Jerry van Trevor awakes on the lounge to find it is now 1938 and with an identity he doesn't know - he questions the butler who convinces him that he is indeed the owner of this palatial Long Island estate!! But it seems it is all an elaborate hoax - the butler isn't even a butler, the family are too cheap to hire one!! He is a telegraph officer and he explains to the now confused Jerry the idea was to make him think he was hallucinating!! It has all been concocted by Colton Drain (wouldn't you know it's Monroe Owsley), the family accountant, to try and secure the inheritance left to Chloe's abusive but now missing husband, Jerry Werrenden. He finds van Trevor (John Miljan) at a hotel, and is taken with his resemblance to the missing Jerry. Once it is ascertained that he will not be missed, he is drugged and bought to the house!!
It didn't happen very often but it always gives me a real kick to see John Miljan who had a patent on unscrupulous lawyers, fight promoters, managers etc play a regular guy. His Jerry is a carefree con man who first gets the butler eating out of his hand and then Chloe (Shirley Grey) - she actually wanted to secure the inheritance for her missing husband but is being railroaded by the unscrupulous Drain. Add to the mix the Colonel, a trusted family friend who is acting as an executrix but has in reality been bleeding the estate dry to the tune of $100,000!!!
Hale Hamilton who usually plays solid family friends etc, is very funny as the bumbling fraudster who desperately wants to pay the money back but doesn't know how!!! Add some of Jerry's cronies, Robert Elliot playing.... no spoilers!! Let's just say most of the actors must have had a ball playing against their usual characters - all except Monroe Owsley who came to the movies recreating his role as the likable drunken brother in the film version of "Holiday"(1930) but was doomed by his supercilious looks and manner to only play rats and weaklings. I've never seen Shirley Grey look lovelier, she doesn't have a lot to do but she does it nicely. She was an actress who for some reason became mired in programmers and couldn't find her way out.
It didn't happen very often but it always gives me a real kick to see John Miljan who had a patent on unscrupulous lawyers, fight promoters, managers etc play a regular guy. His Jerry is a carefree con man who first gets the butler eating out of his hand and then Chloe (Shirley Grey) - she actually wanted to secure the inheritance for her missing husband but is being railroaded by the unscrupulous Drain. Add to the mix the Colonel, a trusted family friend who is acting as an executrix but has in reality been bleeding the estate dry to the tune of $100,000!!!
Hale Hamilton who usually plays solid family friends etc, is very funny as the bumbling fraudster who desperately wants to pay the money back but doesn't know how!!! Add some of Jerry's cronies, Robert Elliot playing.... no spoilers!! Let's just say most of the actors must have had a ball playing against their usual characters - all except Monroe Owsley who came to the movies recreating his role as the likable drunken brother in the film version of "Holiday"(1930) but was doomed by his supercilious looks and manner to only play rats and weaklings. I've never seen Shirley Grey look lovelier, she doesn't have a lot to do but she does it nicely. She was an actress who for some reason became mired in programmers and couldn't find her way out.