Star Dust (1940)

A young teenage girl (Linda Darnell) from Arkansas has stars in her eyes and an ambition to go to Hollywood and be a movie actress. When she gets there, she finds her dream isn't going to be easy to achieve. Directed by Walter Lang (CALL ME MADAM). Typical Hollywood fantasy about the "dream factory" and the movie hopefuls who were drawn to it. That being said, it's more entertaining than it has a right to be. I don't know if the parallels to Linda Darnell's rise in Hollywood were intentional (except for the pushy stage mother who's jettisoned) but they're there. She was signed by 20th Century Fox when she was 15 years old and by age 16, she was playing Tyrone Power's wife in DAYTIME WIFE! It's hokey but you can see why Darnell became one of Fox's most popular stars in the 1940s. With John Payne, Roland Young, Charlotte Greenwood, George Montgomery, Mary Beth Hughes, Donald Meek, Mary Healy and William Gargan.