Hollywood Party

This is a 20 min short Chinese-themed outdoor garden party hosted by Elissa Landi and Charley Chase playing Charley Chan Chase. The performers are vaudevillian depictions of Chinese culture. It does have Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong doing a short presentation. Otherwise, it's mostly white performers dressed in Chinese costumes and one black comedy musical group.

On the technical side, this has the brilliant Technicolor. The green is brilliantly green. The primary colors really pop. It's a great example of early color on film. The production value is good for an outdoor party. Most comments are concentrating on the racial insensitivity. Let's be clear. This is racially insensitive... for today. They are however not mean-spirited in their depictions. It is a show of its time. Making the point even more clearer is the presence of Anna May Wong. I'm not saying it's right but it wasn't wrong back then. It's just very icky now. Otherwise, this is standard vaudeville of that era and it's hard to judge the skill level. It doesn't make me laugh but I do understand the attempted concepts. The colors are great and I always applaud any movie that would have Anna May Wong.

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.

Apart from its historic value as an early example of Technicolor, this is a truly dreadful film. In fact, even the Technicolor itself was just awful--with way over-saturated colors that were very, very hard on the eyes--particularly the greens and pinks.

As for the plot, there isn't much of one. Charley Chase and some lady are the emcees at some bizarre beach party where they and some not especially talented performers act Chinese--or at least act like a dreadful stereotype of Chinese circa 1937. Chase, who could be a funny man, was given absolutely NOTHING to do but make slant-eyed faces at the camera and speak in an awful Chinese-like accent.

In addition to the dreadful acts and narration, there are some very pointless cameos by Clark Gable, Joe E. Brown and others. All the appearances really amount to are exceptionally short clips of only a couple seconds that have no relationship to the rest of the film.

Dumb, pointless and wretched--this is a terrible short that only has some tiny historical value and is as entertaining as watching paint dry. Sadly, while this sappy Hollywoodized version of China was presented, the real plight of the Chinese (who had been invaded and decimated by the Japanese during the 1930s) was never mentioned--they all were portrayed more like "happy children".

Can someone explain why MGM would give this promotional short for The Good Earth color treatment and yet the cinema classic they do in black and white? I suppose there's some rationale for it, but I can't think of any.

Elissa Landi and Charley Chase, he in Oriental garb as Charley Chan Chase host a party which has a few musical acts and some big star walk ons like Clark Gable, Joan Bennett, Joe E. Brown and Freddie Bartholomew. The musical highlight is Joe Morrison who was the love interest in the W.C. Fields classic The Old Fashioned Way singing South Sea Island Magic.

Throughout it all Leon Errol does his drunk act as he keeps trying to mix the perfect cocktail. He did much the same thing in We're Not Dressing.

Entertaining, but nothing special. Don't confuse this with the feature film Hollywood Party.

The 3-strip technicolor is the real star of this musical/comedy hodgepodge. The hosts are Elissa Landi and Charlie Chase in an oriental-themed program. We see glimpses of Joan Bennett, Clark Gable, Joe E. Brown and a nice fashion display with Anna May Wong. The real talent is in a quartet of black singers doing a rendition of "Chinatown, My Chinatown". There is a nice scene with a hula-motiff and the song "South Sea Island Magic". Some rather routine dance numbers and so-so Leon Carroll sketch to fill it all out. Watch for it on TCM.