Made by arrangement with Chesterfield Cigarettes, this 1931 film short was produced to solicit contributions to the National Variety Artists fund for tuberculosis research. I'm no spring chicken myself, but I could only identify a handful of the players here without the cast list, folks like Edward G. Robinson, Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton, and a trio of the Little Rascals, Stymie, Farina and Chubby. The better surprise is catching future stars that were completely unrecognizable, at least to me, such as Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Fay Wray, Douglas Fairbanks and Loretta Young. Interestingly, I was able to pick out Joe E. Louis, even with a fake beard, but was completely fooled by someone I was sure was George Burns, cigar and all. Billing itself as the greatest collection of stars ever to appear in one place at one time, "The Stolen Jools" was nominally a detective story attempting to find out what happened to Norma Shearer's valuables which disappeared at a movie celebrity ball. Mitzi Green solves the mystery by fingering E.G. Robinson and George E. Stone for the heist, but it was all done in good fun for a worthwhile cause. A must see for old time film fans for the celebrities alone, but that's about as much as you get.
Review of The Stolen Jools
The Stolen Jools
(1931)
"Why my nerves are so shot I suspect everyone!"
18 December 2011
Warning: Spoilers