Real mystery surrounds the release of Peter Bogdanovich’s film The Cat’s Meow, for the simple reason that the secret it scandalises was pure dynamite in November 1924. Joanna Lumley plays the narrator, Elinor Glyn: an ageing flapper who is invited aboard William Randolph Hearst’s luxury yacht for a private party with the newspaper tycoon. A mad weekend of booze, charleston and drugs is abruptly curtailed by the sudden death of a film producer, Thomas Ince. A bullet in the head, or stomach ulcers?

“Welcome to Hollywood,” says Lumley in funereal black. “A planet just off the coast of Earth.” Edward Herrmann’s bumbling mogul is the man holding the pistol. But silence is golden, and “our reputations”, as Hearst delicately puts it as he kisses his guests goodbye, “are so terribly fragile”. Kenneth Anger juiced the rumours in Hollywood Babylon (1975) like a Swiss milking machine, which is probably why no one has ever taken his book entirely seriously.

The unexpected charm of Bogdanovich’s film is that he paints a social scenario worthy of Decline and Fall. His cast are comically hollow and effortlessly insincere. Hearst spies on his guests through peepholes he has carved through the decks and walls of his ship, and he is foolishly bamboozled by airs and graces. The silver- screen love of his life, Marion Davies, flirts outrageously with Charlie Chaplin, and it breaks the tycoon’s heart. The chemistry between these three is a cruel and perfect satire on celebrity love. Kirsten Dunst is a marvellous tease as Marion; Eddie Izzard is a manly Chaplin; and Herrmann is hypnotic as the infatuated host who is richer than God.

The Cat’s Meow has taken three years to reach a screen and it is being dribbled out one cinema at a time. This is mighty strange for such a vintage pleasure. I can only think that history, or Hollywood, has long and sticky fingers.

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