65 years before Elizabeth Berkley & Co.

Another of the movies that I recorded and watched off my DVR recently is the early talkie Show Girl in Hollywood.

Alice White plays Dixie Dugan, reprising a character she had played in Show Girl at the end of the silent era. She the star of her writer-boyfriend Jimmie's (Jack Mulhall) broadway play "Rainbow Girls". But unfortunately, the play has closed after a short run. However, Frank Buelow (John Miljan) was in the audience, and works out in Hollywood. He tells Dixie that she'd be great in the movies, and that he'll bring her out to Hollywood to make her a star.

Dixie is surprisingly naïve, and follows Buelow out to California despite Jimmie's advice against it. Jimmie was right. Buelow's boss at the studio, Sam Otis (Ford Sterling) doesn't want Dixie at all, because ingenues are a dime a dozen, and that's with inflation. And when Dixie keeps pushing herself, Otis responds by releasing Buelow from his contract, even though he keeps telling Dixie he can get her a job.

Dixie runs into Donny Harris (Blanche Sweet), a star who used to be big (or maybe still is if the pictures are getting small) and has most of the rooms in her mansion shut off and unfurnished while she keeps up the illusion of being big even if she's a has-been at 32. It'll happen to Dixie too, she warns. But Dixie is just so stupidely hopeful.

Surprisingly, she's justified in her hopefulness. Buelow was such a bad guy that in addition to bringing Dixie out to Hollywood, he also ripped off "Rainbow Girls" from Jimmie. Otis finds out about the copyright problems and offers to buy the rights from Jimmie, especially because he remembers an ingenue who would be right for the role, which just happens to be Dixie. Jimmie is willing to let "Rainbow Girls" be filmed, but only if his girlfriend gets to play the lead as she had done on the stage. They don't realize for a while that they're talking about the same person.

So Dixie gets the job and everybody lives happily ever after. Not by a long shot. Dixie gets Donny a role in the movie, but Buelow continues to be a jerk and gives Dixie ideas about how to do the movie that will sabotage it. This costs Dixie and Donny their jobs, and now Donny is at the end of her rope....

There's a reason why early musicals were generally not well-received on the big screen until Busby Berkeley and 42nd Street came along, and Show Girl in Hollywood is, I think, an example of why. To be fair, it's not terrible, but many of the plot points about the Hollywood newcomer weren't new even if their use in talking pictures was. One of the songs, sung by Blanche Sweet for no reason, brings the movie to a halt, while the climactic musical number at the end is also extremely static. Alice White gets the interesting "I've Got My Eye on You", which is well-used as Jimmie trying to get Dixie noticed at a nightclub.

Show Girl in Hollywood is a creaky curiosity that probably ought to be on DVD in one of those old four-movie box sets that Warner Home Video used to put out. However, it only seems to be on a Warner Archive DVD, which is a shame considering how relatively pricey they are.