Hollywood Cavalcade (1939)

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Hollywood Cavalcade is a 1939 American comedy-drama film featuring Alice Faye as a young performer making her way in the early days of Hollywood, from slapstick silent pictures through the transition from silent to sound.

Production

In the wake of Alice Faye's 1938 success Alexander's Ragtime Band, which took a nostalgic look at the musical scene of the 1910s, screenwriter Lou Breslow approached studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck with an idea to do another period piece, this time in Technicolor, concerning the early days of silent movies. The film was directed by Irving Cummings, with comedy sequences directed by Mal St. Clair.

St. Clair's friend and mentor Buster Keaton staged some of the gags, and a host of silent-era comedians re-created slapstick sight gags. The romance in the storyline was based on the real-life relationship between pioneer producer Mack Sennett (he also served as technical advisor) and his first star, Mabel Normand.

Atypical for Faye's 20th Century-Fox output, Hollywood Cavalcade has no musical numbers, and the tone is more dramatic than comic. (The working title was Falling Stars.) The film presents a fictionalized look at silent-era performers and their productions, and ends just after the silent-film industry converts to sound films.

St. Clair and Zanuck had collaborated on a number of projects in the silent era, among these the Rin Tin Tin films for Warner Bros. and Universal studio's boxing-themed Leather Pushers series. The Film Booking Offices of America series starring Alberta Vaughn were also re-created in Hollywood Cavalcade. This 1925 series, directed by St. Clair, is now thought to be lost. Film historian Ruth Anne Dwyer reports that St.

Dwyer observes that the St. Clair's silent sequences in Hollywood Cavalcade appear as inflated recollections of the films of that era, rather than precise facsimiles:

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