Can someone explain why MGM would give this promotional short for The Good Earth color treatment and yet the cinema classic they do in black and white? I suppose there's some rationale for it, but I can't think of any.Elissa Landi and Charley Chase, he in Oriental garb as Charley Chan Chase host a party which has a few musical acts and some big star walk ons like Clark Gable, Joan Bennett, Joe E. Brown and Freddie Bartholomew. The musical highlight is Joe Morrison who was the love interest in the W.C. Fields classic The Old Fashioned Way singing South Sea Island Magic.Throughout it all Leon Errol does his drunk act as he keeps trying to mix the perfect cocktail. He did much the same thing in We're Not Dressing.Entertaining, but nothing special. Don't confuse this with the feature film Hollywood Party.

It seems to be unanimous that this is a really bad short. And you know for something to be really bad that it has to have no bad cinema factor silliness present. Alas, that is what we have here. The only thing remotely interesting is a black singing troupe that makes noises like out of Fat Albert. As far as the hula girls being naked as another reviewer posted, huh? They are clothed from the neck down, I was actually sticking around to watch that, what a let down. I had visions of Honolulu Baby from Sons Of The Desert (Charlie Chase was in that night club watching too!). But no, those women were definitely fully clothed. My only other comment is this, when ever you see a short subject jam packed with stars, doesn't it always suck if it's from the 1930's? I mean it's like they all say, hell I can't be blamed for this sucking because I'm only in it for 20 seconds, I guess. If you are looking for a half way decent Technicolor short, try the 1930's The Devil's Cabaret, it's 2 strip Technicolor but close enough to satisfy your curiosity of an early color film and it's short, has nearly naked women dancing, and the Devil. Both of these films play on Turner Classic Movies in the USA. Hollywood Party I give a 3 and thats probably too generous.

Hollywood Party (1937) * (out of 4) One hopes a real Hollywood party wasn't as boring as this mess of a short from MGM. The main reason to tune in is the three-strip Technicolor, which was just starting out. In the film Charley Chase and Elissa Landi are introducing various music acts and a few Hollywood A-listers with it all set to a Chinese theme. The Chinese theme also means Chase slanting his eyes, wearing some funny facial hair and throwing around rather stereotypical slang. The movie, no matter how you look at it, is a real embarrassment and one can't help but feel bad for Chase, a veteran of over 250 films, for having to appear in it as MGM certainly didn't do him any favors. The biggest problem is that the film never knows what it wants to be. It starts off appearing to just want to make fun of Chinese customs. It then turns into a music and features some very bad songs. It then tries to be a fashion show, which is fails at miserably even though we see some nearly naked women, which makes one wonder how this got passed by the Hayes Office. Everything this film tries it fails at and the cameos by Joe E. Brown, Anna May Wong, Freddie Bartholomew, Joan Bennett and Clark Gable can't help.

The producers of THE GOOD EARTH d.v.d. apparently figured they needed something ELSE from 1937 to lighten the mood after the tear-jerking ending of the movie version of Pearl Buck's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. While the color of this short contrasts nicely with the feature's black & white mode, the content is even more grating than the similar, albeit non-color, short from the MGM of 1937, SUN.DAY NIGHT AT THE TROCADERO. Where HO11YWOOD PARTY lacks major cast members of THE WIZARD OF OZ (TROCADERO had the Wiz himself, Frank Morgan), THE GOOD EARTH patriarch is played by Charley Grapewin, who'd become Dorothy Gale's "Uncle Henry" two years later. Furthermore, several snippets of incidental music from EARTH's score would be recycled into the OZ soundtrack. The other extra on the EARTH d.v.d., "Supreme Court of Films Picks the Champions Newsreel," is a poorly-edited mess (with NO title card help) from the Oscar Awards the year EARTH was eligible (a clip of Luise Rainer's brief acceptance speech for her award-winning portrayal of "O-Lan" is included).