Fans of Louise Brooks will want to see her in this, her talkie debut, but be forewarned: Windy Riley Goes Hollywood is a sorry excuse for entertainment, that is, unless you can persuade yourself to enjoy a primitive comedy without any laughs, featuring a deeply unappealing leading man. Our hero Windy Riley (played by Jack Shutta) is a pompous, cigar-chomping jerk who messes up everything he touches, and never realizes that everyone thinks he's a fool. Shutta's performance won't leave you begging for more, but the actor can't be blamed. Who could have done any better with this feeble script, or with such a deeply exasperating character? The Windy Riley persona was originally created for a comic strip, and perhaps the strip was funny, I don't know, but based on the evidence at hand I have my doubts.
Windy is on an unexplained cross-country trip from New York to his hometown of San Francisco, but he winds up in Hollywood instead, and is soon working at a movie studio . . . as a messenger boy. He attempts to get ahead by boosting the career of movie star Betty Grey (our Miss Brooks), which he tries to accomplish by means of a dangerous and genuinely idiotic publicity stunt. Instead of boosting Betty's career he nearly ruins it, and is ultimately chased out of the studio -- and Hollywood -- before he can do any further damage.
Louise Brooks made this film after returning from Europe, where she'd appeared in the three movies that constitute her most significant contribution to the cinema. She'd left Hollywood in 1929 on bad terms, having offended the Powers That Be at Paramount, and returned with a well-earned reputation for being headstrong and uncooperative. On top of that, the talkie revolution was under way. Lots of old favorites were falling by the wayside, and all bets were off. None of the big studios wanted to deal with Brooks, so she wound up making her talkie debut here, in a low-budget short cranked out at Educational Pictures under the direction of another fallen star, Roscoe Arbuckle. The former top comedian had been banned from the screen almost ten years earlier, but was making a decent living directing comedies for other performers under the name of William Goodrich. When he was inspired by his material Arbuckle was a gifted director of comedy, but it's obvious from the outset that the director found no inspiration in Windy Riley Goes Hollywood. Roscoe phoned this one in.
So all we're left with is the sight of the leading lady, earnestly trying to play her part and deliver her clunky lines. It's a disheartening thing to experience. She gets to dance briefly, but of course her dance is quickly interrupted by the unstoppable, insufferable Windy Riley. In her best silent films Louise Brooks was (and is) almost ethereal, but here she looks and sounds all too human, thanks to the shoddy material. In her introductory scene, Brooks is presented with a publicity poster of herself and delivers her first line in a talkie: "Oh Mr. Snell, I think it's great! A photograph like that oughta do me a lotta good, doncha think?" That sound you hear is an ex-goddess, crashing to earth with a dull thud.
