I had the pleasure of watching this 19-minute short filled with a whole slew of MGM stars. The premise of the story is that at a ball the previous night, Norma Shearer's jewels went missing. A detective sets on the case bumping into suspicious MGM stars along the way.
Everyone is a suspect! There are lots of cameos and its fun to watch purely for star spotting. Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, Edward G. Robinson, Buster Keaton, Gary Cooper, the Little Rascals, Irene Dunne, Richard Barthelmess (I nearly fell out of my chair when I saw him!) and Barbara Stanwyck among others.
Some of the scenes make sense, but it's a little ridiculous when the introductions are stilted like:
"Hey I know you, you're Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. And everybody knows you! You're Loretta Young!"
Really? Run out of ideas, mayhaps? Besides that, it's campy fun and a pleasure to watch! You'll find it among the Bonus Materials on the Laurel & Hardy DVD The Flying Deuces.
This is a GREAT movie. I love the moment when Stan Laurel presses a button in their car that makes it self-destruct.
ReplyDeleteI particularly like the curious movies that came out of Hollywood, shorts like this in which you think, 'When and how was this shown?', 'Why was it made?', and also the fun of star-spotting.
Great choice.
Christian,
classicfilmshow.com
I just taped Hollywood Revue of 1929 when it was on TCM recently. What an abundance of MGM stars, yay! I like myself an all-star cast. Which is definitely why I enjoyed Stolen Jools.
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