LGM Film Club, Part 432: What Price Hollywood?

In one way, George Cukor’s 1932’s What Price Hollywood? is a ridiculous film that reinforced stereotypes of Hollywood. Constance Bennett stars as a waitress who gets discovered in a diner by a very drunk but famous director played by Lowell Sherman. He remembers nothing about their rather innocent night but gives her the break. After a rough start, she not only becomes an actress but the biggest star in America. “America’s Pal,” she is known as. She becomes best friends with our drunken director, as well as the studio producer played by Gregory Ratoff, who was born in Russia so is perfect as the expat director. She becomes huge, falls in love, the marriage goes bad, the press that loved her later turns on her with a vengeance, etc. It’s all very much how someone who read too many movie magazines would think about the pictures.

Variety’s review read this way: “It’s a fan magazine-ish interpretation of Hollywood plus a couple of twists invariably known as the working girls’ delight. … Cukor tells it interestingly. Not so much for show people, perhaps, but the peasantry will like it as amusement even if it fails to fully convince them, too. Story has its exaggerations, but they can sneak under the line as theatrical license.”

In another way, the film is kind of a brilliant early talkie about real human relationships. Bennett really is best friends with the Sherman and Ratoff characters. She demonstrates true loyalty to them and they to her. The drunken director is in fact based on Tom Forman, the silent director who drank himself out of the movies and shot himself in 1926. Sherman is fantastic here. The film uses some pretty interesting techniques when Sherman goes really bad, which you often didn’t see in the usually flatly filmed early talkies. It’s considered “pre-code” but there’s no real sex in it. No one is trying to break any taboos. It’s a serious film about loyalty, alcoholism, divorce, and the media set in Hollywood.

Which way I felt about this film depended on the minute. Mostly, it’s good and worth watching though, even if parts really are dumb. Unfortunately, there’s also more than a bit of Black maids and butlers in it and while their portrayals are not the worst stereotypes one can see in 1930s Hollywood, it isn’t great. But there’s no way to watch these films without dealing with it in some way. Can understand people just not watching the films of this era for this reason, though that’s not a choice I am going to make.

Here’s a scene. Quite a few are on YouTube, though not the entire movie.