The Stolen Jools (1931)

I never would’ve expected a Buster Monday entry to remind of a Little (TLCw) review, but The Stolen Jools strikes me as an awful lot like The Banquet.  Both are star-studded projects made to raise money for charity, but while The Banquet is a feature film to raise money to aid flood victims, The Stolen Jools is a short to raise money for a tuberculosis sanitarium.  Both, while well-meaning, don’t have a ton in the way of artistic merit or real entertainment and are largely coasting from one celebrity cameo to the next.

The plot is straightforward.  Norma Shearer’s jewels are stolen at a Hollywood function, and an intrepid inspector combs various studio sets, lots, and eateries in search of the perp.  Along the way, he runs into star after star in brief cameos – many play themselves, but a handful, including Buster, play bit characters in their short appearances.

Basically, everybody who was anybody in the early ‘30s is in this movie.  Going through IMDb, the main names I recognize are Wallace Beery (a Buster connection – he played the rival in Three Ages,) Laurel & Hardy, Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Irene Dunne, Gary Cooper, Douglas Fairbanks, Barbara Stanwyck, Fay Wray, and Mitzi Green.  While the plot isn’t any more inspiring than The Banquet’s (although, as a short, it’s by necessity a lot more clear-cut,) I think this film handles its cameos a bit better overall.  Yes, it’s essentially a 20-minute leapfrog from cameo to cameo, but most of the stars have at least a tiny bit to do in their appearances, especially the comic actors.  It’s less, “And now it’s time to trot out Laurel & Hardy!” and more, “Let’s watch Laurel & Hardy clown around for a bit.  Okay?  Box ticked – moving on.”  Still an obvious piece of well-intentioned fluff, but it makes a tiny bit more of an effort (side note:  part of my impressions between the two films could also be the fact that I still haven’t quite acclimated to late ‘80s/early ‘90s Hong Kong comedy.  It’s possible that The Banquet was wonderfully well-received at its time and I just don’t get it, but for me personally, it strikes me as slapped together and more than a little hokey.)

If you’re into old Hollywood, the short has its moments, and at 20 minutes, it’s not a long investment.  Still, if you’re only in it for the Buster of it all, there’s no particular need to watch more than the first two minutes (we’re talking brief cameos all around – how else could you fit “more stars than have ever appeared together in one picture” into two reels?)  He plays a policeman, which takes me back the slightest bit to the Fatty Arbuckle short The Rough House.  In typical Buster fashion, he’s a rather clumsy policeman, and amid the quick bit of slapstick he gets to do is a nice tumble over a partition ending in a neck roll (Buster would’ve been with MGM at this time – at least somebody in the early talkie era recognized that if you have Buster Keaton in your movie, however briefly, you let him do physical comedy!)

Warnings

A little slapstick violence.