The Hollywood Revue of 1929: A Review

THE HOLLYWOOD REVUE OF 1929

This review is part of the Summer Under the Stars Blogathon. Today's star is John Gilbert.

The transition from silent films to sound was jerky and complicated. There was panic at the studios from both the front office and the contract players who had thrived during the silent era. Would they survive the transition? Would the public accept their matinee idols speaking at all? Would their voices, their accents enhance or crush their careers? Into this maelstrom comes The Hollywood Revue of 1929, a de facto reintroduction to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's cavalcade of stars. The Hollywood Revue pulled out as many stops as it was able to, leading a series of performances both entertaining and not.

There is no plot in The Hollywood Revue of 1929. It is exactly what it bills itself as: a series of performances, mostly comedy sketches and musical numbers, where almost every MGM contract player participated (Lon Chaney and Greta Garbo being the most noticeable absences). Hosted mostly by Jack Benny with occasional intros by Conrad Nagel, The Hollywood Revue had a variety of numbers.

We had Joan Crawford doing a song-and-dance routine to Got a Feeling for You. Marie Dressler performed For I Am the Queen, a more comic musical number.  MGM's resident musical heartthrob Charlie King had a good number of musical numbers. Some were serious, like Orange Blossom Time (one of two color sequences). Some were comic, such as Charlie, Gus and Ike, a number first with Gus Edwards and "Ukulele Ike" Cliff Edwards (no relation) then joined by Dressler, Polly Moran and Bessie Love as the trio Marie, Polly and Bess. 

The only non-musical or comedy number and the other color sequence was a staging of the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet performed by John Gilbert and Norma Shearer. This part, which is in the posher Act II of The Hollywood Revue, starts out straight. Once the filming ends, their "director" Lionel Barrymore tells them that he's been instructed to keep the story but change the name, the characters and the setting. Thus, Shearer and Gilbert perform the scene again but with contemporary dialogue.

The Hollywood Revue of 1929 received a Best Picture Academy Award nomination. It boggles the mind to think that if not for The Broadway Melody (another MGM film starring King, Love and another Hollywood Revue player, Anita Page), this would have gone done as a Best Picture winner. If The Hollywood Revue is remembered at all, it is more for bits and pieces than for the film itself.

Out of The Hollywood Revue came the song Singing in the Rain (sic). It is performed twice: first by Ukulele Ike, later reprised by almost everyone else who appeared in the film for a big splashy finale. This section is referred to in the abomination that is known as Babylon, though how both tie into the other one does not care to find out. Another song from Singin' in the Rain (You Were Meant for Me) originated in The Broadway Melody but was repurposed here. 

The posh Nagel, having been told by King that Nagel's image as a romantic lead precludes him having a singing career, proves him wrong by crooning You Were Meant for Me to King's Broadway Melody costar Page. It is a fake, as it is King who dubs Nagel, but the sight gag of Charlie King shrinking in defeat is a nice one.

It is a surprise to see The Hollywood Revue use special visual effects. You had two actors (King and Love) appear smaller, and Love managed to "grow" when Jack Benny asked her to come out of his pocket. Another number with Marion Davies showed her dancing towards us by appearing to go under the legs of British soldiers then emerge fully formed in front of them. This Military March had the sight gag of having Davies appear to move the straight line with her breath. While Military March does not make the case that Marion Davies was a strong musical performer, the final part where she gets twirled like a bayonet by all these men in succession is a marvel to behold.

One might not imagine Joan Crawford cutting the rug and looking happy about it, but she did quite well. Curiously, apart from the Got a Feeling for You and the closing number, Crawford does not appear again in The Hollywood Revue. There is a bit of a herky-jerky manner to the presentations in the film. William Haines, a popular silent film actor who specialized in charming cads, appears exactly once in a curious bit where he tears bits of Jack Benny's clothes. I don't know if this was some offbeat commentary on Haines' homosexuality, but it is rather pointless and unfunny. 

I think director Charles Reisner (with uncredited work from Christy Cabanne and Norman Houston) along with screenwriters Al Boasberg and Robert E. Hopkins made a terrible mistake by trying to make things light and breezy. There is nothing wrong with many of the comedy bits: the Laurel & Hardy sequence as a pair of bumbling magicians and Dressler's For I'm the Queen number were amusing. It is rather that the first section is more comic hijinks, and the second is posher. You have a pair of beautiful ballet sequences and the Romeo and Juliet section, so fitting them into some of the musical and comedy bits feels haphazard. You have a straightforward ballet number, then a comic ballet number with Buster Keaton as Neptune's daughter. While this section has excellent faux-underwater filming, the dichotomy is curious.

As a side note, Buster Keaton is the only one who does not actually speak in The Hollywood Revue.

The Hollywood Revue is held up as a reason for why John Gilbert, the Great Lover, faded into obscurity. The legend is that his voice was squeaky, and audiences laughed at his efforts at playing Romeo. This idea that Gilbert had a comically bad voice is, I think, reinforced in Singin' in the Rain albeit via the character of Lina Lamont. Having seen The Hollywood Revue, I don't find anything wrong with John Gilbert's voice. It is slightly on the high side, but nothing resembling Mickey Mouse. In between the traditional and contemporary take on Romeo and Juliet (which Barrymore has been told to call The Neckers), we hear Gilbert and Shearer have dialogue as themselves.

Again, John Gilbert sounds fine. His natural speaking voice is perfectly acceptable, solidly American and a good tenor. The problem is in the acting. Both he and Shearer way overacted the balcony scene to where it did veer dangerously close to farce. While both were exaggerated, I would argue that is Shearer who is more over the top than Gilbert. His mannerism and hand gestures may have been on the broad side. Shearer, however, was overwrought to where she transcended parody. After seeing The Hollywood Revue, I simply am gob smacked that Shearer was given another crack at our Maiden of Verona in the 1936 version of Romeo and Juliet. Her Juliet in The Hollywood Revue was pretty bad. Her Juliet in the 1936 version of Romeo and Juliet was an Oscar-nominated disaster. 

The Hollywood Revue of 1929 is a time capsule of a studio, of a whole industry, in flux. Keeping to the traditions of a standard revue with various musical and comedy numbers, I think an opportunity to showcase MGM's stable of stars was if not lost at least misapplied. Still an interesting, even entertaining film though a bit long, The Hollywood Revue of 1929 does its best to show actors can talk, sing and dance, or at least try.

DECISION: C+