MOVIE REVIEW: GOING HOLLYWOOD

Many people love films about Hollywood like Sunset Boulevard (1950) and Singin In The Rain (1952) and rightfully so. However, there are some hidden film gems about Hollywood that I really love to watch. One such film is a 1933 offering from MGM - Going Hollywood.

Going Hollywood was primarily a starring vehicle for rising crooner Bing Crosby. Bing had become a superstar a year earlier with a popular radio show and his first feature film for Paramount Studios, The Big Broadcast (1932). However, the studio was still unsure what to do with their instantly hot product. Was Bing a singer who acted or an actor that could sing? Paramount loaned Bing to MGM, which is something they would really not do much in the future. This film would be Bing's first film for MGM studios, which at the time was the biggest film studio in the world. Bing would not make another film at MGM for 20 years and the only other movies he made for the studio would be: High Society (1956), Man On Fire (1957), and That's Entertainment(1974).

Back to Going Hollywood, the film was also a vehicle for actress Marion Davies. Despite a lifelong relationship with paper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, Davies was a star who was becoming more famous for her relationship with Hearst than for her movies. This film did little for Davies' career, but she did look beautiful in the film. Rounding out the cast were great supporting stars as Stuart Erwin, Fifi D'Orsay, Ned Sparks, and Patsy Kelly.

The plot of the movie has Bing basically playing Bing Crosby. He is a crooner going to Hollywood for his first starring role. Fifi D'Orsay is his girlfriend and uptight French leading lady. When I first saw the movie as a teenager I really hated her, but that is a sign of a good actress. Her role in the film was to make you hate her. Marion Davies, basically plays a stalker. She plays a school teacher at an uptight private girl's school who dreams of a relationship with the crooner. When she quits the school, she hitches a train to Hollywood to meet Crosby. She gets a small role in the film Bing is working on with D'Orsay, and as the relationship between Bing and Fifi disintegrates, the career and love life of Marion Davies looks up as she makes Bing realize that she is the woman of his dreams.

Despite a great opening in Grand Central Station, not much of the "real" Hollywood is used, which is unfortunate. The music is written by the great Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed, and the film shows the debut of the popular torch song "Temptation". Other musical highlights include Bing singing "Beautiful Girl" to a young Sterling Holloway (of Winnie The Pooh fame), the bizarre Busby Berkeley-like number "We'll Make Hay While The Sun Shines", and the underrated "Our Big Love Scene". Bing and Marion Davies both looked great in the movie, and the film holds up well 72 years after it was made.

The Hollywood plot of stars going to Hollywood for fame and fortune is a plot line that is still used to do this day. Also the storyline about a failing production, an out of touch director (Ned Sparks), a naive producer (Stuart Erwin), and an uptight prima donna (Fifi D'Orsay) is again something that is a part of modern Hollywood as well as this vintage 1933 Hollywood. The movie is about Hollywood, but like in many movies, the personality of Bing Crosby overshadows the whole film...

MY RATING: 10 OUT OF 10

BING IN HOLLYWOOD: THE 1930s

Many movie goers these days consider the movie musical to be nothing more than fluff and fantasy. Most people in real life do not break out in song. That is true, but for moviegoers of the 1930s and 1940s the movie musical was an escape. It was an escape from the pain of poverty during the Great Depression, and it was an escape from the horrors of World War II. Of all the stars during that era, it was Bing Crosby that introduced the most standards. He was the voice of the times.

Bing started out as a singer with the Rhythm Boys in Paul Whiteman’s Orchestra, and then he moved on to making a series of film shorts for Mack Sennett. Those shorts were corny and really were only used to spotlight Bing’s singing, but it got him more popular exposure. Not only did he become a star on radio, but he was also signed to a long term contract with Paramount Studios. He would remain at the studio for almost 25 years.

The first movie Bing made for the studio was The Big Broadcast in 1932. The film was basically a spotlight of the popular radio stars of the day with a light plotline in between the songs. Crosby got to introduce some great songs like “Dinah”, “Please”, and the underrated torch song “Here Lies Love”. Bing basically played himself, and he did not really stretch his acting chops in this film. My favorite role in the movie was Bing’s friend, played by comedian Stuart Erwin. The movie catapulted Bing to movie stardom, and he followed it up with a more forgettable movie – 1933’s College Humor. The film was not bad, but even a young 30 year old Bing could not pass for a college student. He did get to sing the great song “Learn To Croon”, which became Bing’s unofficial anthem in those early years. More flimsy films followed in the 1930s, but he introduced a great standard in each of them. In She Loves Me Not (1934), Bing introduced “Love In Bloom”, in Here In My Heart (1935), Bing sang “June In January”, and in Two For Tonight (1935) Bing introduced “Without A Word Of Warning”.

