A Girl's Best Years

Playwright John Warburton keeps being hit with successful breach-of-promise suits. Mary Doran is a newspaper reporter who has covered all these cases, so Warburton hires her as his love secretary to record the ladies' come-ons, and censor his notes thanking them for a glorious evening. She also shows up with a dwarf dressed as a small boy to cut short any further misadventures, while everyone sings and plays romantic ballads by Val Burton and Will Jason. How far will she go to save him from himself?

MGM produced several of these overwrought and overproduced short subjects as the independent short comedy producers -- particularly Hal Roach -- shut down their increasingly unprofitable specialty. The other majors were already doing so, and the company found them not only a welcome source of "selected short subjects" to fill out their programs, but a good way to keep their staff busy and train new talent in front of and behind the camera.