By Frank Miller
The Life of the Party
Brief Synopsis
Two gold-digging shop girls use their jobs to hunt down sugar daddies.
Cast & Crew
Read More
Roy Del Ruth
Director
Winnie Lightner
Flo
Irene Delroy
Dot
Jack Whiting
A. J. Smith
Charles Butterworth
Colonel Joy
Charles Judels
Monsieur Le Maire
Film Details
Genre
Comedy
Release Date
Oct
25,
1930
Premiere Information
not available
Production Company
Warner Brothers Pictures
Country
United States
Technical Specs
Duration
1h 19m
Sound
Mono
Color
Color (2-strip Technicolor)
Film Length
7,152ft
(8 reels)
Synopsis
Flo and Dot, song pluggers and clerks in a New York music shop, are exact opposites: the latter, beautiful and reserved, and the former, a typical gold digger. Foster, their employer, blames them for poor business and Le Maire, an excitable Frenchman courting their favor, wrecks the shop when asked to leave. Consequently, the girls are fired and take work in Le Maire's modiste shop. After being offered finery for a party, the girls take the clothes and depart for Havana--Dot having been sold on professional gold digging. There, Flo learns that Smith, a soft drink millionaire, is staying in their hotel but mistakes a Colonel Joy as their game; but as the wedding is set for Dot, she learns that Jerry Smith, with whom she is in love, is the actual millionaire. Le Maire arrives and exposes their plotting, but Jerry pays for their trouble and wins Dot as his wife.
Director
Roy Del Ruth
Director
Cast
Winnie Lightner
Flo
Irene Delroy
Dot
Jack Whiting
A. J. Smith
Charles Butterworth
Colonel Joy
Charles Judels
Monsieur Le Maire
Arthur Edmund Carewe
Fake count
John Davidson
Bogus Mr. Smith
Arthur Hoyt
Secretary
Crew
Film Details
Genre
Comedy
Release Date
Oct
25,
1930
Premiere Information
not available
Production Company
Warner Brothers Pictures
Country
United States
Technical Specs
Duration
1h 19m
Sound
Mono
Color
Color (2-strip Technicolor)
Film Length
7,152ft
(8 reels)
Articles
Life of the Party (1930) -
This 1930 comedy was made to cash in on Winnie Lightner's success in her film debut, The Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929). Lightner was a spirited clown who could also sing, but her career was derailed when musicals became a glut on the market by 1930. In fact, all but one of the numbers recorded for this film were cut. The picture was also shot in two-strip Technicolor, but that version appears to be lost. Lightner stars as Flo, a song plugger whose partner, Dot (Irene Delroy), is so pretty men are too busy flirting with her to buy much music. When they lose their jobs, Lightner suggests snaring rich husbands, so they take a dressmaker for all the couture they can carry and then take off for Havana, at that time a playground for the rich, setting the stage for a comedy of mistaken identities. As usual, director Roy Del Ruth keeps the action moving quickly, and the film offers some priceless location footage of Broadway in 1930, and the type of risqué humor that flourished in the pre-Code years. With the first cycle of screen musicals at an end, Lightner's career didn't last long. She married Del Ruth and retired altogether in 1934.
By Frank Miller
By Frank Miller
Life of the Party (1930) -
This 1930 comedy was made to cash in on Winnie Lightner's success in her film debut, The Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929). Lightner was a spirited clown who could also sing, but her career was derailed when musicals became a glut on the market by 1930. In fact, all but one of the numbers recorded for this film were cut. The picture was also shot in two-strip Technicolor, but that version appears to be lost. Lightner stars as Flo, a song plugger whose partner, Dot (Irene Delroy), is so pretty men are too busy flirting with her to buy much music. When they lose their jobs, Lightner suggests snaring rich husbands, so they take a dressmaker for all the couture they can carry and then take off for Havana, at that time a playground for the rich, setting the stage for a comedy of mistaken identities. As usual, director Roy Del Ruth keeps the action moving quickly, and the film offers some priceless location footage of Broadway in 1930, and the type of risqué humor that flourished in the pre-Code years. With the first cycle of screen musicals at an end, Lightner's career didn't last long. She married Del Ruth and retired altogether in 1934.
By Frank Miller
