Hollywood Party

Hollywood Party (1934)

wade in chuckles up to your chin!...listen to music you'll be hummin' in the bathtub for months!...clap your eyes on the grandest gals ever! ...and see stars so thick you'll have to comb 'em outa your hair!

Jimmy Durante is jungle movie star Schnarzan the Conqueror, but the public is tiring of his fake lions. When Baron Munchausen comes to town with real man-eating lions, Durante throws him a big Hollywood star-studded party so that he might use the lions in his next movie. But, his film rival sneaks into the party to buy the lions before Durante.

Date of release
1934-05-24
TMDB
5.6 / 10 (16)
Runtime
1h 8m
Genres
Comedy, Music
Director
Richard Boleslawski, Allan Dwan, Edmund Goulding, Russell Mack, Charles Reisner, Roy Rowland, George Stevens, Sam Wood

Casting

Interesting facts

Hollywood Party is a 1934 American pre-Code musical film produced and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). It stars Laurel and Hardy, Jimmy Durante, Lupe Vélez, Jack Pearl, Charles Butterworth, Polly Moran, and The Three Stooges. Walt Disney Productions produced a Technicolor animated segment titled The Hot Choc-late Soldiers, with music by Nacio Herb Brown and lyrics by Arthur Freed; it introduces Mickey Mouse, who is voiced by an uncredited Walt Disney and credited alongside the main cast.

Production

Hollywood Party was originally intended as an all-star attraction, like the studio's successful The Hollywood Revue of 1929 produced by Harry Rapf. During production, the movie was known as The Hollywood Revue of 1933 and Star Spangled Banquet. Rapf's 1933 revue would star Jean Harlow, Joan Crawford, Marie Dressler, and Lee Tracy, supported by studio comedians Jimmy Durante, Lupe Vélez, Charles Butterworth, and Jack Pearl.

Production proceeded on a haphazard course, with many hands taking turns at the helm. It has been asserted that Richard Boleslavski directed much of the film, with various scenes directed by Allan Dwan, Edmund Goulding, Russell Mack, Roy Rowland, Sam Wood, and finally Charles Reisner. George Stevens directed the Laurel and Hardy sequence and Dave Gould directed the "Feelin' High" dance number with choreography by Georgie Hale.

The movie had many sequences cut or reshot after several references proved too esoteric for international audiences. A sequence that had featured Thelma Todd (impersonating Mae West), Lupe Vélez, Jimmy Durante, and ZaSu Pitts playing bridge was deleted after it was lost on British viewers not yet familiar with the game. Additional episodes that featured actors Herman Bing, Johnny Weissmuller, Jackie Cooper, and Max Baer were cut from the movie.

In 1933, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contracted Walt Disney Productions to create a "'Silly Symphony' type" sequence for the film (then called Hollywood Revue). In the contract, MGM stipulated that they wanted a sequence that was 400 feet in length and that they would pay Disney $64,000 ($80,000 if it was in Technicolor) in four installments, a substantial improvement from Disney's then distributor United Artists' payments.

One of the segment's original concepts was to focus on movie-star caricatures, which was dropped in favor of the song "Hot Choc-late Soldiers", which was written by MGM songwriters Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed for the short. Despite the earlier contract, the soundtrack was recorded at Disney's studio. Animation for the film was overseen by Ben Sharpsteen, who guided a group of young artists that included Cy Young and Ugo D'Orsi.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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