HEARTS OF THE WEST: a Hollywood history lesson gone wrong

A young Jeff Bridges is appealing as the would-be writer of cowboy stories who stumbles into a film career in this rather labored tale of the early days of Hollywood.
I'm a sucker for films set in bygone Hollywood because they give me a window into a world I would love to have lived in. But my passion for the golden age of Hollywood and the stars who made it so also means that I'm frequently left feeling let down by such films because they rarely succeed in capturing the essence of the time and place.

Don't ask me to describe exactly what the essence should look like because beyond insisting that it be in black and white I can't. But rather like Supreme Court Justice Potter's famous definition of hard core pornography, I know it when I see it.
And I don't see it in HEARTS OF THE WEST.
It's not just the atmosphere-sapping use of colour, it's the film's own confusion over exactly which part of the golden age of Hollywood it's supposed to be depicting.In his head, scriptwriter Bob Thompson has set his story in the silent era Hollywood of the late teens and early 20s, but on paper he's placed events in the early 1930s, after the advent of sound.
So Bridges' Lewis Tater hooks up with a poverty-row studio churning out low budget westerns where everyone acts as if it's 1921 rather than 1931. You may say that's a small point and don't be so nitpicky, but I find it very difficult to suspend my disbelief when in every scene set on a movie set everyone's pantomiming to convey emotion and making loads of noise because they don't have to worry about every sound being picked up by the microphone. AND on top of that Alan Arkin as egotistical director Bert Kessler directs scenes by shouting at the actors while running to and fro in front of the camera. I realise that this is not a film about film making but please! make a token effort toward authenticity.
Beyond these irritations the story is slight and not particularly engaging. Bridges is likable enough but I didn't feel emotionally invested enough in his character to care what happened to him. Surprisingly  (to me anyway) it's Andy Griffiths who impressed me most. He looked just right as Howard Pike, the silent movie star reduced to bit parts in an endless series of interchangeable Westerns.
HEARTS OF THE WEST was one of a number of movies made by Hollywood in the mid 70s about its own past (among the others were 'Gable and Lombard', 'Day of the Locust' and 'Nickelodeon') and none of them came anywhere close to earlier bona fide classics on the subject 'Sunset Boulevard' and 'Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?'