Hollywood on Hollywood

In my opinion Hollywood does some of its best work when it turns the camera around and tells stories about itself. It obviously has insight into the entertainment world. So pictures about movies or Broadway all seem to be letting the rest of the world in on what goes on behind the curtain or what happens after the camera stops rolling.

Hollywood has always done these types of movies. Remember, the first talking picture was The Jazz Singer. In the thirties there were all those Broadway Melodies movies, the first A Star I Born movie, Stage Door with Katherine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers.

However, Hollywood on Hollywood did not reach its peak until the 50's. This decade saw some of the best ever made films about the entertainment world. Perhaps in response to the growing popularity of television, Hollywood chose a subject it knew well to drag people away from the living room and back to the theatres.

Early in the decade Hollywood made two of it's best pictures ever. Sunset Blvd and Singing in The Rain. Sunset Blvd is about a silent film queen who lives in seclusion after her career has faded, Gloria Swanson once said that the movie is far from her actual life. Yes, but other actresses such as Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich did choose seclusion after there careers ended.

In Singing In The Rain we have a brilliant musical comedy that pokes fun at a real life dilemma that occurred to many actors and actresses when sound film came in. Too many had faces and not voices and thus couldn't make the transition to talking films.

Around this time All About Eve came out. This stars Bette Davis as a star being overthrown by a sneaky ingénue. We, the audience get to see the backstabbing and ass kissing that can sometimes play in becoming a star. Also of note in this movie is Marilyn Monroe in a small role of an actress attempting to sleep her way to fame. An image that would always be a part of her.

Marilyn would go on to star in There's No Business Like Show Business, about a show business family that goes from vaudeville to Broadway. This movie also starred Donald O'Connor who was in Singing In The Rain. O'Connor would also star as Buster Keaton in a film based on his life. It wasn't the best film ever made but it showed Keaton as a genius who became a drunk.

Judy Garland, who did plenty of "lets put on a show" movies earlier in her career, would give us her swan song in the early fifties. She made the second remake to A Star Is Born. In it she plays an up incoming star as her husbands career spirals down with the help of alcohol.

Since these films were made, we have had many good films about the entertainment industry. Barbra Streisand spearheading many of them with Funny Girl, based on the life of Fanny Brice, and a third remake of A Star Is Born. Only, this remake switched from movies to the world of Rock N Roll. Even The Way We Were is about the process of making films. Remember the scene where Robert Redford, as screen writer Hubbel Gardner, is upset because the producer is questioning his script.

The 70's saw the bio flick Lady Sings The Blues about the life of Billy Holiday. Also Network, a movie about television, came out and was far ahead of its time. It ends with an on air death. Shocking when it first came out, but after 9/11, on air deaths are too much of a reality to ever be shocking in a movie again.

In 1992 Robert Altman would give us the brilliant The Player which takes place entirely around the film industry. That same year Robert Downey Jr did a remarkable job portraying Charlie Chaplin in Chaplin. Ian McKellen starred as James Whale, the director of the original Frankenstein movie, in Gods And Monsters in 1998. In 2001 Mariah Carey would steal the plot from A Star Is Born for Glitter.

Okay, so Hollywood is still making movies about themselves. However, it reached its peak in the early fifties when it first allowed the world to see behind the lenses. Let us see that actors and actresses are all to human. Prior to these movies Hollywood stars were almost mythical. But after the fifties they became the humans they always were.