Franklin Pangborn

It's June, 1900, and Patricia O'Neill is singing "A Bluebird Is Singing to Me". She picks up her father's lunch from Lulu's Café. Lulu mentions that she is hosting a party tonight but needs the piano moved onto the small stage in her restaurant. Charles Dillingsworth, an important Broadway producer, is coming. Pat goes to the local fire alarm call box and trips the signal while Lulu has the cook put greasy rags in the stove to make some smoke. Pat's father, Captain Matthew O'Neill, is the head of Company 24 that responds to the fire. He complains that this is the third fire at Lulu's in a fairly short time. He grouses but has some of the men move the piano for Lulu. Pat sneaks out through the pantry, quickly climbing the steps. Not looking, she promptly puts her head through a large painting being carried by a man on the sidewalk. The man and his partner introduce themselves. One is Johnny Bennett, a composer. The other is Steve Adams, a painter. Both are in town from Boston hoping to make names for themselves in New York City. Professor Garibaldi has written a letter of introduction to Lulu so they can board in her rooming house. Lulu tells them the charges will be $6/week for the room the two will share. What is not revealed is that Steven is the son of a wealthy banking family in Boston and is hiding out in New York to sow some oats and postpone his marriage to his fiancée Olivia Radford. A messenger notes that Steve has a call from Olivia. Pat is one of a group of young women taking acting lessons from Lulu. Johnny sits at his piano struggling to finish his song "A Much Better Night to Fall in Love". As he tries a few notes on the piano in front of an open window, he is joined by others in the rooming house on violin, string bass, and trumpet. Below, Pat does a wonderful dance. Another tenant, Byron Jones, pops in and offers his talent as a lyricist. His current job is writing the rhymes on greetings cards. Next, Eddie sticks his head in carrying a stuffed horse head. He is an artist specializing in horse illustrations for Calendars Inc. He agrees to introduce Steve to the president, Mr. Ward. Steve returns Olivia's call. She makes it clear that he has only three weeks to play at artist in New York City. She then expects him back in Boston for their wedding. Later, Pat knocks on the door with tea that Lulu has sent up to the boys. Johnny admits that he is a shy guy but wants her to know that watching her dance made the music flow. He tells her that he has had music running through his head even as a young child. He is hoping to have a new song to play at tonight's party. It starts with "I met a flame at the Fireman's Ball." At the party, Johnny and Byron perform the song to great acclaim. Mr. Dillingsworth only has eyes for Patricia, and her dad Matthew doesn't like it. Steve dances with Pat as the tune changes to "New York Is a Nice Place to Stay." During the dance, Steve tells Pat that he wants her to pose for him. There is a contest at the calendar company with a $500 dollar prize. I he wins, the money is all hers. Firemen are circulating selling tickets to the upcoming Fireman's Benefit Jamboree at Swiss Garden. Johnny tries to buy two but only has the cash for one. He will get a second one later on. Captain Olson from Fire Company 18 shows up and trades insults with Matt. The two companies are rivals in an efficiency competition. The winner will become the new battalion chief. They both agree that if they end up in a tie, they will sort the winner out with a tug-of-war. Steve begins work on his portrait of Pat while "I'm in Love with a Calendar Girl" provides background music. As a result of the party, Johnny has gotten an invitation to present some work to Mr. Dillingsworth. Pat gives him her St. Ceclia's medal for good luck. Steve purportedly finishes the portrait of Pat and asks her to be his date for the Jamboree. After she leaves, Steve alters the painting to make it more daring by showing some bare legs. Pat is excited about her upcoming evening with Steve. Johnny is angry at him, asking a girl out when he is already committed to Olivia. As luck would have it, Olivia has come down from Boston to surprise Steve. Steve covers by giving Johnny "the $5 I owe you." Olivia swears she does not want to go someplace fancy like Delmonico's, but somewhere Bohemian like the Swiss Garden Jamboree. At the Jamboree, everyone is frolicking to "Buy Her Some Pretzels and Beer." Olivia requests to dance with Johnny and quizzes him about Steve's activities. Byron surprises everyone with Johnny's new song, "Have I Told You Lately, I Love You." Meanwhile, Steve does his best to mislead Pat about his relationship with Olivia. He claims that he and Olivia are cousins. He invites Pat to take a stroll in the moonlight with him and pressures her to kiss him. Pat is saved by the announcement that the mayor will reveal the efficiency winner among fire companies. He says it is a tie between Company 24 and Company 18. The winner will be determined by a coin flip. Matthew and Olson object, stating they have already agreed to settle it with a tug-of-war. Matt is confident that his large company members will easily win the contest. But Olson has signed up some massive brutes to his company just the day before. Winning now seems in doubt. Olivia departs with Steve for Delmonico's. The tug-of-war contest is undecided until a musician starts playing an Irish jig. This gives Company 24 a spurt of energy. But then Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King" inspires the Scandinavian crew. The final outcome is prompted when someone pores some snuff on the Company 18 anchorman. He loses control during a sneeze, allowing Company 24 to win. Matt is declared the new battalion chief. In the post Jamboree let down, Lulu warns Matt that his daughter may fall in love. When Johnny approaches Pat, she is rather cold. She is sure that Olivia is important to him. Lulu tells Johnny to stick to his guns. The next day, Eddie bursts into the rooming house with the news that Steve has won the calendar contest. Steve gives the check to Pat who is thrilled that she can buy her father a silver battalion chief trumpet. Steve is ready to celebrate. He even offers Johnny a chance to come along with them. Johnny backs out with a warning to Steve that he had better not hurt her. Steve takes Pat for a fancy night on the town - Delmonico's, Rector's, Churchill's. Johnny is in their room wringing his hands when their cab deposits an inebriated Pat and Steve. Steve is ready to press his advantage until Pat mentions that she always dreamed of spending her honeymoon at Niagara Falls. This is not what he has is mind. He just wants some fun. Johnny slaps Steve for hurting Pat. He tries to tell her what Steve really is. She will not listen. He returns her St. Cecelia medal. The next day, calendars bearing Pat's portrait are making a sensation. Crowds gather at windows to take in the risqué painting. Matthew comes after his daughter with fire in his eyes. Pat tries to take shelter in Steve's room by saying they are engaged. This momentarily puts Matt off. But when Pat opens the door, Steve is kissing Olivia. Pat realizes that Johnny was correct. She runs to him and tells her father that they are engaged. Matt is confused. Just then, Dillingsworth arrives with an offer of a role for Pat in his new musical. The score for the musical is by none other than Johnny.

