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.
![Image](http://pic100.picturetrail.com/VOL712/12803063/22779320/379585914.jpg)
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.
![Image](http://pic100.picturetrail.com/VOL712/12803063/22779320/379586164.jpg)
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.
![Image](http://pic100.picturetrail.com/VOL712/12803063/22779320/379586165.jpg)
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:
[youtube][/youtube]
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.
[youtube][/youtube]
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.
[youtube][/youtube]
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.
[youtube][/youtube]
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.