Night Life in Hollywood, called The Shriek of Hollywood in Europe,[4] is a 1922 American silent comedy film[5] directed by Fred Caldwell. It starred J. Frank Glendon, Josephine Hill, and Gale Henry, and featured a number of cameo appearances of celebrities with their families.
In 1922, Ada Bell Maescher organized the De Luxe Film Company to produce the propaganda picture, which would show the "real" living conditions in the film capital. Instead of depicting Hollywood as a lurid, sensual Babylon, with its reported debauches of depravity and wickedness, it was shown as a model city, beautiful and attractive, and populated with home-loving people.[6][7]
Plot
Joe Powell (Glendon) runs away from his small town in Arkansas to visit Hollywood, anticipating debauchery. After his sister Carrie Powell (Henry) heads there too, their father (McComer), mother (Rhodes), and younger sister follow them out there. Once the family is reunited in Hollywood, they learn that it is great place to live.[2][8][9]
Sheet music of the cues from the film were distributed to theaters, and theater owners were told to distribute them, free of charge, to their customers.[10]
The film received mixed reviews,[8][11][12] but was commercially successful.[13]
Preservation
An incomplete print of Night Life in Hollywood is held by the Library of Congress. The second reel of the film is considered lost.[14]
