Warner Bros-First National, 1930
Starring Alice White, Blanche Sweet, Jack Mulhall, and John Miljan
Directed by Mervyn LeRoy
Music by Sam H. Stept; Lyrics by Bud Green
Alice White started out as a secretary at First National, but by 1930, she was a minor star in movies like The Girl From Woolworth's and Playing Around that showcased her bubbly and mildly sexy allure. This was to have been her big break, a sequel to the 1928 non-musical hit Show Girl that had White reprising the character of wanna-be chorus cutie Dixie Dugan. How does this story of how Dixie shoves her way into Hollywood look now? To answer that, we begin in New York, where the show Rainbow Girl just closed, and find out...
The Story: After the show closes, Dixie and her boyfriend Jimmy Doyle (Mulhall) first encounter director Frank Buelow at a nightclub. Impressed with the song she performs onstage, Buelow offers her a contract and claims he has a part waiting for her out west. Turns out he says that to every girl he comes across. Not only is there no role for Dixie, but the studio fired Buelow for his casting-couch practices. She's still determined to have a movie career and barges into producer Sam Otis' (Ford Sterling) office, yelling at him to give her a role. It doesn't work, but she does manage to befriend her favorite movie star Donny Harris (Sweet), who hasn't done a movie in two years and feels she's washed up at the ripe age of 32.
Dixie returns to the studio to discover that Otis wants her back. The studio bought Rainbow Girl, and they want her to star. She's thrilled at first...until Buelow returns. Angry that he was let go, he tells Dixie to be more demanding with Otis. Her bellowing for the script to be re-written ends with the film shut down. It'll take Donny's near-death experience to remind Dixie that she's not the only person struggling in Southern California.
The Song and Dance: The major interests here are the supporting cast and the antique technology on display. The movie studio setting allows us to see how the studios really filmed a musical number in 1930, from the cumbersome boxes holding the noisy cameras to the men recording the song on Vitaphone discs. Sweet is the real stand-out in the cast as the actress looking for a career comeback who understands stardom a lot better than Dixie. She did several movies with DW Griffith, and her dramatic chops show, especially in the sequence leading up to her near-death.
Favorite Number: Sweet kind-of-sings "There's a Tear for Every Smile in Hollywood" as she tries to explain to Dixie what show business does to aspiring performers. The second run-through of "I've Got My Eye On You" is the one we see filmed; along with getting a glimpse of behind the camera booths, we also the spectacle of dancers prancing out of a creepy set designed to look like huge eyes and a mouth. I really wish Warners could have held on to the Technicolor for "Hang Onto a Rainbow." The sequence was originally in color, but current prints have it in black and white. Even without the color, it's still a pretty neat number, with tons of dancers swirling around Dixie in her starburst headdress while a huge rainbow appears behind them.
What I Don't Like: The movie's biggest problem is the "Show Girl" herself. Dixie is frankly a spoiled idiot who should have known better to believe anything a jerk like Buelow said, especially after he lied to her to get her out west. It doesn't help that the dialogue is terrible, and White's performance isn't much better. Her blank stares and silly "Gee!" undercuts the attempt at pathos with Sweet's "Tear for Every Smile" song. The story is a mass of every cliché that ever landed in a movie about Hollywood...and despite everyone talking about White's freshness and youth, the (slightly) older Sweet is the one you'll remember.
The Big Finale: Mainly of interest to fans of the early talkie era or the two leading ladies.
Home Media: Currently DVD only via the Warner Archives.
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