Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Awesome Movie

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

The siren song of Hollywood gets skewered in this rarely seen Paramount comedy from director William Beaudine. The forgotten Stuart Erwin stars as Merton Gill, a small town grocery clerk who dreams of becoming a cowboy star on a par with his screen idol, Buck Benson. Discouraged and ridiculed by everyone in town except erstwhile screenwriter Tessie (Helen Eddy), Merton ups sticks for Tinsel Town and sets his sights on Majestic Studios, where Benson rides the celluloid range. Rejected by the casting office but with his confidence unshaken, he finally lands a role as a comic straight man thanks to the machinations of actress Flips Montague (gorgeous Joan Blondell). Trouble is, Merton thinks he's been cast in a serious role, but when the film's premiere reveals otherwise, tears and recriminations are the order of the day. Make Me A Star also features ZaSu Pitts, silent comic Ben Turpin, and a host of bigger Paramount stars in "on set" cameos, including Gary Cooper, Maurice Chevalier, Claudette Colbert, and Fredric March. It's tremendous fun.

I must first point out that I have never seen the silent version or the Red Skelton remake (both titled "Merton of the movies"), so I really cannot compare this film to the previous or later versions.The film begins in a small town. Local boy, Merton (Stu Erwin) has ambitions to become a cowboy star in movies and has just completed his correspondence course in acting. However, it's obvious to the viewer that Merton, though likable, is a terrible actor and a bit of a boob. So, when he heads off for Hollywood it's not surprising he is in way over his head. However, a lady at the studio (Joan Blondell) feels sorry for him after weeks of coming in to the casting office and helps him get a job. But, he's terrible at acting and they haven't the heart to tell this nice guy. In fact, he's so bad they decide to cast him in a comedy--but not tell him it's NOT a serious western. In the end, he discovers the ruse and feels heartbroken...and then the movie unexpectedly ends.This film has kernels of a good film but doesn't quite make it. Sure, Erwin in likable (as usual) but he's too serious and pathetic in the film to make this a comedy--and at times, I felt uncomfortable watching him. He was, instead of funny, quite pathetic. I assume Skelton played it more for laughs--and that's probably a better way to have played it. In addition, the film has no real ending...it just stops and seems quite incomplete. An interesting but flawed concept.By the way, Harold Lloyd made a similar film but it was much, much, much better. "Movie Crazy" is a terrific film about a boob who arrives in Hollywood and has no idea that the folks are laughing at his dramatic performances--and he becomes an inexplicable star.

This is high modernism at its best - a powerful recognition of the enormous power of cinema to both elevate and crush talent, told through the means of a simple "boy wants to go to Hollywood" story. It is so affecting because though it can be viewed as a relatively straightforward tragicomedy, it ultimately becomes a light but heartfelt meditation on the constraints that art places on the artist and the artist on the art. But that's what they were doing in 1932 - a particularly great year for Cinema - when the technology had really come together (this movie has music overlays, and film within a film), but the industry had not yet begun to self-police itself in the context of its political role in society, and to abandon the unself-conscious exploration of the latest literary forms. These themes - self-consciousness, the artist as victim to his art - themes that Joyce and Woolf were exploring in literature, can be found right here in "Make me a Star." The Pre-Production Code Enforcement movies almost always contain these nuggets, and I watch them no matter how badly rated the contemporary critics assess them. For example, this movie garners but 2 starts, yet I would put it as solid 3.5 (out of 4). Stuart Irwin's acting is a tour-de-force: absolutely astounding at every turn, and the final scene had me in tears: Laugh if you well, his statement "I'm a clown" reminded me of the great aria "Rire Pagliacco" from Il Pagliacci - it was that kind of moment - the self-conscious realization that the actor and the role were one, but in contrast to the opera, here the clown accepts his fate rather than fighting it.Ruth Donnelly has a cameo role and is her usual work-horse self - always great to see the old girl, and let's all work to put her into the pantheon of great stars, for she certainly was. The brilliance of her acting is that she doesn't thumb her nose at conventional morality, she doesn't know it exists. She is too busy in the day-to-day to understand the oppression of woman, but if confronted, she will make it clear that others may be oppressed, but she ain't (and you'll learn the hard way soon if you don't agree with her).I do not know if the 1924 play includes the homosexual innuendo found in this movie, when Joan Blondell says to Sam Hardy, "You're not going soft on him, are you?" Regardless, this moment is fine, and there is no shame or circumspection in either Hardy's or Blondell's interchange - but unlike today you don't know or care whether Hardy is gay or straight, just that he's a great director and yes, he has gone a bit soft on Erwin. I need to research Sam Hardy, but his cameo here is superb.And what else can one say about Joan Blondell, other than to say that the 26-year old she is in this movie could step into 2007 and deal with it just fine? - truly, completely liberated, but still with a tenderness to the conventional morality that she bows to but knew was slipping away. I don't know who insisted on down-playing the romantic angle between the role of Menton Gill and 'Flips' Montague, but this also makes the movie startling. Menton Gill could be gay and Flips just a 'girl-friend' - they really are equals here, whose only real sexuality is the desire to perform.I taped this movie onto a DVD and am sitting my 5 and 8 year-old daughters down to watch this as soon as I can budget 1.5 hours for the three of us (or four, if Mom wants to join) to enjoy this together and to understand its lessons. It is a perfect antidote to the silly point our culture has come to, where celebrity qua celebrity is all that matters, and at least in the ephemera, talent is irrelevant. This movie reminds us that talent is everything, and there is a great price to pay for it.

"Make me a Star" is a heartrending film, one that superbly demonstrates the sincerity, honesty, and versatility of Stuart Erwin. Although many of the early scenes are farcical and satirize slapstick comedy, specifically the kind directed by Mack Sennett, the movie turns serious when it delves into the boorish behavior of the Hollywood studio system moguls, who prey upon starstruck acting hopefuls. And Stuart Erwin, as one of these unworldly hopefuls, handles both the farce and the drama equally adroitly. The final scene between Erwin and Joan Blondell is heartbreaking. In fact, I was so impressed with the movie that I decided to devote much of one chapter to this remarkable film in my book on Stuart Erwin.