The sole value of this film is for viewers to wonder how a star like Louise Brooks should have fallen so far so fast. This is a short, made by the poverty row studio Educational Pictures. Brooks appears for at most five minutes out of twenty, and she has almost nothing to say. She seems bemused by the situation - almost as if she is watching herself in her own train wreck. Perhaps she was just drunk.
That aside, this picture has no merit whatever. Jack Shutta as Windy Riley is painfully unamusing. The premiss that he has, due to the machinations of his rivals in a trans-continental road race, ended up in Los Angeles rather than San Francisco, is feeble. Two years earlier Brooks had been earning $1,000 a week for Pabst. Now her earnings on this short were to be paltry (by 1938 they would be a mere $300 for an entire feature). However, she desperately needed all the cash she could get as she had no savings and no credit. Paramount and the other majors had banished her to the cinematic equivalent of Nome.
The only other point worthy of comment is that the 'director' of this flick was Roscoe Arbuckle, masquerading under the knowing name of William B. Goodrich (will be good - geddit?!). Brooks described the experience of working with Arbuckle as 'floating in the arms of a huge doughnut'. The dismal couple were both no doubt intoxicated, and in Arbuckle's case it wasn't just drink. A nadir for both parties.
That aside, this picture has no merit whatever. Jack Shutta as Windy Riley is painfully unamusing. The premiss that he has, due to the machinations of his rivals in a trans-continental road race, ended up in Los Angeles rather than San Francisco, is feeble. Two years earlier Brooks had been earning $1,000 a week for Pabst. Now her earnings on this short were to be paltry (by 1938 they would be a mere $300 for an entire feature). However, she desperately needed all the cash she could get as she had no savings and no credit. Paramount and the other majors had banished her to the cinematic equivalent of Nome.
The only other point worthy of comment is that the 'director' of this flick was Roscoe Arbuckle, masquerading under the knowing name of William B. Goodrich (will be good - geddit?!). Brooks described the experience of working with Arbuckle as 'floating in the arms of a huge doughnut'. The dismal couple were both no doubt intoxicated, and in Arbuckle's case it wasn't just drink. A nadir for both parties.