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IMDb > What Price Hollywood? (1932)

What Price Hollywood? (1932) More at IMDbPro »

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Overview

User Rating:
8.0/10   616 votes
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Up 8% in popularity this week. See rank & trends on IMDbPro.
Director:
George Cukor
Writers:
Gene Fowler (writer) and
Rowland Brown (writer) ...
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Contact:
View company contact information for What Price Hollywood? on IMDbPro.
Release Date:
24 June 1932 (USA) more
Genre:
Drama more
Plot:
The career of a waitress takes off when she meets an amiable drunken Hollywood producer. full summary | add synopsis
Awards:
Nominated for Oscar. more
User Comments:
Powerful look at Hollywood in the early years more

Cast

  (Complete credited cast)

Constance Bennett ... Mary Evans
Lowell Sherman ... Maximillan 'Max' Carey
Neil Hamilton ... Lonny Borden
Gregory Ratoff ... Julius Saxe
Brooks Benedict ... Muto, Diner Who Will Put Mary in Pictures
Louise Beavers ... Bonita, Mary's Maid
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
George Reed ... Undetermined Role (scenes deleted)
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Additional Details

Also Known As:
Hollywood Madness (USA) (working title)
Hollywood Merry-Go-Round (USA) (working title)
The Truth About Hollywood (USA) (working title)
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Runtime:
88 min
Country:
USA
Language:
English
Aspect Ratio:
1.37 : 1 more
Sound Mix:
Mono (RCA Photophone System)
Certification:
USA:Approved

Fun Stuff

Trivia:
Max Carey was modelled after Lowell Sherman himself, who was known to be an alcoholic, as well as silent film director Marshall Neilan and actor John Barrymore (who was Sherman's brother-in-law at the time). more
Quotes:
[first lines]
[Mary Evans is admiring a magazine photo of Clark Gable]
Mary Evans: Hmmmm. Oh, boy!
[Mary places the magazine photo against her face and pretends Gable is her lover. She speaks in an exaggerated voice]
Mary Evans: Daaahling, how I love you my daaahling, I love you I do.
[she puts the magazine down and returns to her normal voice]
Mary Evans: It's getting late and I must scram.
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Movie Connections:
Featured in Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003) more
Soundtrack:
The Wedding March more

FAQ

This FAQ is empty. Add the first question.
10 out of 10 people found the following comment useful:-
Powerful look at Hollywood in the early years, 30 August 2005
9/10
Author: Karen Green (klg19) from New York City

Another film that deserves a wider viewership and a DVD release, "What Price Hollywood?" looks at the toll Hollywood takes on the people who make it possible.

Adela Rogers St John wrote the Oscar-nominated story of a fading genius of a director, destroyed by drink, who launches one last discovery into the world. Lowell Sherman, himself both a director and an alcoholic, played the sad role that had been modeled, in part, on his own life. (Sherman's brother-in-law, John Barrymore, was also a model, as was the silent film director Marshall Neilan.) The divinely beautiful Constance Bennett plays the ambitious Brown Derby waitress who grabs her chance. Neil Hamilton, paired to great effect with Bennett that same year in "Two Against the World," plays the east-coast polo-playing millionaire who captures Bennett's heart without ever understanding her world.

George Cukor directed the film for RKO, and already the seeds of his directorial genius can be seen. Wonderful montages and double exposures chart Bennett's rise and fall as "America's Pal," and I've rarely seen anything as moving as the way Cukor presented Sherman's death scene, using quick shot editing, exaggerated sound effects and a slow motion shot. As startling as it looks today, one can only imagine the reaction it must have caused over 70 years earlier, before audiences had become accustomed to such techniques.

While the romantic leads are solid--Bennett, as always, especially so--and Gregory Ratoff is mesmerizing as the producer, hats must be doffed to Lowell Sherman for his Oscar-calibre performance. The slide from charming drunk to dissolute bum is presented warts and all, and a late scene in which the director examines his drink-ravaged face in the mirror is powerful indeed. It's hard to imagine what it must have been like for Sherman to play such a role and it was, in fact, one of the last roles he took for the screen, before concentrating on directing--then dying two years later of pneumonia.

When David O. Selznick made "A Star is Born" for United Artists five years later, four years after leaving RKO, the RKO lawyers prepared a point-by-point comparison of the stories, recommending a plagiarism suit--which was never filed. The later movie never credited Adela Rogers St John or any of the source material of "What Price Hollywood?" for its own screenplay, which was written by Dorothy Parker from, supposedly, an idea of Selznick's.

"What Price Hollywood?" is a great source for behind-the-scenes tidbits--Cukor fills the screen with images of on-set action (or inaction), with various crew waiting about as they watch the film-in-a-film action being filmed. This movie works as history and as innovation, but it also works on the most important level, as a well-told story.

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