Getting Gertie's Garter

The basic idea is pretty simple: Scatterbrained Dennis O'Keefe once gave a garter to his friend Gertie. Now he's a prominent scientist (and a married man) and he decides he needs to get Gertie's garter back.

O'Keefe spends almost the entire picture sneaking into rooms, climbing out of windows, crawling around in haylofts, and just generally behaving oddly—all in pursuit of the elusive garter which Gertie, by the way, has decided she might want to hang on to.

The supporting cast includes Sheila Ryan as O'Keefe's exasperated wife; she knows something is up but can't quite catch him at it. Marie McDonald is fine as Gertie herself, a good-natured blonde who is tolerant of O'Keefe's persistence but only up to a certain point. Barry Sullivan and Jerome Cowan trade wise cracks as a couple of buddies who add to the mischief. J. Carrol Naish as the butler and Binnie Barnes as a busybody add hilarious bits as well.

The whole crew eventually ends up at Sullivan's ritzy country house, where Sullivan and McDonald are soon to be married—if O'Keefe doesn't mess up their plans too.

It's all very frantic and slapsticky—extremely funny nonsense.

If possible, this movie should be viewed immediately after watching Up in Mabel's Room, which was made the year before with the same director (Allan Dwan), same star (O'Keefe), and same plot (almost exactly).