Show People

King Vidor, MGM, 1928. Marion Davies as Peggy Pepper, a Georgia girl who arrives in Hollywood, does slapstick for Comet, then turns grand at High Arts; William Haines is the slapstick lead who knew her first. Vidor shoots the lots as workplaces: extras, lunch wagons, a pie. Davies, Hearst's star, plays a climber who has to be talked back to comedy. Cameos include Chaplin, Fairbanks, and Vidor himself. AFI notes the film as a studio satire made inside the studio, with Davies doing the pratfalls her public image was not supposed to allow.