Woodrow is discharged from the military for hay fever, but fabricates receiving a heroic honorable discharge before returning home. Having been discharged from the Marines for a hayfever condition before ever seeing action, Woodrow Lafayette Pershing Truesmith (Eddie Bracken) delays the return to his hometown, feeling that he is a failure. While in a moment of melancholy, he meets up with a group of Marines who befriend him and encourage him to return home to his mother by fabricating a story that he was wounded in battle with honorable discharge. They make him wear a uniform complete with medals and is pushed by his new friends into accepting a Hero's welcome when he gets home where he is to be immortalized by a statue that he doesn't want, has songs written about his heroic battle stories, and ends up unwillingly running for mayor. Despite his best efforts to explain the truth, no one will listen. —J. Adam Ingle Woodrow LaFayette wants to join the Marines, but he's 4F. So he leaves his hometown and with friends, who send postcards from all over the war theaters, and he fakes a heroic career. This has its consequences... —Stephan Eichenberg <eichenbe@fak-cbg.tu-muenchen.de>

Young and popular Hollywood director John Lloyd "Sully" Sullivan (Joel McCrea) is dissatisfied with the shallow comedies that he has been making, such as "Thanks for Yesterday" and "Ants in Your Plants", despite their profitability. He lets his studio boss, Mr. LeBrand (Robert Warwick), know that he wants his next project to be a dramatic exploration of the plight of the downtrodden, based on the book "O Brother, Where Art Thou?". LeBrand wants Sullivan's next project to be another lucrative comedy, but Sullivan turns it down and, wanting to "know trouble" firsthand, begins to make plans to travel as a tramp who only has ten cents in his pocket in order to be able to direct a film that presents a genuine depiction of humanity's sorrows. His British butler Mr. Burrows (Robert Greig) and his valet (Eric Blore) both question the wisdom of Sullivan's plans. Sullivan goes ahead with his plans, dressing up like a hobo and taking to the road, where he is followed by a bus containing several staff from his movie studio, an imposition made by the studio for Sullivan's safety that no one is happy with. When Sullivan hitches a ride in a whippet tank being driven by a 13-year-old boy (Payne B. Johnson) who is learning to drive it, the bus driver steps on the gas, and the two are briefly pursued by a police motorcyclist until the whippet tank and bus turn down a side road while the police bike continues along the highway. The bumpy dirt road causes chaos on the bus. Eventually, the chase ends after the whippet tank knocks the supports off a horse-drawn hay cart, causing the horse to break free and the bus to crash into the hay. After the staff recover from the crash, some of them talk to the bus driver before one of them spots Sullivan near where the whippet tank drops him off. Sullivan persuades his guardians to leave him alone and makes an arrangement to meet with them in Las Vegas later on. Sullivan finds himself working on a nearby farm run by Miz Zeffie (Esther Howard) and Ursula (Almira Sessions). While he is chopping wood, they remark on his appearance. Later, they take him to the movies. That night, Miz Zeffie allows Sullivan to sleep in a bed where her late husband had been. After she says goodnight, Sullivan finds the door locked. He explores a little further and finds someone else in another bed on the other side of the shared bathroom. In the end, he tries to escape by knotting the bed sheets together. He makes it outside, but he rips his pants on a nail as he descends, and one of the knots comes undone, sending him straight down into a water barrel. He climbs out and flees the farm before the owners discover that he has gone. Back on the road, he hitches another ride and eventually finds himself back in a part of Los Angeles that he doesn't recognize. He goes into a nearby diner, where he meets a young actress who has struggled but failed to make it in Hollywood (Veronica Lake) and is just about to give up on her dream of stardom and return to her home. Seeing Sullivan and believing that he is a penniless tramp, she buys some breakfast for him. Sullivan repays the girl's kindness by retrieving his car from his estate and offering her a ride to wherever she wants to go, but he neglects to tell his servants about his return despite thinking that he left them a note. After they discover that the car has gone missing, they report it to the police as being stolen. As Sullivan and the girl continue their conversation, they hear the wail of a siren and see two police motorcyclists following them. Despite Sullivan's insistence that there is absolutely nothing they can do, they end up in a police lock-up. It isn't long before Sullivan's butler and valet arrive and clear things up allowing Sullivan to be released, and he persuades the officers to free the girl as well. The valet drives Sullivan and the girl back to his palatial mansion, and on the way, the tramp reveals to the girl that he is actually Sullivan the movie director. While his servants cook up some ham and eggs for breakfast, Sullivan shows the