Lady! Please!

Arthur Stone has just gotten his correspondence-school detective badge. He figures if he can get a job with the Walter Burns Agency, he's set. But Burns doesn't want him. So Stone convinces Julia Griffith that he can get her stolen pearls back and she says if he does, she'll give him $5,000. But Walter Long and Dorothy Granger, who stole the pearls, plant them on him.

I can't figure out why this isn't a particularly funny short from Mack Sennett's studio. These performers have been funny elsewhere. William Hornbeck, although uncredited, was still working for Sennett. I suspect it is director Babe Stafford; although nominally in charge of some of Sennett's better shorts of this period, when he directed, say, W. C. Fields, no one thinks anyone but Fields was in charge. Although Sennett had moved into the sound era with some funny movies, he soon was producing mechanical shorts with no zip in them. And Stafford directed several of them.

Arthur Stone stars in this comedy short....one I wouldn't rush to see. This is mostly because although it has a few funny situations, too often the director has the scenes go on far too long...and trimming about five minutes from the story might have helped.

Arthur has ambitions of becoming somebody...but he's also a bit of a knucklhead. When he learns about a missing necklace, he pretends to be a detective and goes in search of the pearls. However, he very quickly finds them but doesn't know it. It's because the crook plants the necklace on him because the cops are looking for him. Then, he has his wife follow Arthur and retrieve the valuable necklace in his coat pocket.

The story might have worked well but it just isn't all that funny. Everyone seems to try very hard but it just seems overlong and underfunny.