Word: hollywood
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...that the nation is to have a truly democratic government, guarding the interests of the common people from the selfish mess of plutocratic blood-suckers, something should be done about the cinemas which Hollywood magnates foist upon the public and on the theatres. The producers appear to have at their disposal money, talent, equipment, everything, except taste and intelligence. "Blonde Venus" is a case to the point...
...remembers the "Merry Widow" can quite forgive Von sternberg his recent perpetrations, but "use doth breed a habit in a man" and the director has not been able to discard his former habits of originality and his finesse, even though sloppy work is now the mode for Hollywood. He knows very well how to make a good shot, how to make five extra and Marlene Dietrich Paddling about in a property pound look like six syivan nymphs; he can throw the property sordid glamour over Marline, the whore refusing a be in a flop-house because she intends to return...
...love, a Sherlock Holmes who knows the cute trick of discovering biscuit crumbs on people's waistcoats, who pronounces "elementary" with the grand air, who jumps out of high balconies onto villainous necks, who wields acetylene torches and shoots to kill. This is no Sherlock Holmes, this is Hollywood's "Masterful" attempt to shatter an illusion...
...cement floors, of dead ones breathing heartily, hanging stiffly on steel staircases, & splendid tumult to make audiences forgive and forget. The rest is too much. There is a conglomeration of leers pineapples, cockney, forgeries, subway tunnels into bank vaults, of everything in fact as far from characteristically London as Hollywood could contrive...
Scarlet Dawn (Warner). Soviet Russia interests Hollywood profoundly. Most of the major producers feel sure that there is a good scenario somewhere in the Five-Year Plan and they are trying hard to find it. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer has spent $200,000 trying to do so without success; whatever Warner Brothers spent on this picture can safely be listed on the wrong side of the ledger also. This is the fault, not of Douglas Fairbanks Jr. who acts in the picture and helped Niven Busch Jr. write an intelligent adaptation from Mary McCall's novel, but of a weakness...