Not William Castle who made gimmicky horror films like House on Haunted Hill and The Tingler? The same. (He also produced Lady from Shanghai!)
Rather good drama a year after Sunset Boulevard, in which Hollywood producer Richard Conte becomes obsessed by the murder of a silent film director in 1929 on his lot, and decides to make a film about it - meaning he must solve the murder. Out of the past emerges the director's writer Henry Hull (Lifeboat), the daughter of his actress, Julie Adams, and a film star, Paul Cavanagh (The Woman in Green, The House of Fear), as well as the producer's money man Fred Clark and whatever Jim Backus's role in it is (he's also the narrator) (familiar probably from Rebel Without a Cause). Plus detective Richard Egan (Pollyanna) and Houseley Stevenson as the aging security guard. Adams lets the cast down rather.
Some real people are in it: Francis X Bushman (Sabrina, the original Ben-Hur), Betty Blythe (She, 1925), William Farnum and Helen Gibson (both since 1914), and Joel McCrae.
It's a Universal film - their studio is shown. It's photographed by someone called Carl Guthrie, Written by Frederick Kohner and Frederick Brady.
Neat dramatic ending on set. Another in our mini 'Films about films' season which included Get Shorty and The Last Shot. (And I suppose you should include Cinema Verite).
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