Ralph Cedar Movies

Obviously filmed several years before its 1938 release, Meet the Mayor serves as a vehicle for popular Broadway comedian Frank Fay. Unfortunately, Fay's smug, self-satisfied line deliveries had never played well on screen, and didn't here. The star is cast as Spencer Brown, elevator operator in a backwoods hotel. As the community's resident philosopher, Brown's support is highly coveted in the upcoming mayoral race. The outcome of the plot is decided by a hidden recording device developed by Brown's friend and confidante Harry Bayliss (George Meeker in a rare sympathetic role). Fulfilling the film's leading-lady obligations is Ruth Hall, who by the time Meet the Mayor hit the screens had retired to become the wife of cinematographer Lee Garmes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Sally Bates (|$Isabel Jewell) is a young Texas woman trying to make it to Hollywood on too little money and driving a car that's too old. She gets stranded one night, nearly out of money and gas, in a college town where she meets Bill Cutler (Larry "Buster" Crabbe), a poor-but-honest and hard-working campus hunk -- he's a football hero and also runs the local drive-in restaurant for his mother (Maidel Turner). They take a light-hearted liking to each other and are thrust together even more forcefully when she helps break up a robbery. Sally ends up being taken into Bill's mother's home and working at the drive-in; but Bill is always spending time with his longtime steady Clara Berry (Sally Blane), who's got a lot of money and a lot of interest in Bill -- she and her family have big plans for him, when they marry, and Sally doesn't want to get in the way. She ends up going out with Clara's brother Jack (Regis Toomey), whose fun-loving nature masks a drinking problem and a mean and reckless streak. A series of misunderstandings ensues, culminating in Bill beating Jack to death -- despite the evidence that it was, at worst, manslaughter, the district attorney (Wallis Clark) does his best to prove murder. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Although there's no longer any way to tell for sure (many records have been lost, and nitrate film negatives disintegrated), this seems to be the last time Oliver Hardy and Bobby Ray would appear in a film together (within a couple of years, Hardy would be teamed up with Stan Laurel, creating comic history). Ray plays the janitor at the local movie theater, and Hardy is his boss. The boss and his fiancée, the cashier, are planning to be married, and Bobby and his girlfriend decide to get married, too. But first Bobby has to post playbills all over town -- he winds up sticking them mainly on the townsfolk, including a cop, his sergeant, and the theater manager himself. The theater manager gets his marriage license mixed up with a playbill, which he doesn't discover until he arrives at the parson's home. He angrily goes after Bobby, who escapes and runs off with his boss' fiancée. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide