Hollywood Boulevard

Florey's original cut ran 83 minutes, which I'll agree was too long to hold audience interest in a central story that, although strongly plotted, was weighed down with an inconsequential subsidiary romance featuring an overly verbose and mindlessly self-centered young hero. The shears were desperately needed, but instead of taking them to the youthful egotist, the main story was trimmed instead, throwing the whole movie way off balance. This was bad enough. But worse still was the fact that the repulsive know-it-all who delivers every single line of his wearisome dialogue with such over-the-top enthusiasm, was enacted by the overbearing Robert Cummings, whose non-stop self-adulation even manages to shade his beautiful co-star, Marsha Hunt. Florey's direction was slack in this respect, but fortunately, John Halliday and a fascinating line-up of support players, including Frieda Inescort, Maurice Costello and Gary Cooper, do their utmost to re-focus audience attention. They are helped immeasurably by the superb cinematography of Karl Struss. The Hollywood street scenes and other location cameos like the series introducing Marsha Hunt holding flowers are often breath-taking.