Revealing Details on "Hollywood Steps Out" (1941)!! (Patreon)

Tex Avery’s Hollywood Steps Out, released in 1941, is mostly seen in its “Blue Ribbon” reissue from October 1948. Many animation fans are aware that this version of Avery’s film excised a few sequences, including its ending.

During the conga sequence, Gary Cooper and Shirley Temple were included in the original 1941 version but were cut in the reissue, due to the irrelevance of the scene. After all, Shirley Temple was a mature adult by 1948.

As for the ending that is commonly shown, Clark Gable finds that the blonde woman he has been chasing all night is actually Groucho Marx in disguise, a reprise of a similar gag in the celebrity-infused The Coo-Coo Nut Grove (1936). After Groucho’s line, “Well, fancy meeting you here!” the film fades to black. A unique copy from Encore Entertainment (copyrighted 1978) reveals a few seconds of audio after the fade-out that has been seen in public domain video tapes. In 2016, Steve Stanchfield unearthed a nitrate reel of clips consisting of various cartoons featuring celebrities, presumably sourced from a projectionist. Near the end of the reel, a brief close-up shot of Clark Gable that seems to occur after the usual ending, utters the line, “I’m a bad boy!” a reference to Lou Costello.

The events that happened in between the two shots is a subject of controversy. According to Bob Clampett's wife, Sody, Clampett told several animation historians that after Groucho’s line, Clark Gable said something along the lines of, "Aww, well, I still want what's comin' to me, and I'm a-gonna get it!" to which he plants a kiss on Groucho.

Due to Gable’s reputation as a womanizer, he demanded the final scene be removed from the film. Sody also mentioned that a surviving original print existed in a film archive or collection. The print had reportedly been stolen and has since not been located.

Now, for the big question: is what Bob Clampett said about the ending entirely true? To dispel these widespread rumors, I took it upon myself to access the dialogue transcription, sourced from the United Artists Collection as part of the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research in the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Incidentally, this same source was used to reveal the original ending for Tex Avery’s The Heckling Hare.

Here is the transcription, typed by a Nina Sampson in 1941. This reveals yet another detail: as originally shown in the 1941 version, Clark Gable is seated with his wife Carole Lombard before he notices the blonde woman by their table. Afterwards, Gable uses a subterfuge to leave his seat and follow the blonde woman. The reasoning for the omission served a dual purpose: Carole Lombard was killed in a plane crash in January 1942 and Gable’s demands to quell depictions of his womanizing behavior, especially when it was related to his former wife.