Don't Give Up

"Don't Give Up" is one of four short comedies which starred Buster West and featured his father, John. Buster went on to make about 20 more shorts during the 30s on his own though neither achieved much in the way of notariety in films, though they had worked together in Vaudeville.

Buster plays a really annoying masher who spends the early part of the film bothering women. Not surprisingly, one of the women gets the cops on Buster and they take him to headquarters. However, inexplicably, the DIstrict Attorney didn't seem to care that the guy was a pervert and instead enlists his aid to follow a gangster's girlfriend in the hope that she'll lead him to her infamous and wanted boyfriend. Unfortunately, Buster follows the wrong woman and spends much of the rest of the film pestering her....and who the woman turns out to be in mildly funny.

This film doesn't make any sense and it's mostly unfunny....and there really isn't much more to say about it.

Buster West breezes into town, offends a couple of girls, and shows up at the DA's office -- the District Attorney is played by his father, John West -- hoping to be an investigator. He is assigned to trail a gangster's moll, but naturally mistakes Carol Wines, the DA's daughter for her. Some vigorous and funny situations ensue, amidst the not-so-funny snappy patter.

Director William H. Watson started out as an editor at Keystone before becoming a comedy director about 1918. He served in that role, mostly in the shorts, through the end of the 1930s, although his career stretched out a few years beyond that. He died in 1967, aged 71.