After a few features and shorts over at Warner Brothers, the comedy team of Olsen and Johnson (once called the poor man's Abbot and Costello because of their attempts to rival them at Universal) tried two films at second string studio Republic with weak results. They are a duo of shyster con-men kicked out of the city for an apparent oil scam, and so they head to the country with their dumber than dirt secretary Joyce Compton and her huge Great Dane Prince (playing a pooch named Fluffy).
There, the scam starts all over again, but they appear to be on the up and up, with support from a respected citizen from the small borough (Lila Lee) who tries to hold off the townsfolk from trying to string them up when it appears that the boys have run off with the money. Pedestrian comedy is abound, and there are only a few mildly amusing moments with the duo, Ms. Compton, Fluffy and a run-away boy (Sammy McKim) all trying to squeeze in one car.
The streamlined feature seems to be short a reel, apparently chopped down for T. V. viewing at the expense of some possibly important footage which tied everything together; T. V. editors back in the day seemed to do this a lot with old movies. While their Warner Brothers films and shorts had the type of gags that Olsen and Johnson were famous for (they were certainly around long before Abbott and Costello), the cut material could possibly be censored material that the editors found offensive or possibly extraneous, or most likely, just laziness on the part of those who had the power of the scissor. But with one more feature to go, it wouldn't be long before the two comics headed back to Broadway and had a success that later worked on film and is what they are best remembered for.
There, the scam starts all over again, but they appear to be on the up and up, with support from a respected citizen from the small borough (Lila Lee) who tries to hold off the townsfolk from trying to string them up when it appears that the boys have run off with the money. Pedestrian comedy is abound, and there are only a few mildly amusing moments with the duo, Ms. Compton, Fluffy and a run-away boy (Sammy McKim) all trying to squeeze in one car.
The streamlined feature seems to be short a reel, apparently chopped down for T. V. viewing at the expense of some possibly important footage which tied everything together; T. V. editors back in the day seemed to do this a lot with old movies. While their Warner Brothers films and shorts had the type of gags that Olsen and Johnson were famous for (they were certainly around long before Abbott and Costello), the cut material could possibly be censored material that the editors found offensive or possibly extraneous, or most likely, just laziness on the part of those who had the power of the scissor. But with one more feature to go, it wouldn't be long before the two comics headed back to Broadway and had a success that later worked on film and is what they are best remembered for.