Jack Oakie

A series of misunderstandings leaves an advertising executive with a campaign for a product which has not yet been invented, while he romances his rival in the guise of its inventor. Jerry Webster and Carol Templeton are both in the advertising business, but for different agencies. Annoyed by Jerry's methods of using alcohol and women to ensure contracts for his agency, Carol tries to get him thrown out of his profession. To avoid this Jerry bribes the girl who would testify against him by starring her in a TV commercial for a product named VIP that he's just made up. By accident these commercials are broadcast, and to keep his job, Jerry must come up with VIP for which he enlists the help of Doctor Linus Tyler. Carol goes to see the Doctor to try to get the VIP account, but because she and Jerry have never met, she mistakes Jerry for the Doctor. Jerry takes advantage of this situation to win her. —Leon Wolters <wolters@strw.LeidenUniv.nl> A series of misunderstandings between Carol Templeton and Jerry Webster, representatives of two different advertising agencies, leads to a campaign for a product VIP, which doesn't exist. Meanwhile, Jerry romances Carol, although she does not realize who he is. —Huggo In New York, Madison Avenue is the center of the advertising world, divided into workers and drones like a beehive. Carol Templeton is a professional that has just arrived from Omaha, Nebraska, to work in the Bracket, McGalpin and Gaines Advertising, expecting to be a winner through hard work. The unethical Jerry Webster works in the Ramsey and Son and entertains his clients with sexy women, bribes, and booze to ensure contracts for his agency. When the Southern J. Paxton Miller comes to New York to close the contract of the Cera Miller account, Carol prepares a presentation to the old man. However, Jerry wins the account by taking Miller to a nightclub with strippers, booze and a party later in his penthouse with the strippers, led by Rebel Davis. Carol is upset and goes to the advertising council to throw Jerry out of the advertising business. However, Jerry lures Rebel, who is to testify against him, offering the position of VIP girl in TV commercials for the new product VIP. Then he asks the team to not broadcast but only file the footage, since VIP doesn't actually exist. However, insecure Peter 'Pete' Ramsey, who has inherited the Ramsey and Son, orders a massive advertising campaign broadcasting the commercials to show himself off to his employees. In order to save his job and the agency, Jerry hires Doctor Linus Tyler, who is a lonely man, to develop VIP. Meanwhile, Carol decides to take the VIP account for her agency and she visits Dr. Tyler. However, she meets Jerry instead and believes that he is the famous scientist awarded with the Nobel Prize. Now Carol wants to convince Dr. Tyler to come to her agency and the cynical Jerry uses the situation to seduce Carol. —Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

An aspiring musician arrives in New York in search of fame and fortune. He soon meets a taxi dancer / call girl and moves in with her. Before long, a romance develops. Tender romantic comedy about an aspiring musician who arrives in New York in search of fame & fortune. He soon meets a taxi dancer, moves in with her, and before too long a romance develops. —alfiehitchie A romantic comedy about a dancer who lives in New York and a would-be musician who arrives in town to make his fame & fortune, and platonically share an apartment. It's not too long before sparks fly as they struggle to make it in the city's 'rat race'. —Huggo

A honorable drifter constantly on the run finds his enemies closing in around him. Having fled to Mexico from the U.S. many years ago for killing his father's murderer, Martin Brady travels to Texas to broker an arms deal for his Mexican boss, strongman Governor Cipriano Castro. Brady breaks a leg and while recuperating in Texas the gun shipment is stolen. Complicating matters further the wife of local army major Colton has designs on him, and the local Texas Ranger captain makes him a generous offer to come back to the states and join his outfit. After killing a man in self defense, Brady slips back over the border and confronts Castro who is not only unhappy that Brady has lost his gun shipment but is about to join forces with Colton to battle the local raiding Apache Indians. —Doug Sederberg <vornoff@sonic.net>

During World War I, an anonymous private, (Chaplin) fighting in the army of Tomania, effects the valiant rescue of an officer named Schultz, but suffers loss of memory when the plane in which they are flying crashes into a tree. The little soldier is sent to a hospital where he remains for the next 20 years, unaware of the changes that are taking place around him. He does not know, for instance, that Hynkel (also played by Chaplin) has become Dictator of Tomania, and is ruthlessly persecuting the jews with the help of his two ministers, Garbitsch and Herring. Dismissed at last from the hospital, the amnesia victim returns to his barber-shop in the Ghetto, expecting to find everything as he left it 20 years before, because he does not realize that he has been away for so long. He is surprised and hurt, therefore, when Hynkel`s storm-troopers smash his store windows and make his new life miserable. He finds a friend in Hannah, a beautiful daughter of the Ghetto, and before long their friendship ripens into love. For a while they enjoy comparative peace firstly when Schultz, who has risen to a position of prominence in the new regime, recognizes the barber as his friend and orders the storm troopers to leave him alone, and secondly when Hynkel needs a financial loan from a Jewish financier and ceases temporarily his persecution of the Jews. The financier refuses the loan, so Hynkel takes up his antisemitic activities again, with a vengeance. He is planning an invasion of the neighboring country of Osterlich, and when Schultz questions the judgement of this move, the Dictator condemns him to a concentration camp. Schultz manages to escape to the ghetto, where he attempts to incite a revolution against the government. But before he can carry out this plan he and the barber are both captured and interned in prison camp. Pursuing his project of invading Osterlich, Hynkel invites to his palace Napaloni, Dictator of Bacteria, and after a few comic misunderstandings is able to enlist him as an ally. The invasion is successfully completed and Hannah, who has fled with her friends to Osterlich, again finds herself under the domination of Hynkel`s cruel regime. While The Great Dictator is celebrating his latest conquest by taking a vacation in the country, Schultz and the barber escape from the concentration camp. In the search that follows, Hynkel is arrested by his own soldiers, who think he is the barber, and Schultz sees that the barber is mistaken for the Dictator. Realising the importance of his new position the barber carries out the masquerade and in a speech before the assembled crowds of Tomania, denounces everything that Hynkel stands for and makes a rousing plea for democracy.