The Goldwyn Follies

7/28/2020

There is a sense of both hesitancy and confidence in this strange work from Samuel Goldwyn. The former comes through in the need to try and sell the idea of culture in the form of opera and ballet to his audience by having it seen and endorsed through the eyes of Miss Humanity, an honest rural woman hired by studio head Adolphe Menjou to give an average person's perspective on how movies should unfold. This not-so-subtle tool provides something of a gateway for the film to introduce class acts that might have been seen as inaccessible to rural audiences. The confidence lies in the willingness of Goldwyn to throw everything into this production from comedians to a ventriliquist, from ballet to opera and moments of comedy and romance. Many of the early musicals are a mix of skits of on

6/20/2022

Adolphe Menjou is producer "Oliver Merlin" who selects "Hazel Dawes" (Andrea Leeds) to be his modern day arbiter elgantiae - to keep him in touch with the mood of the ordinary person on the street. Good idea, in principle, but he doesn't particularly agree with her; nor does he really know how to implement her information - so what we end up with here is a bit of a shambles of a film. Comedy, opera, (good - Vera Zorina) ballet, ventriloquism, dancing - you name it, but much of it to no great standard. It reminded me of one of the "Good Old Day's" type Vaudeville theatrical performances that tried to have something for just about everyone; and though all get their five minutes of fame, the rest of it is of little interest. What is of note is that it was the final creative effort from George