Hollywood Steps Out

Hollywood Steps Out is a 1941 short Merrie Melodies cartoon by Warner Brothers, directed by Tex Avery. The cartoon features caricatures of Hollywood celebrities from the 1930s and early 1940s.

Plot

A large bird's-eye view of a city is shown with beams of light moving to a conga beat. The action takes place in the famed Ciro's nightclub, where the Hollywood stars are having dinner - at $50 ($ today) a plate and "easy terms". The first stars seen are Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche and, at a table behind them, Adolphe Menjou and Norma Shearer, followed by Cary Grant, seated alone. Grant talks to himself: “What a place! What a place! It’s as pretty as a picture. But if I ever told my favorite wife the awful truth I'd land right on the front page. Yessireee Bobby.” (All these jokes are references to some of his films, except The Front Page which does not star Grant, but was remade as His Girl Friday in 1940, a film that does star him).

Then Greta Garbo comes along selling "cigars, cigarettes, butts." Grant buys some, tossing a quarter ($ today) into her tray and asks her for a light. Garbo lifts her enormous foot on the table and strikes a match on the shoe, then lights Grant’s cigarette. Garbo is considered even today to have been an extremely beautiful woman, but she did have very large feet, and this was caricatured repeatedly in Warner Brothers cartoons of the era.

In the next scene Edward G. Robinson asks Ann Sheridan: "How’s the Oomph...
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