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Cast & Crew
George Marshall
Edward Everett Horton
Karen Morley
Alan Dinehart
Glen Boles
Berton Churchill
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
Timorous Hubert T. Wilkins, a forty-year-old bookkeeper who has worked eighteen years for the San Francisco importing and exporting firm of Bates & Co., refrains from proposing to Emily Converse, the firm's thirty-five-year-old secretary, because he does not think that they can live on his forty dollars-a-week salary. After Emily convinces Hubert to be more aggresive, he decides to ask his ill-tempered boss for a raise, but Bates does not give him the opportunity. Bates's son Don returns after a successful trip for the company to the Orient and, without telling his father, proposes to Emily's sister Dorothy. They decide to wait until Dorothy finishes school in June before they marry. At Christmas, Bates presents Hubert with a five-dollar bill and praises him for his work, whereupon Hubert requests a ten-dollar raise. Bates replies that the average salary for a bookkeeper is less than thirty dollars and suggests that Hubert quit if he is not satisfied. After Christmas dinner with Emily, Hubert runs into his old colleague from work, Perry, who cajoles him into joining friends for a drink. Hubert gets very intoxicated and leads the whole bar in singing "Three Blind Mice." When Bates arrives, the crowd spins him around and orders him to buy them drinks, as an initiation into their "Blind Mice Club." Bates, who does not notice Hubert, condemns the gathering as disgraceful. The next day, when Bates suggests that Don represent the company for a year in South America, Don reveals his engagement to Dot. Bates tries to dissuade him and failing that, tacitly threatens Emily with dismissal unless she talks her sister out of marrying Don. When Fuller, an office supply saleman who owes Hubert $400, offers to sell him four lots worth over $2,000 for only $800, Hubert agrees. Although Emily thinks Fuller that has taken advantage of Hubert, when she sees the lots, she thinks they are beautiful. At the site, after a man offers Hubert $12,000 for the lots, Hubert proposes to Emily nervously, with her encouragement, and they decide to sell three of the lots and keep one for themselves. However, Hubert soon learns that Fuller showed him the wrong section and that his lots are actually on a marsh. Hubert then stumbles into the marsh. While Hubert is home sick the next day, Bates fires Emily after he learns that Don and Dot have married. Perry visits Hubert and when Bates calls, Perry grabs the phone and calls him a "pot-bellied old pelican." Bates fires Hubert, but Perry, who has had the water in the marsh analyzed, introduces Hubert to the head of a mineral company who wants to bottle the water and erect a health resort. After he offers Hubert $100,000 plus 5% of the net profits, Hubert purchases Bates & Co. He is about to fire Bates, but when Bates says that he is glad that Hubert got the company rather than some outsider, Hubert gives Bates back his job and plans with Emily to meet Don and Dot in Buenos Aires on a double honeymoon.
Director
George Marshall
Cast
Edward Everett Horton
Karen Morley
Alan Dinehart
Glen Boles
Berton Churchill
Rosina Lawrence
Ray Walker
Frank Melton
William Benedict
Jed Prouty
Robert Graves
Selmar Jackson
Richard Powell
Richard Tucker
Harry Fox
Neil Fitzgerald
Jack Stoney
Harry Tenbrook
Tom London
Jack Norton
Boothe Howard
Geoffrey Hale
Fred "snowflake" Toones
Pat Moriarity
Wallis Clark
Harrison Greene
Pat O'malley
Edward Peil Sr.
Mary Gordon
Russell Hicks
Crew
Roy Brent
Louis Breslow
William Conselman
Duncan Cramer
Lewis Creber
William Eckhardt
Joseph Engel
Bernard Freericks
Harry Jackson
Henry Johnson
Samuel Kaylin
Lillian
Helen Marlowe
I. Rosenberg
Paul Schofield
Lamar Trotti
Sol M. Wurtzel
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
This was Joseph Engel's first assignment as a producer, according to a Film Daily news item in December 1934 which also noted that Lew Seiler was scheduled to direct the film. While Engel is listed as producer in the screen credits, reviews credit Sol M. Wurtzel as producer and Engel as associate producer. An early Call Bureau Cast Service lists the following actors in a Turkish bath scene, which apparently was not in the final film: Russ Clark (Attendant), Harry Holman (Fat man), Ernest Wood, Arthur Housman, Chick Collins (Drunks), Roy Brent (Clerk), Joe McGuinn (Man in Turkish bath). In addition, Jean Masset and Fred Crawford are credited in this listing as "Utility characters," but they along with those actors listed in the Turkish bath scene are not included in a later "corrected" Call Bureau Cast Service listing. In 1921, J. L. Frothingham produced a film based on the same source, which was distributed by Associated Producers, directed by Edward Sloman and starred William V. Mong (see AFI Catalog of Feature Films, 1921-30, F2.5560). Sol M. Wurtzel produced a Twentieth Century-Fox 1943 release based on the same source entitled He Hired the Boss, which was directed by Thomas Z. Loring and starred Stuart Erwin and Evelyn Venable.
