Hollywood Cavalcade is a good example of the cinematic conservatism of the Fox comedies in the late ’30s and early ’40s. Narratively, it’s a hash of genres — “a star is born,” historical nostalgia, biopic, backstage romance (“backlot” in this case), film-about-films, American go-getter more interested in his work than in the girl who loves him, and straight-up silent slapstick.
Its story is a pastiche of cliches. It’s 1913. Young understudy Broadway actress Molly Adair (Alice Faye) is “discovered” by an elegant Hollywood prop-boy Michael Linnet Connors (Don Ameche) with Big Plans. He pretends to be a big shot director and tricks Molly, who’s reluctant to leave the New York stage for the “moving pictures,” into believing she’s getting a huge contract. He eventually does make her into a star and himself into a director almost entirely through his fast-talking energy and self-confidence. He starts Molly out in slapstick silents and gradually curates her into a big screen melodramatic diva. Molly loves him but despairs that he cares for her only as his product. She marries one of her handsome and attentive co-stars instead. There’s tragedy, a hospital bed, and a final reconciliation.
It begins promising a comedy — which it delivers brilliantly for a while — then degenerates into trite mawkery. It was apparently a prized project of studio head Darryl Zanuck, who oversaw the writing, had it filmed in Technicolor (Faye’s first such presentation), transformed it from a musical into a dwama (cutting Faye’s three songs), making it the first film in which Faye did not sing. Cavalcade was a nostalgia product through and through. The core story is said to have been based on the relationship of Mack Sennett and the actress Mabel Norman, and if that were not enough, Sennett was hired as a consultant and even appears as himself in the film. The generic hash is justified (I guess) by presenting the history of Hollywood from the silents to the present as an evolution of increasingly sophisticated seriousness. Instead, it gives the impression of a steady decline in energy and freedom after the high point of silent comedy.
Fox made a lot of these nostalgia films with Faye — In Old Chicago, Hello Frisco Hello, Tin Pan Alley, Rose of Washington Square, Alexander’s Ragtime Band — most of which were spirited musicals. Hollywood Cavalcade has none of that spirit. But one part of it is memorably, spectacularly good. Molly arrives in Hollywood with Michael thinking she’s on the path to dramatic stardom. But when she appears on the set for her first shooting, she’s in for a big surprise. The great silent comedy director Malcolm St. Clair was hired to direct two slapstick sequences, and Buster Keaton was hired to act in them. They are priceless. The first is a pie-throwing donnybrook that was probably based on Laurel and Hardy 1927 beauty, “The Battle of the Century.” Many in the audience would have recognized the nostalgia, but Faye’s spontaneous surprise makes it live. In Faye’s own account, one of Keaton’s pies hit her so hard she grabbed one of her own and chased him into the studio lot with it. It’s bona fide funny.
Molly becomes a major comedy star and gets to star in a Keystone Kops short, “Help! Murder! Police!” Veteran Keystoners were hired for the the job and it’s great stuff. Faye is said to have enjoyed making the film more than any of her others. It’s easy to see why.
Hollywood Cavalcade did not, and could not, keep this up. But these few minutes of laughing gas are all that remain in memory.
Even these inspired recreations of the Hal Roach comic world are a bit precious. How could they not be, in 1939? So it’s worth reminding ourselves how free — and free of preciosity — the originals were. Here’s Laurel and Hardy’s monumental pie-fight.
