A behind-the-scenes look at classic Hollywood

Constance Bennett and Lowell Sherman Are Superb

Powerful look at Hollywood in the early years

Santa Barbara Polo Club, 3300 Via Real, Carpinteria, CA, USA

Lionel Barrymore and Kay Francis in Guilty Hands (1931)

Barbara Stanwyck, Ralph Graves, Marie Prevost, and Lowell Sherman in Ladies of Leisure (1930)

Marion Davies and Billie Dove in Blondie of the Follies (1932)

Clark Gable and Jean Harlow in Hold Your Man (1933)

Ginger Rogers, Bruce Cabot, and Frances Dee in Finishing School (1934)

Dorothy Hall and Judith Wood in Working Girls (1931)

John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Billie Burke, Jean Harlow, Marie Dressler, Edmund Lowe, and Lee Tracy in Dinner at Eight (1933)

Helen Hayes in The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931)

Constance Bennett and Neil Hamilton in What Price Hollywood? (1932)

Every hour that you're out of jail you're away from home.

Constance Bennett in What Price Hollywood? (1932)

Constance Bennett, Gregory Ratoff, and Lowell Sherman in What Price Hollywood? (1932)

Constance Bennett

Lowell Sherman

Neil Hamilton

Gene Fowler

Rowland Brown

Adela Rogers St. Johns

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

George Cukor

What Price Hollywood?

Pre-Code insider&apos;s look at Hollywood, a precursor to all those STAR IS BORN films.

Constance Bennett is a waitress at Hollywood&apos;s famed Brown Derby restaurant specifically for the chance of meeting the right contact to help her break into films. In walks Lowell Sherman, a tipsy but famous director. They take a shine to each other and he wakes up the next morning to find her asleep on his living room couch. He invites her to test for a small part in a film, but she&apos;s terrible.

She works all night on her little scene and finally gets it right. Of course she makes a hit and becomes a big star. She&apos;s never romantically involved with Sherman, who&apos;s more interested in the bottle. She has everything she ever wanted and marries a stuffy rich boy (Neil Hamilton) who never fits in.

Eventually Bennett loses the husband and also loses Sherman as his career slips away because of his drinking. The years go by. One night she gets a call to come get Sherman out of jail where he&apos;s been locked up for be drunk and for skipping out on a bar bill. She takes him home and cleans him up, but it&apos;s too late.

Hard-hitting story stunned a lot of viewers who wanted to believe that the lives of the Hollywood stars was a bed of roses. Bennett and Sherman are superb. Hamilton is fine as the rich husband. Also good are Gregory Ratoff as the producer and Louise Beavers as the devoted maid.

There were insider Hollywood stories before this. Marion Davies&apos; comedy SHOW PEOPLE showed how fame can go to an actress&apos; head. The following STAR IS BORN films borrowed heavily from this one but the heroines in these (Janet Gaynor, Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, and the 2018 version) were all married to the tragic figure.

Perhaps a bigger studio than RKO could have secured the Oscar nominations Lowell Sherman and Constance Bennett deserved for this film.

Pre-Code insider's look at Hollywood, a precursor to all those STAR IS BORN films.

Constance Bennett is a waitress at Hollywood's famed Brown Derby restaurant specifically for the chance of meeting the right contact to help her break into films. In walks Lowell Sherman, a tipsy but famous director. They take a shine to each other and he wakes up the next morning to find her asleep on his living room couch. He invites her to test for a small part in a film, but she's terrible.

She works all night on her little scene and finally gets it right. Of course she makes a hit and becomes a big star. She's never romantically involved with Sherman, who's more interested in the bottle. She has everything she ever wanted and marries a stuffy rich boy (Neil Hamilton) who never fits in.

Eventually Bennett loses the husband and also loses Sherman as his career slips away because of his drinking. The years go by. One night she gets a call to come get Sherman out of jail where he's been locked up for be drunk and for skipping out on a bar bill. She takes him home and cleans him up, but it's too late.

Hard-hitting story stunned a lot of viewers who wanted to believe that the lives of the Hollywood stars was a bed of roses. Bennett and Sherman are superb. Hamilton is fine as the rich husband. Also good are Gregory Ratoff as the producer and Louise Beavers as the devoted maid.

There were insider Hollywood stories before this. Marion Davies' comedy SHOW PEOPLE showed how fame can go to an actress' head. The following STAR IS BORN films borrowed heavily from this one but the heroines in these (Janet Gaynor, Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, and the 2018 version) were all married to the tragic figure.

Perhaps a bigger studio than RKO could have secured the Oscar nominations Lowell Sherman and Constance Bennett deserved for this film.

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What Price Hollywood?

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