Watch Hollywood Party For Free
Hollywood Party
Elissa Landi and Charley Chase host an East Asian themed garden tea party in Hollywood. After introducing a few Hollywood luminaries who are attending the party, they present a number of musical and/or dance performances to entertain the crowd. This set of performances also includes ethnic Chinese actress Anna May Wong modeling some fashions she brought back from her first ever trip to China. Through it all, one of the guests, already inebriated, is having a few problems mixing and serving the cocktails he wants.
| Release : | 1937 |
| Rating : | 4.8 |
| Studio : | Louis Lewyn Productions, |
| Crew : | Art Direction, Director of Photography, |
| Cast : | Elissa Landi Charley Chase Joe Morrison Leon Errol Clark Gable |
| Genre : | Comedy Music |
Watch Trailer
Cast List
Related Movies
The LA Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence
After-School Special
Can I Be Your Bratwurst, Please?
Good Eating Habits
La marche gaie
Reviews
Overrated and overhyped
Brilliant and touching
As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.
A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.
But it is in beautiful Technicolor. That's the only bright aspect here.
The producers of THE GOOD EARTH d.v.d. apparently figured they needed something ELSE from 1937 to lighten the mood after the tear-jerking ending of the movie version of Pearl Buck's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. While the color of this short contrasts nicely with the feature's black & white mode, the content is even more grating than the similar, albeit non-color, short from the MGM of 1937, SUN.DAY NIGHT AT THE TROCADERO. Where HO11YWOOD PARTY lacks major cast members of THE WIZARD OF OZ (TROCADERO had the Wiz himself, Frank Morgan), THE GOOD EARTH patriarch is played by Charley Grapewin, who'd become Dorothy Gale's "Uncle Henry" two years later. Furthermore, several snippets of incidental music from EARTH's score would be recycled into the OZ soundtrack. The other extra on the EARTH d.v.d., "Supreme Court of Films Picks the Champions Newsreel," is a poorly-edited mess (with NO title card help) from the Oscar Awards the year EARTH was eligible (a clip of Luise Rainer's brief acceptance speech for her award-winning portrayal of "O-Lan" is included).
When this short was produced in 1937 three strip technicolor had only been in use four years. The color photography is beautiful and vibrant -astonishing really when you first see it. The subject matter is another matter. This short has an Asian theme with obviously Caucasian actors and actresses masquerading as Asians in full Asian dress. There is much poking fun at Asian speech and manners. Black Americans are also stereotyped in this film. All of the latter greatly detract from the film. As far as subject matter is concerned the only sensible moment in the whole thing is a brief appearance of Anna May Wong. There are also very brief cameo introductions of Clark Gable, Joe E. Brown and Freddie Bartholomew. So, from a technical point - wonderful, from all other points - a disaster by current standards.
The 3-strip technicolor is the real star of this musical/comedy hodgepodge. The hosts are Elissa Landi and Charlie Chase in an oriental-themed program. We see glimpses of Joan Bennett, Clark Gable, Joe E. Brown and a nice fashion display with Anna May Wong. The real talent is in a quartet of black singers doing a rendition of "Chinatown, My Chinatown". There is a nice scene with a hula-motiff and the song "South Sea Island Magic". Some rather routine dance numbers and so-so Leon Carroll sketch to fill it all out. Watch for it on TCM.
