Swan Song September: Hoopla (1933)

This month we watch films featuring the final performance of a beloved star. This week we examine Clara Bow in Hoopla.

RODNEY BOWCOCK:  It’s old-timey carnival time when this movie opens as we meet Nifty Miller (Preston Foster) and his son Chris (Richard Cromwell).  Nifty manages the carnival and Chris is his bumpkin son who shows up to the carnival hoping for work and spoiling his dad’s relationship with his lover Carrie (Minna Gombell).  This ticks Carrie off but good so she gets drunk and talks Lou (that’s Clara Bow) the hootche-coochie dancer into cozying up to Chris so that he’ll fall in love with her and, I guess, leave the carnival in disgrace when she humiliates him.  Reluctantly, Lou accepts the offer because she needs some extra cash to play craps with, but (you guessed it), she falls in love with Chris.  It’s all kind of silly and takes forever for anything to happen.

SAMANTHA GLASSER: There are a lot of reasons why this film didn't work for me. One, Clara Bow is known and beloved as the bad girl with a heart of gold. When we are introduced to her, she is gambling away all of her money on the floor of a backroom. She has recently swindled an underage boy out of a valuable ring which she attempts to gamble away. When she is caught, she shows no remorse for her actions. This isn't the Clara we know and love. Fans of actors who transform themselves role to role might not appreciate the appeal of a star who reliably plays the same type film to film, but Clara was a great example of that, and she is still beloved to this day for her bouncy, never-give-up personality.

RB:  You make valid points about Bow playing against type here and one wonders why she’d accept such a role until you realize that it’s 1933 and by her own admission, she needed the money.  I think a better question would be who at Fox made such a terrible mistake in casting her in this kind of role?

SG: The love story felt completely forced. When she begins wooing Cromwell, it is in pursuit of greed; she wants to win the $100. Her advances are overt and embarrassing, literally disrobing in front of him at times. There is no motivation for her change of heart; he is the same young man at the beginning that he is when she becomes interested in him. He doesn't do anything especially sweet or vulnerable to make her change her mind. It's bad writing. Shockingly, this story wasn't thrown together. It is based on a stage play that starred Walter Huston called The Barker. New Movie Magazine's reviewer disagreed with me, saying, "There is one minute, when the boy Chris (Richard Cromwell) whom she has tried to seduce, confesses his love for her, that Miss Bow rises into fine and genuine emotional acting. No one else in the film gets quite that far."

RB:  Chris has all of the charisma of a glass of milk.  He’s just THERE.  And he’s always there, following Lou around with a big dopey vacant stare on his face.  The film seems to take great pains in making sure that we get to see Lou in various states of undress which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and surely wowed the male audience in 1933.  But it also doesn’t make a ton of sense, since Chris fell for Lou pretty much as soon as she batted her eyelashes at him.  It certainly wasn’t necessary.

SG: The film is set in the carnival, but we don't see much of the opulence, only backstage conversations about the pitfalls of the lifestyle and why Nifty doesn't want his son raised in the environment, and the traveling between shows. Perhaps glamour wasn't the point. If the intent was to comment on the seediness, it doesn't go far enough. It's like none of the film was intentional; it was hastily thrown together to make a buck. It is completely unfortunate that such a bright, legendary star like Clara Bow went out with this mess.

RB:  I will say, that it definitely has a vibe that suits small towns during the depression.  Money was obviously hard to come by, and audiences would surely side with the attendees of the carnival vs the big city slickers that were traveling around trying to take what little cash they have.  Does it go far enough?  I agree with you that it doesn’t.  There’s very little understanding of the motivation with this, or as I already mentioned, much else in the film.  I am not familiar with the 1928 version of The Barker, either in play or film form, but it would be interesting to explore if there’s any more to those and this was just a lousy adaptation.  I also haven’t seen the later Betty Grable version of the story, Diamond Horseshoe.

SG: Director Frank Lloyd broke his leg while making this film. Cinematographer Ernest Palmer sprained his ankle and was also on crutches. It wasn't a pleasant experience for many.

Clara told a reporter for Modern Screen, "Preston Foster, who plays the spieler with me in Hoopla, is a grand person. Richard Cromwell who plays my sweetheart is a lamb. And Minna Gombell is a pal of mine — but I can't have them watching me while I work. I like the extras and the electricians, too, but I do not want them peeking at me. Their eyes would tear holes in whatever I was trying to do. If a stranger comes on the set, I go cold all over."

It is no wonder Clara decided to retire. Her anxiety in front of the microphone, the crappy scripts and the public criticism sucked all the fun out of the job. After Hoopla was released, a so-called beauty expert named Sylvia published an extensive article in Photoplay about how fat Clara looked in the movie and what she could do about it. "I know what I'm talking about, because thousands of readers of Photoplay have told me that my suggestions work, and if these girls and women — and they're your fans, Clara — if they can do it, so can you!"

RB:  And “Sylvia” is a darn fool.  Say what you will about the film, but Clara looks great here.

SG: After working for Paramount for many years, Bow tried a change by moving to Fox in hopes that it would revive her sagging career. She told Ruth Biery at Modern Screen, "I have always been a most frank and honest person, and I had made up my mind that if these pictures were not what they should be, I would not burden the public with any more trash, and lose my prestige and self-respect to boot. I am not a wealthy woman, neither am I poor. I could use more money easily, but all the money in the world would not compensate me if I lost my, I should say public, but I'll say my friends' respect and love, and I certainly would do just that if I helped force down their throats any more trashy nonsense like Hoopla."

A.G. Miller of the Lyric Theatre in Atkinson, Nebraska said, "Personally I thought this the bunk, but when a picture like this one will draw them in to very good business, why, who in hell can tell what they want?"

"Boys howdy," said R.W. Hickman of the Lyric Theatre in Greenville, Illinois. "If you want to get an eyeful just watch Clara Bow in this one. It's The Barker all dressed up with Clara turning in a swell bit of entertainment. It looks like she's trying to break into the nudist colony but they will like it."

RB:  This wasn’t intended to be Clara’s swansong in films, but it was.  And aside from occasional interviews and a turn on radio’s Truth or Consequences in 1947 (sort of) and all of her problems aside, as you point out, it’s kind of understandable why.  Unlike her other FOX films, Hoopla lost money and was pretty tough to see for a long time (it did screen at the Syracuse festival in 1988), until a fairly recent restoration which gets trotted out occasionally, but still hasn’t seen the light of day in terms of a physical release, which is assume will probably never happen.  This is not a good movie in no uncertain terms, but, I suppose it does deserve to be more widely available as it provides an end to a wonderful career that is still widely known today.  One and a half stars.

SG: Clara went on to support her husband actor Rex Bell in his political pursuits and they raised two sons. She wrestled with mental health issues until her death at 60 from a heart attack. For those who love her, the knowledge of her personal struggles and her mistreatment by the film industry which handsomely profited from her talent are a twist of the knife. I feel protective of her because she brings a lot of joy to the screen. That's why a movie like this is such a low blow. One star for the film, but three cheers for Clara.