Hollywood on Parade, Volume 2 (MOD) (DVD Movie)

Hollywood on Parade was a series of "celebrity newsreel" shorts by Paramount Pictures. Director Louis Lewyn used the studio's contracted stars in original musical numbers, comic sketches, "stars at home" scenes, and often integrated the pieces with frame stories and publicity coverage of Hollywood parties and premieres. Eddie Kane goes on a tour of the Paramount studio backlot, and pops in on the dressing rooms of Helen Kane, Anna May Wong, Jackie Cooper, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Billie Dove, Ben Lyon, Bebe Daniels, Tom Mix, Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey.Richard Arlen dresses as "Arlen the Great", a turbaned mystic who shows us what's happening in Hollywood via his crystal ball: Clark Gable meets with foreign dignitaries, Tallulah Bankhead sings a song, and Buster Keaton and Lew Cody take a bus tour.The portraits on the wall in artist Willy Pogany's studio come to life, in the form of Johnny Mack Brown, Mary Pickford, John Boles, Buster Collier, Evalyn Knapp, Mary Carlisle, Toshia Mori, Gloria Stuart, Lona Andre, and Ginger Rogers. Cliff "Ukulele Ike" Edwards (the voice of Jiminy Cricket) shows us the latest goings-on in Hollywood: Clarence Muse belts out a song in his inimitable style, Jean Harlow learns how to golf, William Powell and Carole Lombard have a day at the races, and a Mexican mariachi band serenade Lupe Velez.Buster Crabbe is looking for girls to work as extras in his new movie Search for Beauty (1934), but Lloyd Hamilton gets in the way. Lloyd takes them to the premiere of Mae West's I'm No Angel (1933), with George Raft, Charlie Chaplin, and West herself in attendance. Then it's on to a unique Hollywood costume party, with Gloria Swanson dressed as a nun, Fay Wray in the torn dress she wore in King Kong (1933) and Groucho Marx wearing a sign identifying himself as Hal Roach's animal star "Rex, the Wonder Horse."Songwriters Mack Gordon and Harry Revel visit several of their friends in their quest for the perfect song, including Jimmy Durante, Rudy Vallee, Ben Turpin, and Ted Healy and his Three Stooges (Moe, Larry, and Curly.) This was Healy's last onscreen appearance with the Stooges before his tragic (and still controversial) death in 1937. PLUS: Knife of the Party (1934): This unusual comedy short features Shemp Howard leading his own "Stooges", consisting of James Fox and Charles Senna. They're part of a vaudeville troupe forced to work in a hotel after being threatened with bankruptcy. Shemp had been one of the original Three Stooges, but had quit in 1932, resenting Ted Healy's dominating influence. He rejoined the act in 1946 after his brother Curly suffered a debilitating stroke. Directed by Leigh Jason.