Hollywood Screen Tests: Take 2

This documentary pieces together a selection of screen tests dug out of the 20th Century Fox vaults, presenting them as a sequence of raw, unvarnished moments where actors try on parts and personas. Rather than offering a straight biography or a linear history, the film lets the footage speak, with brief hosting segments by Robert Culp that frame the material and point out notable faces. Viewers move from glimpses of future stars to lesser known performers, seeing how lighting, direction and a single take could change an actor's fate. The result feels like an archival scrapbook, equal parts curiosity and study, leaving room for the imagination without revealing later career turns.

Released in 1999 as a television documentary, the program was directed by Edith Becker and created by Ed Singer. Its source material is explicitly the studio screen test vaults at 20th Century Fox, and that archival provenance shapes every choice the production makes.

The film did not register on the major awards circuit, and there are no well known nominations attached to it. That lack of industry recognition left it to circulate mainly among archival programmers, classic film societies and private collectors rather than in mainstream festival lineups.

For students of classic Hollywood casting and film history this compilation has value, since it preserves transitional moments in performance and studio process. It includes familiar names like Joan Collins, Rossano Brazzi, Angela Cartwright and May Britt, which helps draw attention from fans of mid century cinema. The work functions as a reference piece, one that cinephiles and historians can return to for detail rather than for narrative drama.

Critical and audience responses have been mixed, with appreciation coming largely from people interested in filmmaking technique and star studies. The film underscores themes of first impressions, the mechanics of screen presence and the role of studio gatekeepers, while casual viewers may find the pacing episodic and the appeal specialized. Overall, it reads as a research friendly artifact more than a mass entertainment feature.