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Handsome young Pepe Nuñez prefers to roam the world as a vagabond singer and fisherman, while his staid identical twin brother Tomás manages the family shoe factory. While visiting his brother in San Francisco, Tomás tells Pepe that he is needed in Panama for an important business deal and asks Pepe to impersonate him while he is gone so that his competitors, the Bermejillos, will not know that he has left town. Happy-go-lucky Pepe agrees to pose as Tomás, president of the Nuñez Shoe Company, and his first act is to appoint his sidekick, Paco Jerez, as an efficiency expert. In the role of Tomás, Pepe revolutionizes office routines at the factory. He introduces streamlined shoes, entertains the employees with his singing and promotes the pretty blonde information clerk to the position of Paco's secretary. He also presents Rita Castro, Tomás' cabaret-singer girlfriend, with a $10,000 bracelet and falls in love with his Aunt Crescencia's niece, Eva Collado. When Paula Bermejillo, the pretty business representative from the rival firm, suggests a merger, Pepe, who finds her attractive, proposes that they discuss it over dinner. After visiting the night spots, a very drunk Pepe blunders into the nightclub where Rita is performing and causes a jealous scene. In the morning, Pepe learns that while drunk, he signed a contract prohibiting the Nuñez Shoe Company from making rubber galoshes. When Pepe learns that Tomás has sent a fleet carrying raw rubber from Panama, he decides to manufacture rubber tires, and promotes the new product on a radio broadcast featuring himself as a mystery singer. Although the radio program is a great success, Tomás wires Pepe to discontinue it. When Eva discovers that Pepe is only posing as president, she condemns him, and Pepe, believing that he has lost her love, disappears with Paco. Soon after, Tomás returns and realizes that Pepe's radio tire project is a sensation and he and Eva, now contrite for their condemnation of Pepe, begin to search for him. They find him at the docks, aboard a tramp steamer, singing for the tire company by remote control. Pepe is delighted when he discovers that he has redeemed himself in Tomás' eyes, especially when Eva comes aboard and suggests a honeymoon cruise for two.

Martin Garralaga and Tito Guízar in The Prodigal Returns (1939)

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The Prodigal Returns

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