Screen Snapshots Series 16 No 2 Review: 1930s Hollywood Instagram

If you have ten minutes to spare and love old Hollywood gossip, yes, this is absolutely worth your time today. Film historians and lovers of random vintage trivia will eat this up. Anyone looking for a real plot or an actual movie will probably hate it and get bored in thirty seconds. 🎥

It is basically the 1930s version of Instagram stories. You just get dropped into these random celebrities' lives with zero context.

The short starts in the old Mexican quarter of Los Angeles, which looks surprisingly quiet. I wonder how much of it was cleared out just for this camera crew to shoot.

Then, bam. We are suddenly at Joel McCrea’s ranch, and the transition is so fast it almost gives you whiplash.

McCrea actually looks like he knows how to handle a horse, which is nice to see. He isn't wearing any fancy makeup, just looking like a regular guy working his land.

Next up is Edward Everett Horton’s estate. Horton has this wonderfully anxious look on his face, almost like he’s worried the director Ralph Staub is going to steal his silverware. 😅

It’s funny how these old shorts tried to make everything look so natural when it’s obviously staged. Like, oh look, here is Anna Sten just casually lounging by her swimming pool, totally surprised by a giant camera crew!

It has that same loose, sunny California energy you get in some of the lighter scenes of Steamboat Round the Bend. Though obviously, this has none of the structure of a real film like Big City Blues.

The final segment takes us inside a movie studio to show "how films are made." It is incredibly clean and everyone is smiling way too much.

I swear one of the crew guys in the background is just holding a piece of cardboard and pretending to look busy. Nobody actually works like that, especially not in 1936.

Still, there is something very comforting about these old Screen Snapshots. They don't try to be art.

They just want to show you some pretty people and some nice houses. And honestly? Sometimes that is more than enough.