Hollywood Party (1937)

Can someone explain why MGM would give this promotional short for The Good Earth color treatment and yet the cinema classic they do in black and white? I suppose there's some rationale for it, but I can't think of any.Elissa Landi and Charley Chase, he in Oriental garb as Charley Chan Chase host a party which has a few musical acts and some big star walk ons like Clark Gable, Joan Bennett, Joe E. Brown and Freddie Bartholomew. The musical highlight is Joe Morrison who was the love interest in the W.C. Fields classic The Old Fashioned Way singing South Sea Island Magic.Throughout it all Leon Errol does his drunk act as he keeps trying to mix the perfect cocktail. He did much the same thing in We're Not Dressing.Entertaining, but nothing special. Don't confuse this with the feature film Hollywood Party.

It seems to be unanimous that this is a really bad short. And you know for something to be really bad that it has to have no bad cinema factor silliness present. Alas, that is what we have here. The only thing remotely interesting is a black singing troupe that makes noises like out of Fat Albert. As far as the hula girls being naked as another reviewer posted, huh? They are clothed from the neck down, I was actually sticking around to watch that, what a let down. I had visions of Honolulu Baby from Sons Of The Desert (Charlie Chase was in that night club watching too!). But no, those women were definitely fully clothed. My only other comment is this, when ever you see a short subject jam packed with stars, doesn't it always suck if it's from the 1930's? I mean it's like they all say, hell I can't be blamed for this sucking because I'm only in it for 20 seconds, I guess. If you are looking for a half way decent Technicolor short, try the 1930's The Devil's Cabaret, it's 2 strip Technicolor but close enough to satisfy your curiosity of an early color film and it's short, has nearly naked women dancing, and the Devil. Both of these films play on Turner Classic Movies in the USA. Hollywood Party I give a 3 and thats probably too generous.

Hollywood Party (1937) * (out of 4) One hopes a real Hollywood party wasn't as boring as this mess of a short from MGM. The main reason to tune in is the three-strip Technicolor, which was just starting out. In the film Charley Chase and Elissa Landi are introducing various music acts and a few Hollywood A-listers with it all set to a Chinese theme. The Chinese theme also means Chase slanting his eyes, wearing some funny facial hair and throwing around rather stereotypical slang. The movie, no matter how you look at it, is a real embarrassment and one can't help but feel bad for Chase, a veteran of over 250 films, for having to appear in it as MGM certainly didn't do him any favors. The biggest problem is that the film never knows what it wants to be. It starts off appearing to just want to make fun of Chinese customs. It then turns into a music and features some very bad songs. It then tries to be a fashion show, which is fails at miserably even though we see some nearly naked women, which makes one wonder how this got passed by the Hayes Office. Everything this film tries it fails at and the cameos by Joe E. Brown, Anna May Wong, Freddie Bartholomew, Joan Bennett and Clark Gable can't help.

Apart from its historic value as an early example of Technicolor, this is a truly dreadful film. In fact, even the Technicolor itself was just awful--with way over-saturated colors that were very, very hard on the eyes--particularly the greens and pinks.As for the plot, there isn't much of one. Charley Chase and some lady are the emcees at some bizarre beach party where they and some not especially talented performers act Chinese--or at least act like a dreadful stereotype of Chinese circa 1937. Chase, who could be a funny man, was given absolutely NOTHING to do but make slant-eyed faces at the camera and speak in an awful Chinese-like accent.In addition to the dreadful acts and narration, there are some very pointless cameos by Clark Gable, Joe E. Brown and others. All the appearances really amount to are exceptionally short clips of only a couple seconds that have no relationship to the rest of the film.Dumb, pointless and wretched--this is a terrible short that only has some tiny historical value and is as entertaining as watching paint dry. Sadly, while this sappy Hollywoodized version of China was presented, the real plight of the Chinese (who had been invaded and decimated by the Japanese during the 1930s) was never mentioned--they all were portrayed more like "happy children".