User Reviews

A Smith Called Pete narrates one of his occasional serious shorts, in this one about a private detective. Jo A. Goggin was a PI who used a movie camera. In this case he was trying to prove that a man who was suing for $100,000 for an accident that had paralyzed his legs was faking his injuries.

It's a pleasant little effort, and a typically nice change of pace effort for Smith, who mutes his snarkiness, although not his skeptical delivery for this one. Cameraman Harold Lipstein gets in some nice shots.

This Pete Smith short is less humorous than most of his one reelers. Instead it is a rather serious story about a private detective trying to get the goods on a man who is suing the PI's client for 100K due to injuries in an accident he says that have left him wheelchair bound.

The PI's tool of the trade is the camera, and once he knows the fellow can walk, try as he might he cannot get a picture of him walking. The faker carries a gun and will just shoot wildly into the woods if he hears any noises and thinks he is being watched. The narrator mentions how he has beaten a couple of murder raps.

How the PI finally gets the photos is what the rest of the short is about. John Miljan, uncredited, plays the role of the faker here. One thing I wondered about - if the faker lives on his farm all alone with numerous chores that must be done daily, how is he claiming to get this work done without help and being stuck in a wheelchair? The short never answers that question.

David O'Brien wrote this short as he did several others before and after this until the studios stopped making shorts in the mid 1950s and then he wrote for TV. O'Brien was one of the few success stories to emerge from poverty row, known as a player in B westerns until MGM and the Pete Smith series got him out of those kind of roles. Actually, David O'Brien's life story was interesting enough to have itself been the subject of a Pete Smith short! G'bye now!