Cheap Going Hollywood (Video) (Raoul Walsh) Price

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Customer Reviews of Going Hollywood

Doesn't work, but it's a collectible.
This is rather a generic musical effort for MGM, below par even for the 30's and not nearly as much fun as RKO's "Flying Down To Rio" from the same year. Its major problem is Marion Davies, not to mention dialogue and choreography that's as bland as it is gauche. It's not that Davies doesn't try -- she manages to come through this one with one or two good moments, but her lack of talent makes these seem more like happy accidents. Comedienne Patsy Kelly steals every scene from Davies, and Crosby displays enough skill and cool, even in his early days, to avoid complete embarrassment on camera with her. Let's not be too unkind to Davies; you can see in her few serious, "dramatic" lines that musicals and comedies were NOT her element. Despite its shortcomings, film historians will delight in certain aspects of this product: Bing's performance is incredibly good, even with this material, and he utterly masters 3 very good tunes in "Temptation", "Going Hollywood", and "Beautiful Girl" (the latter a number that young Sterling Holloway almost steals from Der Bingle). These songs alone, by classic writers Arthur Freed and Herb Brown, are worth the price and trouble of obtaining this tape. The video is a little dark, obviously made from 2nd- or 3rd-generation prints, but it's pretty clean and sharp for VHS. This is really a 2-star production, but I give it 4 for the supporting cast and the songs -- and, actually, because Marion Davies displays in this movie the "look" that made it difficult for men to keep their eyes away from her. She's a stunner. Until she opens her mouth.

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An odd but entertaining oldie...
A very weird film, featuring a young (and super-cute!!) Bing Crosby alongside Marion Davies, the uniquely untalented kewpie-doll starlet who William Randolph Hearst backed in flop after flop. It's meant to be a screwball comedy, but reads more like unintentional camp, particularly in any scenes where Davies is called apon to dance, sing or act. Bing plays a crooner gone Hollywood; Davies plays a blonde nutcase who stalks him from coast to coast, insisting that their love was meant to be. Davies's character seems particularly psychotic in light of her bizarrely vacant delivery... The disconnected performance and lackluster plot combine synergistically, and after a while you just have to start cracking up... it's a scream! Like Davies, the movie looks great, but lacks substance. (For a more sympathetic take on Davies' legacy, check out Kirsten Dunst's surprisingly sympathetic portrayal in Peter Bogdanovitch's 2002 comedy, "The Cat's Meow," a thought-provoking and thoroughly entertaining film about the Hearst/Davies relationship...)

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1933 DELIGHT
Marion Davies plays a teacher at a girl's school who's bored with academics and wants to explore the world; she also idolises crooner Der Bingle and decides she will find him, so off she goes in hot pursuit..........A rare glimpse at the decidedly lovely & elusive La Davies is interesting, but the movie belongs to Bing. The best ingredient of the whole film is his rendition of TEMPTATION which was penned by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown for the movie. The scene where Crosby belts out GOING HOLLYWOOD in a Hollywoodised Grand Central Station will be remembered by 70's moviegoers in a clip from THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT. Marion Davies was impressive in her big number, WE'LL MAKE HAY WHILE THE SUN SHINES and there is a funny (if exaggeratted) comic performance by Fifi D'Orsay as a hot-tempered movie star. It would be fun to see more of the elusive Marion Davies on video. Contrary to popular belief, she wasn't a no-talent bimbo as dipicted by Orson Welles' Susan Alexander in CITIZEN KANE; she was a gifted light comedienne who was hampered by Hearst's insistence that she be seen in innocent ingenue-type roles. At thirty-five, she supposedly gave a superlative performance as PEG O' MY HEART!