Cleaning Up

The copy of this movie that I just looked at was a Pathescope print cut down from 70 minutes to 35, losing some of the story in the process. George K. Gee is a noble twit who decides to break with family tradition and go to work selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door. Through a series of mishaps, he finds himself demonstrating his product in the middle of a leg show, becoming the surprise comedy star of the revue, and selling a lot of vacuum cleaners in the process. He also has to pretend to be the husband of Betty Astell, who is the petite ami of Alfred Wellesley, whose wife, Barbara Gott, has dark suspicions of what is going on. Things end happily.... or at least I imagine they do, given the way this movie is cut down. The gag sequences look like they might in a longer version.

It's all that remains of this collaboration between writer Michael Barringer and director Leslie S. Hiscott. They worked together in these roles on eleven movies from 1932 through 1943, some of which are quite good. This one was produced by British Lion, and their negatives and theatrical prints were destroyed during the Second World War, leaving only a few of these home-movie cutdowns.