HOLLYWOOD CAVALCADE (2oth Century-Fox 1939) Fox Home Video

Okay, someone at Fox Home Video’s marketing department has fallen asleep at the controls because Irving Cumming’s Hollywood Cavalcade (1939) is NOT a musical – so billed on its cover art and as part of the Alice Faye Collection Vol. II. Rather, Cumming’s quaint expedition is meant to be a loving and humorous portrait of the early days of movie-making in California. Unhappy circumstance, as an entertainment, it tends to fall apart into turgid recreations of actual events we remember more fondly elsewhere from the cinema firmament. Based on an idea from Lou Breslow, the screenplay by Ernest Pascal takes the fictional character of Michael Linnett Connors (Don Ameche) and runs with its visualization of him as the ‘all-in-one movie’ mogul who basically created the movie industry single-handedly. At varying points in the screenplay, Mike takes on the flavor of a Mack Sennett, Cecil B. DeMille, Louis B. Mayer and even, Darryl F. Zanuck (the real man who discovered Rin-Tin-Tin). However, the fusing of all these great men into one has a devastating effect on Linnett’s humanity. This isn’t a creative genius, but a picture-producing machine, Linnett’s only true love being the movies.

Unhappy circumstance for Molly Adair Hayden (Alice Faye) who long pines in her unrequited desire to have Mike take notice of her as anything more than a movie star. When first Mike and Molly meet, she is a Broadway understudy who has had her big break after the star gets sick. Born in a trunk…anyone? Mike, having taken on the persona of Flo Ziegfeld first, is – rather predictably, in the audience that particular night and, with buddy Dave Springold (J. Edward Bromberg) cajoles Molly into accepting a studio contract in California. Molly is naturally skeptical. The movies…what’s that? Her curiosity gets confirmed after she reluctantly makes the journey to the coast, only to discover Mike is – wait for it - an office boy, aspiring to greatness within the fledgling movie industry. Nevertheless, Molly is a big hit in pictures when she accidentally takes a pie in the kisser from Buster Keaton in her first silent short. Soon, Mike – having abandoned Ziegfeld’s loftier aspirations to morph into Max Sennett - is brimming with ideas. He creates the spectacle of the ‘bathing beauty’, then moves into the realm of slapstick with Ben Turpin and later, The Keystone Cops. Finally, Mike launches into a grand epic, a la Cecile B. DeMille.

What is particularly frustrating about Hollywood Cavalcade is its slap-dash plot structure; Ernest Pascal’s screenplay moving through an endless parade of vignettes depicting Hollywood’s early history with only Mike’s unbound determination to act as our narrative coupling. Having Alice Faye in a movie where she never utilizes her greatest singing talent is, frankly, a travesty. Throughout, one waits in baited anticipation for the turgid snippets to dissolve into a ballad or dance routine from the elegant Ms. Faye. Honestly, with so many Faye performances still absent on DVD, why Hollywood Cavalcade was chosen ahead of the pack – especially to be included in a box set billed as Faye’s greatest ‘musicals’ remains a mystery.

Fox Home Video’s DVD is a disappointment. Though restoration efforts have managed to more closely align the mis-registered 3-strip Technicolor, owing to Fox’s shoddy and shortsighted film preservation efforts from the past, the color palette here is grotesquely faded and continues to be slightly out of focus on several glaring occasions. Flesh tones are a pasty pink/orange. As no fine grain elements presumably exist, and certainly, no 3-strip separations to be able to re-combine the image digitally, the best one might have hoped for was a little digitally tinkered color correction and basic clean-up. Yet, even this has not been applied. Fine details are mostly lost in a non-descript middle range.  Even close-ups look fuzzy. Contrast is a tad anemic. The audio is 1.0 Dolby Digital and presented at an adequate listening level. Extras include three featurettes (one on the movie, one on Buster Keaton, and another on the notorious, Fatty Arbuckle), a Movietone short, ‘restoration’ comparison and advertising/stills galleries. Bottom line: NOT recommended!

FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)

2

VIDEO/AUDIO

2

EXTRAS

3