Things start out bad before the first reel even begins to light the screen: This story is set Entirely (underlined) in Hollywood! and there Is no Broadway in Hollywood, in LA, Broadway is a street without distinction downtown. Except that it's about a film-in-the-making in a film, it could just as well be a play, because this is, in all other respects, a NY story. OK, so they didn't have money to rent in Astoria studios, but I looked up "Hollywood Jungle" and it just referred me back to this, so it's not like the title was already taken (good title, someone should grab it quick and make a picture out of it) so why they just didn't call it what it is in the first place is completely baffling.
Otherwise it's a very pedestrian (in more ways than one) B- showbiz story, call it a "gris pale" (pale gray),rather than a "noir", Sundrenched Hollywood doesn't provide the dark nooks and crannies for fugitives to hide in that Manhattan does. And most of the action is a loooong Foot Chase (!) through "seamy", ugly backstreets and parking lots (yes, despite popular imagination, there Are ugly backstreets in glamourous Hollywood), though at one point it skips, between shots, to across Downtown in East LA for a couple minutes, then abruptly ends up back in Hollywood again. This is in LA, famous for its traffic jams on freeways, where everybody drives, Nobody (underlined) walks, so at least the crew could count on never being disturbed, at any hour, shooting on the empty sidewalks. They did shoot on the saddest, most nondescript streets--one building facade sports a pathetic little cypress tree surrounded by omnipresent concrete and stucco, the only feeble sign of "life" as the camera wends thru the "slums" of the Entertainment Capital of the World. As boring as it sounds, this is as good as it gets. After all that walking, when the goon returns unsuccessful at getting his man, The Big Boss decides he's the only one to get the job done right. and yet another chase ensues, this time in a car at least, which shouldn't take more than a few minutes to cross Hollywood, as, geographically, it's not that big a burg, but to pad out to feature length (1 hour 6 mins., (!) in this case) and slow down the action in process, he gets stopped for a traffic violation en route.
All the racing, I should say walking, around is due to a would-be Hollywood angel/gangster who sees bad movie funding as a good way to meet women desperate to do anything to become a star, but he welches on his debt, and the manhunt begins. Any intended comic relief supplied by the broke would-be producer-director of his pipe dream project is corny and falls flat, no matter how the actor who plays him tries to force it. The one good bit is from an older uncredited character actress After the charlatan director, whose just promised a couple of would-be starlets roles, offering money he doesn't have, as a supposedly legitimate reason to" get to know them better," said character actress makes it abundantly clear that she's been around the block more times than you can count and that she has and will do Anything for money, and as she sashays off, you're left with the definite impression that she indeed has and will.
And that's everything that can be said about Broadway/Hollywood Jungle
