A Girl's Best Years

This MGM short has the distinction of being released on Christmas. And, like many of MGM's shorts, the actors are all relatively unknown actors--folks that MGM tried out first in shorts to see if they'd be worth promoting to full-length films. With this one, evidently MGM was not impressed and Mary Doran and John Warburton went on to make more films--mainly in supporting roles. The only one you will recognize if you're an old movie buff is Barnett Parker who made a career for himself playing Butlers and stuffy high-class dudes, though sadly this career was cut short by an early death.

Michael Royce (Warburton) is apparently a brainless idiot. Again and again, he finds himself involved in breach of promise suits (basically, he needs to marry the woman or pay her off because he ended up engaged to her). So, he hires a smart reporter (Doran) to follow him and extricate him from troublesome situations like this. She is great at the job...but ultimately falls for the idiot!

The plot is quite cute, the actors competent and the story worth seeing...or worth expanding to full-length, making it a nice B- movie. But the singing, well, that I could have done without.