One of George Cukor's earliest successes before his glory years at MGM was this classic What Price Hollywood. Done at RKO it's the story of three star crossed people and that's literal for one of them.
Constance Bennett plays Mary Evans who is discovered by drunken director Lowell Sherman while working as a waitress at the famous Brown Derby in Hollywood. In 1932 that was the place to be if one wanted to be discovered because all the Hollywood celebrities dined there at one time or another. Including those like Sherman who liked their cuisine strictly liquid and at that time illegal.
You might think that playing a movie star was no stretch for Connie Bennett. But she and her sisters Joan and Barbara were of a distinguished theatrical family with father Richard Bennett in Hollywood himself at that time. She was as far removed from Mary Evans in real life as you can get, still Bennett got deep inside the part.
Sherman might have modeled his character on any number of distinguished Hollywood lushes. He probably took bits from all of them, but his director is uniquely his own, at once self centered, talented, vain and frail.
The third part of this triangle is Neil Hamilton, polo playing scion of a prominent society family who is introduced to Bennett when he smacks her with a polo ball. It was definitely love at first sight, but love between them takes a rocky road.
Hollywood has never been easy on itself. The movie industry figures that the scandals they've had are all too public so honesty is probably the best policy. In the sound era What Price Hollywood is one of the first of a long line of critical examination of the movie industry that also includes The Big Knife, The Bad And The Beautiful, Callaway Went Thataway and Two Weeks In Another Town. And of course we can't forget A Star Is Born in its original and remakes.
What Price Hollywood got an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. As its done before the Code, it holds up well today as a mark of distinguished and mature film making.
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