Hollywood and Vine (1945)

★★★★★ · A great send-up! · AppleGirl · 2004-12-31

This comedy takes off on all the Hollywood cliches of the 1930s and 1940s. Nice pretty girl arrives in town, aspiring to stardom. Meets nice fellow who can help her out. But it's the stray dog, Emperor, who actually rises to stardom after stumbling into an audition and being discovered by the artiste director. Enjoyable movie, lots of fast dialogue and cases of confused identities. Great shots of 1940s SoCal streets and diners, too. The finest moment in the film is the brillant montage of newspaper headlines which chronicle the dog's descent into various Hollywood scandals. Very funny. I…

★★★ · that is cute and funny · 1110babe · 2010-01-07

Was the Dalmation marking on the Lavish Studios guardhouse an editorial statement about Hollywood, too? I loved the office numbers of the family members--hat sizes. It's very appropriate that a B movie would deal with the doings of a B studio. The dog angle was clever and made this more than a girl goes to Hollywood plot. I don't know, though, how Pop became so rich. Was that left on the cutting room floor or did they change the ending? Maybe someone can explain that part. Perhaps he sold his burger joint for a mint in the WWII construction boom. This is an interesting cast to look up online.…

★★★ · Daisy Bumstead Steps Out · Souldogs · 2005-10-18

The true star of the picture is "Daisy," a talented mutt here apearing in her only film outside of the popular "Blondie" franchise, based on the comic strip. Film premise, described elsewhere, is amusing, and the human characters are likeable, but (as with many B-grade comedies) the script is riddled with unfunny dialog, that the actors deliver as if golden. A very nice musical number toward the end features an all-women, all-mandolin orchestra whose unique sound is worth the effort of a download in itself. In wartime, all-girl mandolin orchestras were not particularly rare, so it might take…