Hollywood Party

USA 1934
produced by
Lewis Lewyn, Harry Rapf, Walt Disney (animated sequence) for MGM
directed by Richard Boleslawski, Allan Dwan, Edmund Goulding, Russell Mack, Charles Reisner, Roy Rowland, George Stevens, Sam Wood
starring Jimmy Durante, Jack Pearl, Lupe Velez, George Givot, Eddie Quillan, June Clyde, Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Polly Moran, Charles Butterworth, Richard Carle, Robert Young, Edwin Maxwell, Leonid Kinskey, Tom London, Jeanne Olsen, the Three Stooges (= Larry Fine, Moe Howard, Curly Howard), Walt Disney (voice)
story by Edgar Allan Woolf, screenplay by Howard Dietz, Arthur Kober, music by William Axt

Laurel and Hardy, Münchhausen, Mickey Mouse, Three Stooges

review by
Mike Haberfelner

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Schnarzan (Jimmy Durante) is the king of the jungle - but only in the movies, in real life he's a filmstar in decline because the lions in his jungle flicks just don't look real enough. Fortunately though, lionhunter baron Münchhausen presently pays Hollywood a visit, and he's got plenty of lions with him, so Schnarzan throws him a big party which is attended by all of Hollywood, even Mickey Mouse (who introduces a Technicolor sequence in this otherwise black and white flick) - and also by Schnarzan's fiercest rival on the jungle flick market, Liondora (George Givot).

Both Schnarzan and Liondora try to catch the attention of oilking Clemp (Charles Butterworth), the only one in Hollywood rich enough to buy the lions, and his wife (Polly Moran) - but then out of the blue Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy show up and turn out to be the actual owners of the lions, and eventually, the two of them release the animals on the party guests, and even Schnarzan has to wrestle a lion for real, when ...

Jimmy Durante wakes up, and it was all just a dream.

Lupe Velez plays a partycrasher, who eventually gets into a hilariously slowed-down food fight with Laurel and Hardy, and the Three Stooges play autograph hunters, but don't get all that much to do. Eddie Quillan and June Clyde play the obligatory romantic couple, but their story leads nowhere.

Part comedy, part revue movie, this film is mostly a mess: Despite some imaginative song-and-dance numbers (including one featuring scantily clad female telephone operators) and a (actually rather brutal) Disney-cartoon, this is without real highlights on the revue side, while on the comedy side, this has little to offer besides above-mentioned intentionally weirdly paced food fight between Lupe Velez and Laurel and Hardy. And the film's lead Jimmy Durante seems to have been caught on one of his worse days. As for a script, there is a story involved, but it leads nowhere.

Allegedly, this was intended to become something much bigger, but a constant change of directors and other studio problems seriously sabotaged the project almost from square one.

All that said, if you're into major studio pictures from the 1930's, you will doubtlessly want to see this regardless from what I may say, and since this film does have at least a few highlights, you will not be totally disappointed.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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