What Price Hollywood? (1932) on Netflix
Mary Evans waits tables at the Brown Derby and charms Max Carey, a film director who is very drunk. He invites her to a premiere and promises her a screen test.
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- Netflix3.8/5
- IMDb7.0/102,933 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes83%
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Plot summary
Max Carey is a film director who drinks heavily. One night he comes into the Brown Derby, where the waitress Mary Evans amuses him, and he asks her to join him at a premiere. He collects her in a jalopy instead of a limousine and leaves the car with the parking valet as a tip. The next morning he recalls nothing of the evening, and Mary reminds him of the screen test he promised and says she worries about his drinking. Her first attempt at the test fails, and she pleads for a second chance. After long rehearsals she films the scene again, and the producer Julius Saxe offers her a contract.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about What Price Hollywood? (1932)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Producer David O. Selznick wanted Clara Bow for the female lead in What Price Hollywood?, but RKO's New York executives were wary of a Hollywood story because similar projects had failed before; by the time Selznick convinced them, Bow was committed to another film.
- The plot of What Price Hollywood? heavily inspired A Star Is Born (1937), a legacy that led to three remakes: 1954, directed by George Cukor and starring Judy Garland and James Mason; 1976, directed by Frank Pierson and starring Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson; and 2018, directed by and starring Bradley Cooper alongside Lady Gaga.
- Adela Rogers St. Johns loosely based her story for What Price Hollywood? on actress Colleen Moore, her husband, the alcoholic producer John McCormick, and on the life and death of director Tom Forman, who killed himself after a nervous breakdown.
- Four years after What Price Hollywood?, David O. Selznick hired Rowland Brown to direct the reworked script, now called A Star Is Born and set to star Janet Gaynor and Fredric March, but fired him when he refused to rewrite it. Selznick then asked George Cukor, who declined because the plot was still too similar to his earlier film.
- RKO executives considered suing Selznick International Pictures for plagiarism over the similarities between What Price Hollywood? and A Star Is Born, but decided against legal action; none of the original film's writers were credited on the remake.
- Selznick first promised the direction of What Price Hollywood? to writer-director Rowland Brown, but after Brown rewrote the script Selznick replaced him with George Cukor.
