Priscilla Dean looks like a cross between Drew Barrymore and Tina Fey. She’s easily the best part of this forgettable movie.
I had three movie choices for Raymond Griffith:
A comedy called Hands Up! that’s available in very poor quality on YouTube
The 1930 version of All Quiet on the Western Front, where Griffith has a very small but memorable part
This movie
I probably should have gone with Hands Up!. It’s a comedy, and he was a famous silent comedian (his nickname: The Man with the Silk Hat). But I’ll try to make it up to you, Raymond. If All Quiet on the Western Front comes up as an option for someone with a larger part, I’ll watch it.
Today’s fake poster is based on a different “Color + Animal” movie.
This is the last star at 6124 Hollywood Boulevard. Next up: 6140!
I wish there was a clearer picture, but how much can you expect to find from a movie that’s over a century old?
I’m starting a new project (because lord knows I need more projects). The Hollywood Walk of Fame has not-quite 3000 stars on it, and about 1200 of those were awarded for motion picture achievements. My goal: to have seen at least one movie that each one of the honorees worked on. One movie can represent multiple people/groups, so it should be far fewer than 1200 movies total. I’m going to start on the southeast end of Hollywood Boulevard, work my way down the south side, then come back up the north side. After that, the same idea going up and down Vine. I’m using Wikipedia’s version of the list. If someone doesn’t have a motion picture star (even if they’ve done a ton of movies) I’m not counting them.
There are seven stars at 6100 Hollywood. I remember seeing movies from three of them:
Stanley Kramer: Produced High Noon, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
Gregory Peck: starred in To Kill a Mockingbird, The Omen, and a billion other movies.
Jimmy Smits: surprisingly few films. I’ve definitely seen him in Attack of the Clones & Rogue One, though.
The other four: William C. de Mille, Juanita Moore, and Gregory Ratoff.
Today’s movie takes care of director William C. de Mille, older brother of Cecil B. DeMille (who changed the spelling of his name to look cool). He wrote a lot of scripts based on plays. Miss Lulu Betts was originally a novel, then a play.
That’s him!
This is a comedy based on a nonsense premise: two people pretending to marry are told the wedding was accidentally real. It’s about as feminist as a 105 year old movie directed by a man could manage, and it’s pretty fun. It’s on Youtube.
Today’s fake poster is a Lulu.
Three more movies and I get to move all the way to 6104 Hollywood Boulevard!
There’s a lot they hadn’t learned how to do in movies in 1920, but this movie pushes to do the most it can with the available tools and knowledge. No color? Tint the whole frame! No fades? Use oddly-shaped irises! Continuity between shots in a scene? We’ll do that next time and trust the audience to figure it out!
It’s also pretty amazing to see that so many foundational elements of modern horror movies are in here. Mysterious characters, plot twists, multiple suspects, a surprise ending: they’re all there!
Is this movie good by today’s standards? Not really. Is it a revolutionary movie for its time? Absolutely.
And was it funny for me to watch this for the first time decades after watching Forbidden Zone? Oh, so funny.
This may shock you, but there aren’t great photos available from this movie. But I did manage to pull one that sort-of matched the style of the posters I decided to parody.
