Still image from the 1928 film Show People.

Show People

Directed by King Vidor

In this silent film, a small-town girl tries to make it in Hollywood.

1928 1h 23m Silent TV-G

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CAST
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King Vidor, Director
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King Vidor
Director

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Marion Davies, Peggy Pepper [also known as Patricia Pepoire]
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Marion Davies
Peggy Pepper [also kn..

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William Haines, Billy Boone
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William Haines
Billy Boone

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Dell Henderson, Colonel [Marmaduke Oldfish] Pepper
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Dell Henderson
Colonel [Marmaduke Ol..

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Paul Ralli, André [Telefair]
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Paul Ralli
André [Telefair]

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Tenen Holtz, Casting director
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Tenen Holtz
Casting director

FULL SYNOPSIS

After driving his ostentatiously dressed daughter Peggy in a battered model T from Georgia to Hollywood, Colonel Marmaduke Oldfish Pepper announces at a film studio gate that he will let the president of the company put her in the movies. At the casting office, where father and daughter tramp past a waiting crowd to speak to the clerk, Peggy, who is asked for her photographs, offers her baby and childhood portraits and then demonstrates her acting skills by making facial expressions she uses to portray various moods. Amused, the clerk signs her up, but, while waiting for her to be cast, the Peppers' money dwindles down to forty cents. At the studio's commissary, after the colonel charms a server into giving him extra crackers, a slapstick comedy artist, Billy Boone, sits down with them at the table. Despite Peggy's pretenses that she is looking over several offers, Billy realizes their desperate situation and offers to get her a job at Comet Studios where he works. On the way to her first assignment, Peggy wanders through several films in progress and disrupts the scenes before finding Billy and his colleagues. Believing that she has been cast in a dramatic role, she is wearing her prettiest party dress and does not realize she is filming a slapstick comedy, until she is thoroughly spritzed with seltzer water as the camera rolls. Although the cast and crew are impressed by her natural, surprised reaction, the horrified Peggy flees the set. Billy consoles her and convince...


VIDEOS
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Ben Mankiewicz Intro...
Hosted Intro
Ben Mankiewicz Intro...
Hosted Intro
That's John Gilbert!...
Movie Clip
The Various Moods
Movie Clip
Who's That Little Guy?...
Movie Clip
Miss Pepoire Is Fatigued...
Movie Clip

ARTICLES
MGM's Show People (1928), one of the biggest hits among Marion Davies' silent films, was written as a send-up of Hollywood and, more specifically, the career of Gloria Swanson. Davies plays Georgia-bred starlet Peggy Pepper, who has aspirations to become a great dramatic actress but instead scores a hit in slapstick comedies starring Billy Boone (William Haines, who later retired from films to become a successful interior decorator). The pair fall in love, but complications arise after Peggy - now billed as Patricia Pepoire Ð achieves her goal of becoming a dramatic star and plans to marry her unctuous new leading man. Davies puts her gift for facial clowning to expressive use in lampooning Swanson, and Show People also proves a romp for director King Vidor, noted for such hard-hitting dramas as The Big Parade (1925) and The Crowd (1928). For the final scene of the film, Vidor has the heroine and her true love reunited on the set of a World War I drama directed by - King Vidor! (The same year, Davies and Vidor were reunited for The Patsy, with Davies again putting her talent for mimicry to funny use in impersonations of Pola Negri, Mae Murray and Lillian Gish.) Show People is further enlivened by the cameo appearances of such stars of the day as Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, John Gilbert and William S. Hart, along with gossip columnist Louella Parsons and Marion Davies herself. Davies' romantic relationship with publishing magnate William Randolph ...

NOTES
A written prologue after the opening credits reads: "To hopeful hundreds there is a golden spot on the map called Hollywood." Although his onscreen credit states that the character played by Dell Henderson is called "Colonel Pepper," the character introduces himself to a studio guard as "General Marmaduke Oldfish Pepper." (Henderson had previously portrayed Davies' father in director King Vidor's 1928 film, The Patsy, .)
       At the beginning of the film, "Peggy Pepper" and the colonel are seen driving along Hollywood Boulevard in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles, CA. Shots of the entrances of the Paramount, Fox, First National and M-G-M studios as they were in 1928 are shown in the film. According to modern sources, the Comet Studios slapstick sequences were shot at the old Mack Sennett studios in the Edendale area of Los Angeles. The "High Arts Studio" sequences were shot at M-G-M. According to t...

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