girl around his home. When she finds out about his true wealth, she gets him to show her the swimming pool, and then pushes him into it. When he asks her what the big idea is, she tells him that it is for making fun of a poor girl who had only tried to help him, by his story about being a washed-up director. After she calls him a clunk, he pulls her into the pool, and they splash around just as the servants arrive with breakfast. After the meal, the girl apologizes for pushing Sullivan in the pool, and Sullivan talks about trying his plan to live like a hobo again. The girl insists that he take her with him, but he objects to the idea, even after she threatens to throw him in the water again and Mr. Burrows agrees with the girl's suggestion of accompanying Sullivan. The girl instructs Burrows to get her some tramp clothes while Sullivan requests that he go down to the station and get him a train ticket, but when the girl refuses to tell them where she is from, Sullivan gets Burrows to grab her legs and all three of them fall into the pool. The valet comes to help Burrows out, only for Burrows to pull him in too. In the end, Sullivan agrees to the girl coming with him, on the condition that she dresses up like a boy. This time, his experiment is a success, and after they have ridden in a cattle car, eaten in some soup kitchens and slept in some homeless shelters, including one where somebody steals Sullivan's shoes, Sullivan eventually decides that he has had enough. The studio publicizes the huge success of Sullivan's experiment. The girl wants to stay with Sullivan, but he reveals to her that he is married to a wife who doesn't love him, a piece of advice that he chose to take on the pretense that he would pay less tax on a joint income, which ended up backfiring severely in many ways - his joint returns have ended up being much higher than the ones he earned when he was single, his wife (Jane Buckingham) ended up having an affair with his business manager, and she would never agree to him getting a divorce. As a gesture of thanks to the homeless people for the insights that they have given him for his next film, Sullivan decides to give them several five-dollar bills. When he reaches the train yard, somebody knocks him unconscious, steals his money and shoes and drops his body into a boxcar as it departs, but as the thief tries to escape with Sullivan's money, he is run over by another train. After the would-be thief's mangled body is found, identification cards sewn into the stolen shoes lead to the deceased thief being identified as John Sullivan. Sullivan regains consciousness in another city and with no memory about who he is or how he came to be where he is. He is discovered by a yard bull (Emory Parnell) who accosts him for trespassing in the rail yard. Still in a dazed state, Sullivan hits the yard bull with a rock, and as a result is convicted for assault and battery and sentenced to six years hard labor in a work camp. While he is working in the camp, Sullivan's memory gradually starts to come back to him. While he is there, he and the prisoners are given a special treat by being shown the Walt Disney cartoon Playful Pluto (1934), and he is surprised to find himself laughing along with the other prisoners. Sullivan is unable to either convince anybody else that he is John Sullivan or make any form of communication with the outside world, but when he sees an old newspaper with a front-page story about the unsolved mystery of "his" killing, he finds a way to solve his problems by confessing that he is the man who murdered John Sullivan. The next edition of the newspaper is printed with his face on the front page, and someone in the outside world recognizes him and makes arrangements for his release. He discovers that his wife, presuming that she is now a widow, has married his business manager, which means that if she still refuses to grant him a divorce, he will have her charged with bigamy. Back at the studio, Mr. LeBrand gives Sullivan the green light to start shooting the "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" movie, but Sullivan tells LeBrand that he has changed his mind and the next movie he wants to make now is a comedy, as a result of him seeing firsthand just how much joy such movies have brought to the downtrodden people.

After learning her multi-millionaire fiancé has already been married seven times, the daughter of a penniless marquis decides to tame him. US multi-millionaire Michael Barndon marries his eight wife, Nicole, the daughter of a broken French Marquis. But she doesn't want to be only a number in the row of his ex-wives and starts her own strategy to "tame" him. —Stephan Eichenberg <eichenbe@fak-cbg.tu-muenchen.de>

A down-on-his luck newspaperman finds himself the center of an experiment being conducted by two daffy millionaires--to see if someone can spend $1000 a minute, every minute, for 12 solid hours. If he can do it, he gets $10,000. If he can't do it, he gets nothing. —frankfob2@yahoo.com

A theatrical troupe headed by a flashy showman finds itself in the tiny--and bankrupt--kingdom of Belgardia. The showman falls in love with the daughter of the dotty king, who has promised her to another. Complications ensue.