Hollywood (1942)

^| Imagine a movie in which — The dignified big boss of Paramount gets tossed out on his ear. Bing Crosby's son takes a powder when his old man begins to croon. C. B. DeMille gets told one of his ideas stinks. Paulette Goddard, Dorothy Lamour and Veronica Lake kid the pants off their famous trademarks with a little ditty called "A Sweater, A Sarong and a Peeka-boo Bang." A meek little gateman becomes the tyrannical Caesar of the lot. No, you wouldn't be nuts. You'd just be seeing Paramount's new super-duper funfest, Star Spangled Rhythm. You'd be nuts only if you missed it! It is a healthy sign if we can still laugh at ourselves in these grim and precarious days, and Paramount does just that in this uproarious satire of a movie studio, admittedly its own, which gets taken in by a terrific hoax. Heretofore "sacred cows," including executives, stars and glamour gals, take a sledgehammer ribbing and are made the goats for all manner of ludicrous slapstick comedy and situations. There.are the scenes with Crosby's nineyear-old son, Gary, for instance. Bing and Gary are walking hand in hand through the studio gates when the gateman asks: "Come to watch your dad make pictures?" Bing begins to swell with importance until Gary chirps back: "Naw! Why watch him when Dorothy Lamour's working!" The Crosby ego takes another puncturing a little later when Betty Hutton meets Gary playing ball outside a sound stage. "Is your father inside?" she asks. Gary mumbles "Yeah." "Then why are you out here?" Betty queries. Gary gives a bored shrug. "Aw, he's singin' again," he says. There is the office which is supposed to be occupied by the Paramount production chief, B. G. DeSylva, named B. G. DeSoto in the story and played by Walter Abel. It's oversized and overfurnished with everything from a grand piano to a loud speaker system, and equipped with a fantastic collection of mechanical gadgets operated by a row of pushbuttons on the desk. One button makes the top of the desk slide forward and a neon-lighted bar appear. Another makes the Venetian blinds shoot up in rhythmical unison. A third turns on 16 electric fans, and a fourth starts a patriotic march blaring from concealed loudspeakers throughout the room. DeMille gets his come-uppance in a charming scene which shows him supposedly talking to DeSoto over the dictograph. Actually he is talking to a gateman who has usurped DeSoto's office and authority for the nonce. "This is DeMille," DeMille says importantly. "You know how much everyone talked about the octopus in Reap the Wild Wind? Well, I've got a great idea . . ." A voice at the other end of the dictograph cuts him short. "It stinks!" says the voice. Unable to believe his ears, DeMille says, "What was that you said?" "It stinks!" the voice repeats. For once someone has said something besides "Yes" to Mr. DeMille. The honor went to Victor Moore who plays the gateman who impersonates DeSoto. By one of those odd quirks of fate, it was DeMille who gave Moore his first role in a motion picture back in 1915! Offscreen, DeMille came in for plenty of ribbing too. The day before his big scene was to be shot, he received a wire from Eddie Salven, his assistant director who is famous for keeping DeMille productions on schedule. "Dear Boss," it read, "after the terrific build-up I've given you all over Hollywood for being the acme of punctuality for more than 25 years, please don't be late on the set tomorrow. And do you know your lines? Your worried assistant, Eddie Salven." Highlight of the satire, however, is the scene in which Paulette, Dottie and Veronica put their glamour on the pan with the "A Sweater, A Sarong and a Peek-a-boo Bang" song. It's the unhappy tale of three little maidens of the silver screen who came to Hollywood to emote and were promptly buried beneath those mantles of glamour — a sweater, sarong, and eye-hiding coiffure. Dottie wears a flaming red sarong, Paulette wears a midriff sweater and short skirt, and Veronica, in addition to an exaggerated version of her famous coiffure, wears a form-fitting dress which is slit from the bottom as well as the top a la 7 Wanted Wings. Thus garbed they sing the ditty and prance about in a corny burlesque of famous glamour girl poses and didoes. As they move off, three new figures take their places to do a reprise of the song: Arthur Treacher in a Goddard wig. gym shorts and turtle-necked sweater; Walter Catlett in a flowing Lamour wig and sarong, and Sterling Holloway in a grotesque swim suit and eye-covering Lake wig. Again the camera moves and the original "creators" of the famous trademarks are shown — Mussolini in a sweater, Hirohito in a sarong, and Hitler with a peek-a-boo bang! Mussolini, incidentally, was portrayed by Paul Porcasi, .a Frenchman; Hirohito by Chinese Richard Loo; and Hitler by that son of Erin, Tom Dugan! Aside from its nonsense. Star Spangled Rhythm marks a new wrinkle in moviemaking. It is a story with a comedy plot strong enough to stand on its own merit, yet one which encompasses the talents of 68 stars and featured players without resorting to the obvious dodge of a revue within a revue, or the episodic treatment such as Tales of Manhattan demanded. Credit for the triumphal idea belongs to DeSylva, who dreamed it up and gleefully lampooned himself along with other studio bigwigs. Basically it is a story of an old studio gateman (Victor Moore) who has pretended to his son in the navy (Eddie Bracken) that he is production boss of Paramount. Helping him in the deception is a telephone operator (Betty Hutton) who pretends she is Moore's secretary. Bracken and six of his sailor pals turn up to visit the studio, whereupon Betty and Moore frantically contrive to carry on and lure the real boss (Walter Abel) and his secretary away from the studio and take their places. The plotters then get involved with all the players on the studio list, thus bringing them into the story in a natural way and giving them parts to play. Nine musical and dance numbers are worked in via projection rooms, rehearsal stages, etc., and the finale is a huge stage show at a navy base which Moore and Betty find themselves committed to stage. Aside from the star names already mentioned, the cast includes Bob Hope, Ray Milland, Fred MacMurray, Mary Martin, Dick Powell, Vera Zorina, Alan Ladd, Rochester, Marjorie Reynolds, Susan Hayward, Franchot Tone, Cecil Kellaway, Susanna Foster, Lynne Overman, Preston Sturges, Richard Denning, Ernest Truex, Dona Drake, Ellen Drew, Albert Dekker, Cass Daley, Betty Rhodes and Gil Lamb, plus scores of others. A star spangled cast, make no mistake! Long before actual shooting started, the whole studio was caught up in the excitement of the thing. From top executive to office boy, the studio personnel had the spirit of a school kid on Hallowe'en. Even Mr. Freeman caught the fever. As might have been expected, it was Bob Hope who popped up with the classic of the extemporaneous quips. When Bob noted that Bing Crosby was using his son in some of the studio background scenes, he dragged his own manager-brother into a scene with him. "I wasn't going to let this epic go out with two Crosbys and only one Hope," he explained. "Now it's even, but if Bingo tries to rope in any more of his four sons and four brothers, I want to remind him there are seven Hope brothers — and we all have kids!" fij 27