Going back to Bing’s third movie in 1933, he was loaned to MGM Studios for the splashy musical Going Hollywood. It would be one of the best of the earlier Bing films. He was reunited with Stuart Erwin, his love interest was the older Marion Davies, and he got to sing some wonderful Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed tunes like: “Temptation”, “Our Big Love Scene”, and “Beautiful Girl”. Bing would not return to the studio until 1956, and it was the first of only four movies Bing made for the studio. With Bing Crosby being such a big and rising star, I am really surprised Paramount Studios loaned him out in the 1930s as much as they did.

The movie roles remained forgettable until Bing was loaned out again to Columbia Studios in 1936. For the movie Pennies From Heaven, Bing had his most dramatic role yet as an ex-convict who “adopted” a young child of another convict. It was still not Citizen Kane, but Bing had a lot more to do in this movie than just sing and play a crooner. He also introduced the title song, and a few other great songs like “So Do I”, and “Let’s Call A Heart A Heart”. When Bing went back to Paramount though, he went back to the flimsy musicals, which were quite popular with movie audiences.

Fast forwarding to 1939, Bing made a favorite movie of mine to end the decade. He played real life songwriter and kid show producer Gus Edwards in the movie “biography” The Star Maker. Bing sang some vintage songs, even vintage for 1939, like “School Days” and “I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now”, while he got to sing the new song “Still The Bluebirds Sing”. The film was another example that Bing was feeling more sure of himself as an actor and could play roles other than a carefree crooner. By making movies like Pennies From Heaven and The Star Maker, Bing was paving the way for meatier roles in the 1940s and even roles that would recognized by the Academy Awards. Bing never could have imagined that back when he was making movies playing a 30 year old college co-ed…

GUEST REVIEWER: GOING HOLLYWOOD

Here is the usual interested Bing movie review from the Bing guru Bruce Kogan...

One of Bing fan said that this film was essentially about stalking. I had never thought of it in those terms, but it's true.

Marion Davies is a love starved French teacher at a girl's boarding school who's spare hours are taken up with the radio crooning of Bing Crosby. She follows the object of her affection out to Hollywood and in Hollywood cliché style gets her big break in the movies.

First if you're willing to accept the beautiful Marion Davies with this crowd of old spinsters at the boarding school then the rest of the plot simply follows. Second for Bing Crosby fans one has to remember that this is NOT a Crosby picture. He's the leading man in a Marion Davies film. Everyone is familiar with William Randolph Hearst and the Svengali like influence he had on her career. Marion's making a musical so you go out and buy the hottest singer currently as her leading man. And that, boys and girls, is the story of Bing's first film away from Paramount.

You also hire a topflight director in Raoul Walsh to keep things at a brisk pace. And you give Marion a good supporting cast that includes Fifi D'Orsay, Ned Sparks, Stu Erwin, and Patsy Kelly. Mix 'em together and you got Going Hollywood.

It's not a bad mix. Crosby had a lot of songs in this film. The big hit was Temptation, but there were other good ones from Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed. One thing however, since this was not Paramount and MGM was known for the great production numbers in their films, Bing got some great numbers. I'm surprised frankly that Hearst allowed Crosby a huge number like the title tune, set in Grand Central Station, without Davies in it. Davies does join him in a dream sequence where she sings a couple of lines of We'll Make Hay While The Sun Shines with Marion and Bing dressed as a pair of Grand Wood rustics. Another big production number that Paramount would never spend the money for.

Davies had good if limited talents. Hearst however could only see her as a pure heroine. Since he discovered her in the Ziegfeld Follies, Davies's dancing should be no surprise. It's at least as good as Ruby Keeler's. She had a good gift for mimicry, her imitation of Fifi D'Orsay is a key point in the plot. One thing that would be considered in god-awful taste now is her donning black-face to get on Bing's movie set and imitating the dialect.

It's funny though. Think about pictures like Play Misty For Me and The Fan made two generations later. Stalking was looked on entirely differently back in those more innocent days...

BRUCE'S RATING: 7 OUT OF 10
MY RATING: 9 OUT OF 10

PHOTOS OF THE DAY: BING AND HIS LEADING LADIES

Bing Crosby had a clause in his contract that he would have approval over his leading ladies. Luckily he had a good eye for beauty because he surrounded himself with some of the most beautiful and talented women that were around during Hollywood's golden age - as these classic pictures clearly show...

CAROLE LOMBARD (1909-1942)

ANN BLYTH (BORN 1928)

SHIRLEY ROSS (1913-1975)

MARION DAVIES (1897-1961)

MIRIAM HOPKINS (1902-1972)

DEBBIE REYNOLDS (BORN 1932)