Sunkist Stars at Palm Springs (1936) Online

...This is a curious series of films. They are not really very good...but they are quaintly interesting. "Sunkist Stars at Palm Springs" is the best of the three or four I have seen. They were made...well, partly to promote Technicolor...partly to give studios a chance to see some of their stars in Technicolor..the films are produced by MGM, from what I hear, profits went to the Motion Picture Relief Fund--so none of the studios complained if/when their stars turned up..and a lot did..Clark Gable, Alice Faye...many others....the sad thing is they are heavy on names and short on having them do anything really delightful. Betty Grable takes off her skirt, revealing shorts and dances with the chorus girls--most of the others just stand there...Johnny Weiss muller frolics in the pool...but curiosities is what they will remain. Even so, at eighteen minutes...you won't get really irritated and you may spot a personal favorite along the way.

This is a cutesy short, well worth watching. The color is good for it's day, and there are enough movie personalities to make it interesting.

There actually is a plot of sorts. Winners of dance contests from across the U.S. are invited to Palm Springs for get together with celebrities of the day. The only sad part is that a disproportionate amount of time is allowed at the end of the short for Fuzzy Knight to play and sing - what a waste.

However, as mentioned earlier, it's an interesting and entertaining piece of Hollywood history that is worth watching...

It appears from time to time on the Turner Classic Movie channel.

This is another 3-Strip Technicolor short from the '30s provided by M-G-M that I just watched on YouTube. Some good musical performances by Francis Langford and Fuzzy Knight (though I found his comedy lame). There's also an appearance by the grown up Jackie Coogan and his then-wife, the young and about-to-emerge star Betty Grable (though her big break wouldn't come until she signed with 20th Century-Fox) as they dance a little with some female dancers. However, Coogan and Grable are on the ground while those dancers are on the roof of some villa. Poolside, we see Johnny Weissmuller playing with some inflatable ducks while Buster Keaton falls from his floating raft (the only moderately amusing thing in this short). Betty Furness and Walter Huston are at a table playing with an egg in a bottle. All of this is emceed by "Mike" (a giant microphone with an expressive face on it) doing impressions (perhaps the creepiest thing I've seen here). And the entire audience is some beauty contest winners from each state (my home state of Louisiana is among the represented that is depicted on screen). Nothing else to add except this was an interesting if bland short that should whet your curiosity of past stars and the early use of Technicolor.

Sunkist Stars at Palm Beach (1936)

*** (out of 4)

Technicolor short from MGM shows off various Hollywood stars vacationing at Palm Springs. Edmund Lowe hosts the short, which features cameos by Dick Foran, Robert Benchley, Jackie Coogan, Betty Grable, Buster Keaton, Claire Trevor and Johnny Weissmuller. Walter Huston also shows up and sucks an egg out of a bottle. No, I'm not joking. It's fun seeing all these stars in color but the film doesn't have much in the way of a plot.

As of now this isn't on DVD but you can catch it playing on Turner Classic Movies. Well worth your time.

With Edmund Lowe acting as a kind of master of ceremonies Sunkist Stars At Palm Springs has several female dance contest winners one from each of the 48 States and affiliated territories get to do fun in the sun with some film stars. Interesting that of these except for Johnny Weissmuller because of Tarzan were B list players. I guess MGM couldn't do anything involving water without Weissmuller.

I could have done without the live 'microphone' using the voice of Peter Lind Hayes to do some not very good impressions of some personalities of the day. Only Fuzzy Knight at the end of the film and Jackie Coogan and Betty Grable had any kind of sustained numbers.

Not well remembered but Coogan and Grable were married at the time. He was on the way down, she'd be zooming up in the Forties once she went with 20th Century Fox. Shortly after this short subject was made Grable and Coogan split up.

Nothing special here except for stargazers and these were second magnitude stars.

During the 1930s, MGM was experimenting with the first true color system from Technicolor. But instead of using it in feature films right away, they made a variety of color shorts--and I assume that is to enable them to hone their craft on these promotional films before attempting bigger and more expensive pictures.

Many of these color films were self-promotion videos directed by Lewis Lewyn. The plots of these shorts were very tenuous and it more an excuse to showcase many of their stars...often the B-list stars in particular.

This particular short is super-bizarre because the emcee is a talking microphone that looks to be part papier mache....and it comes off as very creepy and DEFINITELY weird! It talks with Edmund Lowe as well as narrates! I have no idea who thought this was a good idea but in hindsight, it was NOT!

Like these other shorts, this one features quite a bit of singing and dancing as well as some limp comedy. The most interesting, perhaps, is seeing Betty Grable dance since this was early in her career--before she moved to 20th Century Fox and became a mega-star.

Overall, this is a basically plot less promotional film...with that ultra-creepy mic. Probably mostly of interest to die-hard classic film lovers only.