A naïve young woman travels from her hometown to Hollywood, hoping to make it as an actress. She gets her big break thanks to the generosity of a fellow actor she meets in a lunchroom, and soon she’s a high-profile star, courted by major producers and forgetting about the people she’s left behind. Along the way, she runs into a range of famous people, who appear in cameos as themselves, in scenes that skewer the pretensions and clichés of Hollywood movies. It’s a familiar story that’s played out in plenty of showbiz cautionary tales and satires, but watching it unfold in a movie from nearly a century ago is still remarkable.
That movie is 1928’s Show People, one of a handful of comedies featuring silent-era star Marion Davies, whose career mostly focused on serious dramatic work, at the insistence of her longtime romantic partner William Randolph Hearst. Davies proves herself to be a gifted comic actress in Show People, with a self-deprecating performance as wide-eyed Peggy Pepper, who comes to Hollywood from Savannah, Georgia, with ambitions of movie stardom. Davies even makes a “cameo” as herself, to a disgusted, dismissive reaction from Peggy.
Released the year after the first sound movie, 1927’s The Jazz Singer, Show People covers the same era as Damien Chazelle’s recent Hollywood epic Babylon, with some of the same personalities showing up onscreen. Chloe Fineman makes a brief appearance as Davies in Babylon, and many of Chazelle’s real-life inspirations are part of Show People’s self-referential Hollywood world.
Actor John Gilbert, the main source for Brad Pitt’s Babylon character Jack Conrad, is the first star that Peggy and her father, General Marmaduke Oldfish Pepper (Dell Henderson), spot as they drive through Hollywood. Later, Peggy is mesmerized by Gilbert in 1926’s Bardelys the Magnificent, from Show People director King Vidor, which looks like exactly the kind of movie that Conrad made in Babylon.
There are no drug-fueled orgies or elephants shitting directly at the camera in Show People, but it still offers a somewhat cynical view of Hollywood, from the dismissive casting agent who first meets with Peggy and her father to the social-climbing leading man (Paul Ralli) who’s concocted a fake biography for himself as a French aristocrat. After that initial, demoralizing meeting, Peggy and her father grab lunch in the studio commissary, where the General scores extra crackers by comparing the server to Gloria Swanson. There, they meet Billy Boone (William Haines), a comedy player whom the intertitles identify as a “custard pie artist.”
Billy takes Peggy under his wing and brings her to the dilapidated Comet Studios (filmed at the real-life Sennett Studios), where she wanders through various productions in a scene reminiscent of Babylon’s elaborate set piece featuring multiple simultaneous film shoots. She’s mortified to discover that Billy has gotten her cast in a slapstick scene, in which she’s sprayed in the face with seltzer while another actor is pelted with, yes, custard pie. But like Margot Robbie’s Nellie LaRoy in Babylon, Peggy becomes an instant sensation, which Vidor portrays in a clever, funny scene of audience reactions during a test screening.
Despite her newfound comedy stardom, Peggy still longs to be a serious actress, and she angles for a meeting with the head of High Arts Studio. On her first dramatic shoot, she meets the pompous Andre (aka former waiter Andy) and goes through a tortuous process of attempting to produce tears, which Davies depicts with a masterful range of frustrated facial expressions. Peggy may not be a very good actress, but Davies shows off the full range of her skills in Show People. At Andre’s direction, Peggy reinvents herself as the snooty Patricia Pepoire, and Davies’ perpetual sneer is a delight.
Show People boasts nearly as many celebrity appearances as Robert Altman’s The Player, from Charlie Chaplin (who asks Peggy for an autograph) to writer Elinor Glyn, the basis for Jean Smart’s Babylon character, to Vidor himself, directing Peggy in Show People’s finale. Elements of film-industry parody that have become commonplace, like the director who mimics framing a shot with his hands, or the diva star who’s always late to the set, arrive fully formed in Show People.
The skewering of Hollywood in Show People is gentler than in many later movies, and Peggy’s story never turns fully tragic. Still, the movie is smart and self-aware, packing plenty of sharp observations into its lightly comedic structure. Thanks to her relationship with Hearst, Davies has become associated primarily with Hollywood scandal and intrigue, an image perpetuated in pop-culture depictions like Amanda Seyfried’s Oscar-nominated role in Mank. Show People airs as part of TCM’s Star of the Month tribute to Davies, and it’s a worthy showcase of her skills as an actor, as well as a reminder that Hollywood’s obsession with taking itself down is as nearly as old as movies themselves.
“Show People” airs January 10 at 6:30 p.m. PT/9:30 p.m. ET on TCM and is available on DVD from Warner Archive.
