“David O. Selznick has said that his later production, A Star Is Born, was inspired by and fashioned from What Price Hollywood? The story lines of these films are remarkably similar. In What Price Hollywood?, a waitress at the Brown Derby restaurant meets an alcoholic director who gives her a break in film. Her career ascends while his descends. The story of A Star Is Born is exactly the same in outline, substituting an actress for the waitress and a drunken actor for the alcoholic director. A Star Is Born also contains a number of scenes that are very reminiscent of What Price Hollywood?: in one film the actress is mobbed by her fans on her wedding day; in the other, she is besieged at her husband's funeral....

“Lowell Sherman may have patterned his role on his brother-in-law, John Barrymore, who was also a friend of Cukor and screenwriter Gene Fowler, who later wrote Barrymore's biography, ‘Good Night, Sweet Prince.' Sherman brings to the early section of the film that light self-mockery with which Barrymore frequently guyed the ineptitudes of his late comedy roles. In the drunk scenes, Sherman retains an air of refinement and sensitivity. He plays totally without self-pity and without asking for sympathy, even in his suicide scenes. It is the first of a number of drunk scenes in Cukor's films, and in them all (particularly in A Star Is Born and Holiday) the director shows a remarkable sympathy but no bathos toward the problem of alcoholism....

“The direction is silken smooth, nicely balancing the comic and serious moments. Interestingly enough, some of the Neil Hamilton-Constance Bennett scenes here have the same roustabout romantics as did the screwball comedies of the period, a genre that Cukor otherwise never tried.”