Steinesongo Too many fans seem to be blown away

ManiakJiggy This is How Movies Should Be Made

Patience Watson One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.

Paynbob It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

classicsoncall You'll be giving this short the bird too, and yes, Charlie Chan Chase actually did say that to the film's hostess, Elissa Landi. This is really an embarrassing little flick with all sorts of racial stereotyping; given the era most of it's understandable but it's still painful to watch. Clark Gable, Joan Bennett and Joe E. Lewis all make brief cameos, they probably should have begged off. The setting is an East-Asian themed garden tea party, and the Oriental flavor is most evident in the brightly colored costumes of the dancers. There's a segment in which a host of Oriental ladies wearing very little make their appearance. I have a comment to make about that but it might get the old heave-ho here and I don't want to offend. Among the mostly talent-less performers, Anita May Wong is fairly entertaining with her song number, one of the brighter spots in this mercifully short offering.

Michael_Elliott Hollywood Party (1937) * (out of 4) One hopes a real Hollywood party wasn't as boring as this mess of a short from MGM. The main reason to tune in is the three-strip Technicolor, which was just starting out. In the film Charley Chase and Elissa Landi are introducing various music acts and a few Hollywood A-listers with it all set to a Chinese theme. The Chinese theme also means Chase slanting his eyes, wearing some funny facial hair and throwing around rather stereotypical slang. The movie, no matter how you look at it, is a real embarrassment and one can't help but feel bad for Chase, a veteran of over 250 films, for having to appear in it as MGM certainly didn't do him any favors. The biggest problem is that the film never knows what it wants to be. It starts off appearing to just want to make fun of Chinese customs. It then turns into a music and features some very bad songs. It then tries to be a fashion show, which is fails at miserably even though we see some nearly naked women, which makes one wonder how this got passed by the Hayes Office. Everything this film tries it fails at and the cameos by Joe E. Brown, Anna May Wong, Freddie Bartholomew, Joan Bennett and Clark Gable can't help.

charlytully 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).

frankfob This short serves as both a fashion show and as a demonstration of the beauty of Technicolor. It's interesting as the former and terrific as the latter. As others have pointed out, the color is superb--clear, crisp and deep as only three-strip Technicolor can be, and while I've never been much of a connoisseur of '30s fashions, I actually liked some of the stuff I saw here. There's one segment with a bevy of showgirls passing in a sort of "Miss America" review dressed in some Las Vegas-type costumes that rank among the skimpiest I've ever seen in a non-stag movie of that period--not that I'm complaining--that serves to show off both the costumes' spectacular colors and the girls' spectacular bodies (which it does to a very satisfying degree; I don't know how MGM got away with showing so many almost-nude women back then). There's a rather boring hula by a woman who fortunately looks good but unfortunately can't dance very well, a forced and unfunny "novelty" Spike Jones-type number by the Al Lyons Band, a rather pedestrian tap dancing act, a few other musical interludes--none of them even remotely memorable--and some VERY brief cameos by such MGM stars as Clark Gable and Joan Bennett. The film's main drawback, however, is the premise--a group of white actors dressing up and acting like "Chinamen" (comedian Charley Chase is particularly embarrassing doing an awful Fu Manchu/Charlie Chan impersonation), including everyone from the band to the waiters. Leon Errol does his patented drunk routine but it doesn't seem to really have anything to do with the movie--it just involves him and a waiter for a minute or two and then they're gone--and a quartet of black singers does a clever "hum" of "Chinatown My Chinatown". Even for the "unenlightened" 1930s, this short really pours on the stereotypes about Asians, especially Chinese. It gets embarrassing every so often--well, okay, it gets embarrassing A LOT--but even so, it's extremely interesting as an historical document. I gave it four stars: two for the beautiful color (and zero for the lame musical numbers, the witless "comedy" and the offensive and insulting racial stereotyping) and two for the all-too-brief appearance of the luminous Anna May Wong, who looks sexier than I've ever seen her (and in color, yet!) modeling a beautiful blue (apparently silk) gown and then an even more beautiful yellow one. She just radiates charm, grace and class, three things this short is completely devoid of. It could have used much more of her and much less of everybody else.