British comedian Walter Forde's first feature-length comedy is a lively little trifle in which our hero erroneously thinks he's inherited a fortune and looses his job, but eventually saves the day and gets the girl after a high-speed chase by car, train and air. The film makes good use of locations (starting with the factory where the day-dreaming Forde is mocked by his co-workers) and builds up a tremendous head of steam as it powers towards it's action-packed conclusion; although as usual in such comedies it seems highly unlikely that the gorgeous Pauline Johnson would really have looked twice at the barrel-chested, pug-faced Forde. Ian Wilson is creepily hilarious in an early appearance as a malevolent, gum-chewing golf caddie.
2 Reviews
Lovely To Look At
boblipton25 November 2018
Walter Forde works in a factory. He gets a letter from a law firm that he has inherited half a million pounds and leaves the factory in triumph...only to discover it is a gag by his work mates. Disconsolate, he returns to the factory, where his boss, Sam Livesey, who needs to raise money to keep his business going, invites the newly rich man to dinner. Soon, Forde is getting along brilliantly with Livesey's beautiful daughter, Pauline Johnson. When Forde confesses he is not rich, she asks him not to tell her father, because he will make her marry the neurasthenic Charles Dormer.
It's Walter Forde's first feature as an actor and director and it's a very good one in the style of Harold Lloyd. He drops his comedy routines into reasonably appropriate spots -- there's a golf sequence that's actually funny, thanks to Ian Wilson as a dyspeptically blank caddie (Wilson's screen career would continue into the 1970s, with several appearances in CARRY ON films). It all ends with a wonderfully set-up three-way race. The movie also has some very funny title writing.
Forde would appear in a few more features, but by 1931 he had given up appearing in front of the camera for directing some fine comedies and thrillers. His last on-screen appearance was uncredited, as a piano player in his terrific romantic comedy, CHEER BOYS, CHEER.
It's Walter Forde's first feature as an actor and director and it's a very good one in the style of Harold Lloyd. He drops his comedy routines into reasonably appropriate spots -- there's a golf sequence that's actually funny, thanks to Ian Wilson as a dyspeptically blank caddie (Wilson's screen career would continue into the 1970s, with several appearances in CARRY ON films). It all ends with a wonderfully set-up three-way race. The movie also has some very funny title writing.
Forde would appear in a few more features, but by 1931 he had given up appearing in front of the camera for directing some fine comedies and thrillers. His last on-screen appearance was uncredited, as a piano player in his terrific romantic comedy, CHEER BOYS, CHEER.
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