What price Hollywood? 1932 - The familiar 'A Star Is Born' story with Cukor in the director's chair

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IMDB rating: 7,8

Director: George Cukor
Main Cast: Constance Bennett, Lowell Sherman, Neil Hamilton, Gregory Ratoff

"What Price Hollywood is often referred to as the 'first' version of the oft-filmed A Star is Born. While there are strong resemblances between the two properties, Hollywood is in many respects a wholly separate entity.
Constance Bennett plays a star-struck waitress who manages to make a good impression on prominent film director Lowell Sherman. With Sherman's patronage, Bennett rises to film stardom as 'America's Pal'. Sherman is gratified, but he keeps his distance; a chronic alcoholic, he is certain that his inevitable fall from grace will adversely affect Bennett's stardom. Impulsively, Bennett marries wealthy playboy Neil Hamilton, who genuinely loves his wife but is jealous of the demands made on her by her career. Hamilton walks out, but not before Bennett has been impregnated. Turning her attentions to her mentor Sherman, Bennett does everything she can to halt his career downslide, but it is too late. In a startlingly conceived sequence (utilizing slow motion and rapid-fire montage cutting), Sherman kills himself in Bennett's bedroom. When his body is found, the ensuing scandal destroys Bennett's career (represented visually by a life-sized cutout of 'America's Pal' shrinking into nothingness). Hoping to heal her emotional wounds, she flees to Paris with her child, where she is reunited with a contrite Hamilton.
What Price Hollywood? producer David O. Selznick later claimed that most of the dialogue and situations in the film were drawn from life; he'd make the same claim upon producing the similar (but not identical) A Star is Born five years later. Somewhat perversely, Lowell Sherman based his performance-especially the inebriation scenes-on his then brother-in-law John Barrymore." - www.allmovie.com

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Sin takes a holiday 1930 - Ahead of its time for liberated thinking

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0021377/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 6,3

Director: Paul L. Stein
Main Cast: Constance Bennett, Kenneth MacKenna, Basil Rathbone, Zasu Pitts

"This pre-Code comedy is more interesting for its decor and reflection of the morals of the day than for its acting or story. The plot revolves around three characters, each in love with the one who isn't in love with her or him. Things work out in a way - two characters find each other and the third is left to move on. All this happens in an atmosphere of wealth, where amoral dalliance is both expected and titillating.
Gaylord (Kenneth MacKenna) quickly arranges a marriage of convenience to his secretary, Sylvia (Constance Bennett) to avoid the advances of his socialite friend, Grace (Rita le Roy). Gaylord draws up a 1 year contract with Sylvia so that there is an understanding about how they can both behave and he encourages her to travel to France and do her own thing. However, after spending time in France with Reggie (Basil Rathbone), Sylvia returns to Gaylord to ask what he truly feels....
In this film no-one is correct - everyone behaves atrociously. The men are ultimately revealed as cads or blind to their actions while the women are calculating and far more deliberate and nasty in their actions. It's interesting to watch to see who Sylvia will end up with - she ain't no angel - don't be fooled by her apparent innocence. She's just as much of a bitch as Grace as her behaviour demonstrates. We have a confrontation at the end between all the characters involved which is what we have been anticipating and the dialogue is very entertaining.
In real life Kenneth MacKenna was married to Kay Francis for about 3-4 years in the early 30s (they were divorced in early 1934). He preferred being behind the camera directing rather than out in front, so that explains his disappearance from film acting after 1933."

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Merrily we live 1938 - Basically a cute, charming remake of My man Godfrey

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0030442/?ref_=nv_sr_1
IMDB rating: 7,4

Director: Norman Z. McLeod
Main Cast: Constance Bennett, Brian Aherne, Alan Mowbray, Billie Burke, Patsy Kelly, Ann Dvorak, Tom Brown, Bonita Granville

"It's hard to argue that Merrily We Live doesn't owe a huge debt to My Man Godfrey, with which it has a great deal in common. Normally, copycats of classics are pale imitations that provide, at best, a few moments of diversion but are in no real way memorable. So it's quite a surprise that Merrily is actually quite a scintillating little screwball comedy, in spite of its Xerox-like origins. Merrily lives up to its title, being one of the most delightfully madcap comedies of the era. While the screenplay that Jack Jevne and Eddie Moran cooked up isn't high on originality, it's quite skillfully put together and very well structured. Yes, we often can see that a particular gag is coming, yet when it arrives we welcome it as a friend whom we haven't seen in so long that his familiarity seems fresh. Credit is also very much due to Norman Z. McLeod's lightning fast direction, which keeps everything going at a crisp pace yet never allows things to get so frenetic that the audience loses track of things. The cast is also a delight, with lovely Constance Bennett a joy and Brian Aherne turning in a perfectly calibrated comic performance. Best of all, though, is Billie Burke, having found the part that she was always meant to play and one which takes thorough advantage of her very distinctive personality and even more distinctive way with a phrase." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/merrily-we-live-v102162/

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Topper 1937 - The film that set the standard for supernatural comedies

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029682/?ref_=nv_sr_1
IMDB rating: 7,4

Director: Norman Z. McLeod
Main Cast: Cary Grant, Constance Bennett, Roland Young, Billie Burke, Eugene Pallette, Arthur Lake, Hedda Hopper

"By 1937, producer Hal Roach was hoping to wean himself away from the Laurel & Hardy-Our Gang slapstick on which he had built his studio's reputation by delving into the 'screwball comedy' genre. Roach selected the racy Thorne Smith fantasy novel Topper for adaptation, and the result was one of the most endearingly funny films of the decade, inspiring controversy on its 1937 release. The gentle, whimsical comedy about friendly ghosts was scorned by some for morbidness and for indulging in the supernatural. In fact, Topper was the first feature film about ghosts that succeeded both at the box office and among critics. A husband and wife killed in a car accident return as spirits, visible only to their friend Cosmo Topper. The ghosts are prone to misbehaving but are well-intentioned and helpful. Every Hollywood ghost story that followed owed something to Topper's clever spirit and fanciful imaginings.
Though special effects abound in Topper, most of the humor derives from the embarrassed reactions of Roland Young as he tries to fend off the flirtatious advances of the ghostly Marion and the benignly strongman tactics of the spectral George. Adding to the fun are Eugene Pallette as a flustered house detective and Arthur Lake as a pratfalling bellboy. The musical score by longtime Hal Roach composer Marvin Hatley is perfectly attuned to the zany goings-on (including snatches of background music from Roach's earlier Laurel and Hardy comedies), while Hoagy Carmichael appears briefly on screen to introduce the film's signature tune, 'Old Man Moon'.
Inspired by the Thorne Smith novel The Jovial Ghosts, Topper was a hit that remained popular for more than a generation, inspiring the sequels Topper Takes a Trip and Topper Returns and a 1950s television series. Cary Grant, Constance Bennett, and Roland Young are the three stars, with Young getting an Oscar nomination." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/topper-v50462/

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