Hollywood Goes to Town

I watched another of those movies off of my DVR where TCM had enough time after the feature to program a short. This time, it wasn't quite a traditional short, but one that was in part a promo for one of MGM's features: Hollywood Goes to Town.

The movie starts off with an odd bit about different parts of the US having different local traditions: Mardi Gras for New Orleans, the Indianapolis 500 for Indianapolis, and so on. For Los Angeles, that tradition is the star-studded movie premiere, this back in the day when such premieres were still broadcast nationwide on a coast-to-coast hookup. Think Janet Gaynor at the end of A Star is Born telling America that she is Mrs. Norman Maine. We then get behind-the-scenes footage of the Carthay Circle theater, where preparations are being made for the big premiere of MGM's prestige film Marie Antoinette.

After preparations are finished, it's time for the big night, and the narrator helpfully tells us who's walking down the red carpet, which isn't necessarily limited to MGM's contract players although several of them show up. There's Claudette Colbert, as well as the spouses of some of MGM's big stars, namely Carole Lombard (married to Clark Gable) and Barbara Stanwyck during her marriage to Robert Taylor. This being a one-reeler, that's pretty much all there is to the film.

Well, there are a few other points to note. IMDb lists this as being released in July 1938. With that in mind, I wondered when exactly Marie Antoinette was released. The IMDb page says the Hollywood premiere was July 8. This short definitely looks like it was rushed into production. More interesting is the soundtrack. Herbert Stothart is credited with the music on Marie Antoinette. On the other hand, Hollywood Goes to Town has a credit in the opening for music by David Snell. And yet, the print TCM ran has several scenes (notably of fireworks) that sound like they should have music but are silent. I looked up David Snell, and there's no indication that he was caught up in the Hollywood blacklist, which was the one reason I could think of why music might be removed from a movie. But in that case MGM probably would have edited out Snell's credit entirely. And I find it hard to believe they'd go back and edit an obscure short like this. So I don't know why there's so little music, and why MGM might pick shots of fireworks with the deliberate intent of running them with no music backing them.