Alice in Movieland

I had a few things in my queue to blog about, but not having finished up something off the DVR, I decided to watch a short off the Sea Hawk DVD: Alice in Movieland.

Now, the first think I noticed was the copyright date: 1947, which seemed odd considering that Joan Leslie was the star and Jean Negulesco the director. However, it turns out that the short was re-released at the turn of 1946/7, and was originally released in 1940 (see the IMDb page), which makes more sense since by 1946 Leslie and Negulesco had become big enough not to be doing shorts like this.

Anyhow, the story is a fairly trite one that reminded me a lot of A Star is Born. Leslie plays Alice Purdee, a girl from Anytown, USA who wins a beauty contest with the prize of a trip to Hollywood for a screen test. However, she finds that actually becoming a star isn't as easy as she thought. There's even character actress Clara Blandick as her grandmother back in her small town, reminiscent of the May Robson character in A Star Is Born.

One thing that made me wonder whether the release date was correct was a scene where Alice goes to a talent show at a nightclub, and a bunch of Hollywood stars (all Warners stars, of course, since this was made at Warner Bros.!) are out in the audience. They mention Alexis Smith, who I thought wasn't a star yet, although she had made some shorts. I'm guessing they might have redone the audio. Ditto for Craig Stevens. Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman are shown together, which made me look up exactly when they got married. That turned out to be about two months before the short was originally released. (They were still married at the time of the re-release.)

Alice in Movieland isn't great but it isn't bad. But The Sea Hawk is worth it, so getting the extras is just a bonus.