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Reviews
Diplomaniacs (1933)
My candidate for Worst Hollywood Musical of All Time
I first saw Diplomaniacs on TV when I was about 10 or 11. I couldn't believe that grownups were capable of making anything that bad. There's bad and there's BAD: there's the kind of bad that after a few seconds makes you snap off the set in disgust, and then there's the kind of BAD where you can't turn away, so BAD it's fascinating: you're transfixed by the utter BADness of it. And that's the effect Diplomaniacs had on me.
Years later, when I was past 50, I came across a VHS cassette of it for a couple of bucks in a video store liquidation sale. I couldn't resist: I bought it and played it to see if it matched my 40-year-old memories of it. It did: I'd love to enter it in a contest for Worst Hollywood Musical of All Time. If Hollywood ever made anything worse (although The Great Gabbo comes close), I hope I never see it.
Had I been a film critic when it came out, I would have written "They were trying for Duck Soup, and came up with Dog's Breakfast." Racist as hell, in terrible taste, and the songs... oh, my God!
But dig who wrote it: Joseph Mankiewicz, who went on to write All About Eve. Shows there's hope for us all.