MGM's March on in 1934-35 with Metro Goldwyn Mayer: Convention of the Century (1934) User Reviews

The reading of the names of MGM executives spoilers..?

[ksf-2 · 4/10 · 25 August 2013]

so I wrote SPOILERS.. but this tape was spoiled when it was made.

This short opens with the crowd watching "someone" arrive by car at the Drake Hotel in 1934 for an MGM studio presentation in Chicago; it's so slow that for the first minute or two we actually hear the snippets of what the crowd is saying, as if a live microphone were left on by accident. Flash to another crowd, and a cheering track has been added over a silent scene. Then the title card shows Col Ferguson's Crusaders. (?) Then another title card shows us "Mary the Rhino" from the Tarzan movies feature. I guess they couldn't get Tarzan, Jane, or even Cheetah. We don't even see the actual rhino, unless I blinked and missed it. The editing is horrible, the narration doesn't match up with what is shown most of the time. I found this interesting almost exclusively for the historical value. Only ONE of the many people they introduce actually smiles, and he was joking with the person standing next to him... we don't get to hear what they are saying in what could have been the most entertaining part of the film. The camera jumps up and down, and with the use of title cards for some of the introductions, it looks to me like silent scenes are included with the talking scenes. Droll. Dry. Seems to be an archive of the MGM executives at the time, but even that is not explained. Shown on Turner Classic Movie channel as a filler between features. Skip it... you won't miss much, unless you are related to the MGM bigshots being highlighted.

Horrible Look at People We Don't Care About

[Michael_Elliott · 10 June 2011]

MGM's March on in 1934-35: Convention of the Century (1934)

* (out of 4)

I guess you could look at this 7-minute short as being a part of film history but the end result is so bad that you can't help but become bored within the first minute. MGM held a convention in Chicago where they invited all of their distributors to "sample" the films that the studio had coming up. Studio executive Felix E. Feist is on hand to "talk" with everyone as the viewer must sit there and be introduced to the distributors, most of whom you've never heard of. I'm really not sure what the point of this short was because seeing these people isn't going to get you excited and there's very little "preview" of the films MGM would eventually release. We're told that MGM loves to show off animals including Leo the Lion and we're told that their latest creation of Mary the Rhino from the upcoming Tarzan picture. We hear her name a couple times but we're never told anything about her, which is a real head scratcher and you have to wonder why she was even brought up if the film was just going to go over the names of the distributors. Perhaps this short was just MGM's attempt to kiss up to these men and put them in a "film" so that they'd get the studios films played at more theaters. Who knows but who cares?