While Russell Hopton and Irene Ware are the top-billed stars of this Monogram comedy, the real star is Harry Holman, a minor character actor who, as Honest John, steals every scene he is in. This gregarious fat man (think Sydney Greenstreet of Poverty Row) takes over this film from the moment he pops up, playing an obvious con-man who is too dimwitted and bombastic to really be successful at being a con. He is hired for a con by Hopton to pick up a bag to turn into the police, humorously wearing an advertisement for a restaurant that went out of business six months before. Holman is hysterical wearing this awkward billboard sign trying to pick up the bag containing a lot of money, dropping it into an overly abundant stream of water going down a roadside curb, and attracting an audience (who do not go out of their way to help him!) as he tries to pick the bag up with his umbrella. "Honest John" becomes a celebrity thanks to his turning in of the loot-filled bag and when the press reveals that he is the head usher of a failing Broadway show, it is obvious that all this was a publicity gag in order to save the show from failure.
The plot ain't much, but when Holman comes on, the film exposes a huge heart underneath all its attempts to con the public. Holman is sort of a fairy godfather for the romantic intrigue surrounding him, and while threats of him being exposed as a fake are obvious, you know that everything is going to turn out all right. That stereotypical 30's film villain, Bradley Page, provides the film's conflict for the large number of characters, but he is more of a sleazy nuisance rather than a trouble-making scoundrel. Even as the third billed character, however, it is Hopton who wins the raves here, playing the type of character that Guy Kibbee had mastered at Warner Brothers in a string of fast moving programmers.
The plot ain't much, but when Holman comes on, the film exposes a huge heart underneath all its attempts to con the public. Holman is sort of a fairy godfather for the romantic intrigue surrounding him, and while threats of him being exposed as a fake are obvious, you know that everything is going to turn out all right. That stereotypical 30's film villain, Bradley Page, provides the film's conflict for the large number of characters, but he is more of a sleazy nuisance rather than a trouble-making scoundrel. Even as the third billed character, however, it is Hopton who wins the raves here, playing the type of character that Guy Kibbee had mastered at Warner Brothers in a string of fast moving programmers.
