The Goldwyn Follies (1938)
Is it a Comedy? Is it a Musical? Is it a Satire? Is it a Love Story? Is it worth watching?
Don't worry yourself. If you catch this clinker on some late-nite TV station, you'll be asleep long before these questions even pop into your mind.
The plot (such as it is) in a nutshell:
There's this Hollywood producer named Oliver who has a reputation of making bad movies. (Hmmmmmm... Wonder where they got that idea!??) The audiences roar with laughter through his films, especially during any death scenes.
One day, while Mr. Merlin (no relation to Arthur's Merlin that I'm aware of, though I doubt even magic could have helped out here) was filming his latest 'blockbuster' in a small town, he happened upon a delightful young lady named Hazel who just happened to be sitting in the local Soda Fountain sipping her soda. (Hmmmmmm... Wonder where they got that idea!??) At that particular moment, Hazel is explaining to her friend why movies are so bad. Oliver is immediately smitten with the girl's honesty and insight (read: 'tight sweaters') and offers to whisk her away to the glamour of Hollywood where she will be hired as his adviser. Hazel would become the voice of 200 million Americans, complete with a new name: 'Miss Humanity'. (I think she would have preferred 'Lana' or 'Gloria'.)
Now, Mr. Merlin wants to protect his new Miss Humanity from Hollywood and smuggles her in and out of the studio under a blanket. He buys her a small home and hires a chaperone to protect her from the outside world. (I wonder where the 'humanity' comes in?) At her new home, Merlin reads new screenplays to Haz... er... 'Miss Humanity'... and devours every idea she has. One of the screenplays is Romeo and Juliet, but the ending is too sad for Miss Humanity and she suggests changing it to allow the lovers to live happily ever after.
So... Merlin re-writes Shakespeare.
Along the way, Oliver must also incorporate other talents scheduled for the film: a horrendous Russian actress named Olga; a trio of Marx Brothers Wannabes (the Ritz Brothers); and a severely untalented accordionist who is constantly recast as a gigolo, a doorman, a French customs officer, and a Russian impresario.
The story he comes up with goes something like this: the accordionist runs away from the Russian actress. The actress falls in love with a gondolier. For reasons know only to Oliver, a 'Water Nymph Ballet' appears where the Russian actress pops out of a pool, dances around with a man in evening clothes, climbs around on a huge statue of a horse, then jumps back into the pool. The Ritz Brothers then appear on a Venetian canal and serenade a fish. Finally, a soprano pops out of nowhere and sings some arias from La Traviata. Well, this is exactly what America wants to see according to Miss Humanity!
All Merlin needs now is a gondolier, who Hazel discovers when she wanders into a small hamburger stand and sees the short-order cook flipping burgers and belting out tuned by George Gershwin (with full-orchestra accompaniment, no less!).
So... here we are... the film is being made with Mr. Burgerflipper as the gondolier, but, much to Oliver's chagrin, Mr. B. and Miss H. fall in love and want to start making a family as soon as possible. But!! Oliver has fallen in love with Hazel, too!! (If this surprised you, go to the back of the class!) He tells Hazel that, if she marries burgerboy, he'll be kicked out of the picture. Mr. B. promptly stands up to Merlin and claims that, if he can't marry Hazel, he will quit on his own! (Ooooo! The tension mounts!!! Yawn...)
Merlin, who admires the young man's courage, has a sudden change of heart, gives his blessing to the couple, and grants the singing chef a 5-year contract with the studio. (Hey! It could happen!)
The entire cast then gathers around the piano for one more round of Gershwin before the movie fades into oblivion.
Here's a sample of some of the dialogue you may want to miss (chorus to the Ritz Brothers' song):
Here pussy pussy pussy pussy pussy pussy pussy
Here pussy pussy pussy pussy pussy pussy pussy
Here pussy pussy pussy pussy pussy pussy pussy
Here pussy pussy pussy pussy pussy pussy pussy
Here pussy pussy pussy pussy pussy pussy pussy
Where is the dog-gone cat?
The Goldwyn Follies was intended to make Samuel Goldwyn the 'Ziegeld' of Hollywood. To this end, he hired George and Ira Gershwin to write the music and lyrics for his movie, but George had the audacity to die before writing the key music for the ballet. Ira tried to convince Goldwyn to use highlights from George's 'An American in Paris', but Goldwyn considered that to 'highbrow' for his audience. He was quoted as saying, "What would the miners of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, think of it?" (Wonder what they though of La Traviata!??) Instead, Goldwyn hired a two-bit composer named Vernon Duke to compose the remainder of the score.
Throughout the pre-filming stage, Goldwyn hired 9 of Hollywood's most gifted writers to create his dream, but after treatments, scripts and rewrites were rejected over a two-year period, Goldwyn suddenly found himself two weeks away from shooting with no workable script. In desperation, he hired Ben 'The Front Page' Hecht to pull everything together. The fact that Hecht wrote the script in only two weeks may account for the dismal results.
Another key 'selling point' of the movie was a 'glorious new color technique', yet, with all of this emphasis on colour, Goldwyn (for reasons known only unto himself) hired a black and white camera artist. When questioned on this choice, Goldwyn simply answered, "Toland always photographs color; it just comes out black and white."
