever since.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Why Be Good? Sexuality & Censorship in Early Cinema (2007)

Soundtrack:

My Wild Party Girl

A sign of "Its" time

The first thing I had to wonder, just prior to watching "The Wild Party" was whether or not it was based on the novelette I'd ripped through, just a month or so ago: The Wild Party by Joseph Mancuso March--originally published in 1928. Discovering that this was a very different story was my only disappointment.

It often seems that no small number of people, out there, don't want to give the early days of Hollywood the credit it so richly deserves. And that's sad; as sad as, say, the somewhat dark story behind "It" Girl, Clara Bow--whose mother considered slitting the girl's throat when Clara declared her she wanted to be an actress.

(Fortunately that didn't happen. If it had, film fans of today might not have an inkling of a clue that, even way back then--in the days that would become infamously known as "The Great Depression"--girls just wanted to have fun.)

Clara Bow plays her role of mischievous college girl, Stella Ames, to-the-hilt. And a young, debonaire Frederic March as straight-laced college professor Gilmore is her perfect counterpart.

The way the two begin seeing eye-to-eye may be said to be expected, but not totally predictable--because the antics of Stella Ames and her sorority sisters provide just the right element of subplot. If there was any one flaw in this gem, it was that the sound quality was often so scratchy, I was unsure, now and again, what one actor or another had said.

Still, this in no way detracts from the film's overall quality. (One must taken into account, after all, that 1929 was the infancy of the "talkie" era). Come to think of it, I can

only imagine what a "wild party" '29 must've been for many Hollywood executives and stars alike--the huge stock market crash aside!