Mädchen für Hollywood

... and that's as flimsy an excuse for a parade of stars as there ever was. This one seems more forced and artificial than such films normally do.

Many of the stars have little or nothing to do in their cameos: Barbara Stanwyck, Burt Lancaster, Diana Lynn, and especially Robert Preston. Perhaps they're the lucky ones, given the limp nature of the script. They might have wound up like Spike Jones -- he and his City Slickers are far more obnoxious here than they were in "Thank Your Lucky Stars" (1943). Or the pitiable Alan Ladd, singing about that greatest of cities, Tallahassee, Florida. Seriously.

The occasional bright spots include Paulette Goddard wearing soapsuds, and Ray Milland hiding his telephone in an overhead light fixture, à la "The Lost Weekend".

I was also keen to see the rarely glimpsed, grey-haired Glenn Tryon, the male lead in 1928's magnificent "Lonesome", one of the final great achievements of the American silent film. "Lonesome" is comparable in some ways to King Vidor's "The Crowd", but is much less frequently discussed.

I think few would argue if I were to say that "Variety Girl" is for completists only.

Caveat emptor: This film's recent video release in the Bob Hope Collection has the George Pal Technicolor sequence in black and white.

"Variety Girl" is one of those films that was popular in the 1930s and 40s which supposedly gives audiences a behind the scenes look at a Hollywood Studio. In each, the various big-time contract players are seen as a VERY scripted version of themselves...and most of the major studios made films like this. Some examples include "The Hollywood Revue of 1929", "The Goldwyn Follies" as well as "Paramount on Parade". For the most part, these films were pure hooey and they are more self-promotion than entertaining when you see them today.

In "Variety Girl", it the story of a very talented young woman and her new, and VERY obnoxious friend....and the women's road to discovery by Paramount. As far as the cast goes, some are actors pretending to be Paramount executives (such as DeForrest Kelley playing a publicity agent) and many are real actors, writers and directors playing a version of themselves. This would include Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Barbara Stanwyck, Paulette Goddard, Gary Cooper, Ray MIlland, Dorothy Lamour, Alan Ladd and quite a few other actors. Non-actors playing themselves include Cecil B. DeMille, George Marshall, Spike Jones and Mitchell Leissen.

I enjoyed seeing the various cameos, though many were simply too brief. What I didn't love was the character played by Olga San Juan. Like Mary Hatcher's character, both were supposedly newbies to Hollywood trying to break into films with Paramount but they simply made San Juan's character too despicable and obnoxious....to the point where it really hurt the film. It was supposed to be funny...but I found her character to be grating every second she was on the screen and her acting way beyond just broad! The 'joke' about all this is that the studio keeps mixing up the two ladies, and when one misbehaves, the other is blamed.

So is this worth seeing? Well, it depends. If you are a fan of old films, you can look past the unlikable story and San Juan and just enjoy the many cameos, as practically everyone at Paramount seems to be in this movie. If you are not a fan of old films, the cameos won't mean much to you and the story itself is simply bad. None of this is very surprising, as most of these 'behind the scenes' films stink and are very short on actual plot. One of the few exceptions I can think of is "Thank Your Lucky Stars" from Warner Brothers. The rest are just more self-promotion than anything else and are tough to love...and this is definitely true of "Variety Girl".

There's plenty of stars in this homage to Variety clubs international but precious little entertainment. A poor script and shoddy production values make this movie look as though it was shot over weekends on whatever sets happened to be available. Painful to sit through at times with dated comedy routines that were probably not very funny even at the time. Of the performers Pearl Bailey does a not bad musical number, and Bing Crosby and Bob Hope come the closest to being funny.

"Variety Girl", a film from 1947, showed up recently on cable. The film, which takes the theme of the Variety Club, which was a charitable organization involving well known movie people, is an excuse for showcasing the talent players employed by the studio. Paramount was at the time one of the most powerful places in which movies were made. As such, the idea behind this picture was to show how united and family-like the studio was.

The story is paper thin. It presents an implausible situation about two young women trying to make it in the movie industry. They, like thousand other hopefuls, attracted by the glamour of Hollywood came to Los Angeles in droves to be discovered. This is exactly what Katherine Brown and Amber Lavonne try to do with amazing results.

The fun in watching "Variety Girl" is recognizing stars, larger than life, being caught in the act of being themselves. Thus, we see the likes of Alan Ladd, Dorothy Lamour, Burt Lancaster, Lizabeth Scott, Barbara Stanwych, Gary Cooper, William Holden, William Bendix, and many others involved in either the show that takes the center of the story, or just around the studio, mixing with colleagues and extras.

The funniest sequence involved Olga San Juan, who plays Amber, emoting to the high heavens just to be noticed by the many diners at the Brown Derby. Also the singing duo of Bing Crosby and Bob Hope in their rendition of Harmony.

This is just an entertainment as conceived by the studio, no doubt. The best way to watch it is just to do so without expecting anything other than a smile. That way it will not disappoint.

For those who enjoy plenty of upbeat "40's Hollywood glamour" atmosphere, good musical numbers, and seeing dozens of stars of the mid 1940's, "Variety Girl" is a pleasant time-passer.

Another reviewer here left a very good review, but got their people badly mixed-up in their final paragraph. It is not Mary Hatcher, but the manically energetic Olga San Juan, in fur coat and sunglasses, who tries hard to get the attention of a famous director in the Brown Derby restaurant. The director is not Cecil B. DeMille, but Mitchell Leisen.

Mary Hatcher was gorgeous, a very good actress, and had a lovely voice which could range from Swing to operatic. Perhaps she didn't go far in movies because she looked and sang like the twin sister of Kathryn Grayson, a major star at the time, and Hollywood didn't need two almost identical beauties with operatic voices.