Featuring the crooning of Dick Powell, the lavish staging of Busby Berkeley, several production numbers with Benny Goodman and his Swing Band, the original film rendition of the now-standard “Hooray for Hollywood,” and, last but not least, gossip columnist Louella Parsons as herself, Hollywood Hotel was called by a reluctantly admiring New York Times reviewer “about the loudest musical show on record, a thing of decibels and splashes...which probably deserves being called the best Warner musical in recent history.” Its all-Hollywood story manages to evoke a number of types basic to the region (including Ronald Reagan as a master of ceremonies). Using the vehicle of Dick Powell as a singer with the Goodman band hired to dub over the non-voices of no-talents, Hollywood Hotel pokes plenty of fun at a breed of ham with which the place was apparently rife. Comedy of the Ted Healy, Hugh Herbert, Edgar Kennedy variety (with Fritz Feld as the perennial Russian immigrant) completes the picture. (JB)