Movies-about-the-movies and Hollywood life were made by the dozens in the 1920s, and Show People is among the best of this genre, as well as one of the best films of Marion Davies and director King Vidor.

It was based on a popular stage comedy called Polly Preferred with Hollywood as the locale for a parody of the rise to stardom of Gloria Swanson, already a screen legend in 1928. King Vidor used the vacant Mack Sennett studio for the scenes of the early career of Peggy Pepper, a star-struck "Georgia Peach" who gets her big break in Hollywood in Sennett style comedies.

The slapstick comedies bring fame and fortune, and Peggy goes Hollywood in a big way. She now calls herself Patricia Pepoire, leading dramatic actress, and has forgotten her days in comedy, her former friends that haven't "made it," and Billy, the boy she fell in love with when she first arrived in Hollywood. Patricia has a big, fancy mansion staffed with servants, travels in limosines and has a new boyfriend who is posing as a European count.

For Patricia, decked out in a regal headdress and gown and covered in jewels, reality sets in on the eve of her wedding to the phony count when a pie meant for the groom hits her in the face instead. She leaves the wedding with her first love Billy, and presumably they live happily ever after working in comedy together.