Crashing Hollywood (1937)

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This back-stage crime comedy, a remake of Lights Out (1923), takes a healthy satirical stab at the powerful studio system of the times. The trouble begins when an ex-convict and a screenwriter together write a screenplay based on the bank robbery that got the criminal in trouble with the law. After… More This back-stage crime comedy, a remake of Lights Out (1923), takes a healthy satirical stab at the powerful studio system of the times. The trouble begins when an ex-convict and a screenwriter together write a screenplay based on the bank robbery that got the criminal in trouble with the law. After the film's release, the police, following the clues set forth on screen, capture the ex-con's former partners who escaped before. When other mobsters see the film and hear the story, they fear that such films will become the rage and they could go to jail, so they launch an all-out assault on a Hollywood studio creating all sorts of behind-the-scenes mayhem. Ironically, soon after Crashing Hollywood was released, a hit man for the Bugsy Siegel-Meyer Lansky Mob in New York spotted an extra who turned out to be former mobster "Big Harry" Greenberg, who snitched on his bosses and then disappeared. The hit man informed his superiors and soon afterward, Greenberg was slain. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi