Movies About Classic Hollywood

A young woman hits Hollywood, determined to become a star.

A Broadway matinee idol famous for his black-face portrayals anonymously joins an amateur acting troupe and falls in love with the leading lady.

A young lady from Georgia goes to Hollywood in the hopes of becoming an actress.

Philandering actor Richard Hardell is murdered at a movie studio. His jealous wife Blanche, his director Rupert Borka, and a girl he mistreated, Helen MacDonald, all have substantial reasons for having wanted him dead.

Producer Ginsburg invests in a big-budgeted talkie musical, financially supported by his lawyer John. During a screening for prospective exhibitors the projectionist mixes up the sound-disc reels, with the images not matching the dialogue.

'Rainbow Girls' has just opened and closed on Broadway when Dixie, a actress in it, runs into smooth-talking Hollywood Director Frank Buelow. He tells her she would be a natural and promises her a movie contract, so she goes to Hollywood, but there is no contract for her. She meets washed-up actress Donny (Blanche Sweet) on the lot and they become friends. Frank is fired from his studio and the new director finds that Frank's storyline is actually a copy of 'Rainbow Girls,' the Broadway stage play. They call Jimmy, the author and Dixie's boyfriend, for the rights and he goes to Hollywood to produce it as a movie. Dixie gets the lead, but things start going wrong when dizzy Dixie, spurred on by the fired Director Buelow, thinks that she is better than the picture or the studio and starts to make demands. Interesting note: Good look at early Hollywood, with cameos by Loretta Young, Walter Pigeon, Noah Beery and a young Noah Beery, Jr. make the film fun to watch.

Two small town widows bring their children to Hollywood, where their children become competing film stars. The girl is sweet, the boy is a killjoy sissy. For publicity, the rival families go to London to meet a middle European boy King. The three kids decide they need to escape their stifling lives and run away to the docks and join a gang.

Murder during film shoot sparks search for a killer.

Merton Gill is longing to become a cowboy actor and leaves his hometown to try his luck in Hollywood, but there his acting ability is regarded as non-existent. Actress Flips gives him a chance in a bit part, but he fails in that; however, the way he fails makes her think that he could be a good comedian. She persuades the studio to put him in a western parody, not telling him what they're really planning, because they know that he does not like comedies. Rather than ending tragic-comically, the movie becomes a brilliant coda to art and its servants, the artists, in this case the magniloquent Joan Blondell and Stuart Erwin.

After a mix-up with his application photograph, an aspiring actor is invited to a test screening and goes off to Hollywood.

Story of a Hollywood studio during the transition from silents to talkies.

The career of a waitress takes off when she meets an amiable drunken Hollywood director.

A glamorous film star rebels against the studio, her pushy press agent and a family of hangers-on.

A love-struck teacher pursues a radio singer to Hollywood.

With a full Hollywood background and settings, but more an expose of scandal-and-gossip magazines of the era, has-been actor John Blakeford agrees to write his memoirs for magazine-publisher Jordan Winston. When Blakeford's daughter Patricia asks him to desist for the sake of his ex-wife, Carlotta Blakeford, he attempts to break his contract with Winston.

Ronny Bowers, a saxophonist in Benny Goodman's band, has won a talent contest and a ten week contract with a film studio. On his first evening he is supposed to go with the studio's star Mona Marshall to a movie premiere. But she doesn't want to go, so the bosses decide to use a double for her: Virginia. When Mona finds out next morning that happened, she insisted to fire her double and Ronny. Ronny finds work as a singing waiter in a drive-in, and is spotted by a director of the same studio, who wants him to lend his voice for a leading actor in a musical. After the first screening Louella Parsons invites him to sing on her program, "Hollywood Hotel". He accepts, not knowing that Ronny Bowers does not want to lend him his voice again. So everybody starts to play his little game to solve his own problems.

While hospitalized young Billy meets his silent movie idol Tim Bart but then the talkies came, destroying Bart's career. Now Bart must convince his young friend he is still a star.

A New York bank plans to sell a Hollywood studio at a big loss. But the head accountant is suspicious and goes to investigate. He finds chicanery, romance, and help to save the studio.

Young Esther Victoria Blodgett comes to Hollywood with dreams of stardom and achieves them only with the help of alcoholic leading man Norman Maine, whose best days are behind him.

Starting in 1913 movie director Connors discovers singer Molly Adair. As she becomes a star she marries an actor, so Connors fires them. She asks for him as director of her next film. Many silent stars shown making the transition to sound.

Carolyn Sayres, rejected by talent scout Brooke, falls in love with Bud Borden, helping her become a star. Wharton parodies Zanuck's early Hollywood experiences.

Olsen and Johnson, a pair of stage comedians, try to turn their play into a movie and bring together a young couple in love, while breaking the fourth wall every step of the way.

A filmmaker attempts to sell a surreal script he has written, which comes to life as he pitches it.

Hollywood director John L. Sullivan sets out to experience life as a homeless person in order to gain relevant life experience for his next movie.

A producer devises an elaborate gala premiere for his latest anti-Nazi propaganda epic.