The Smart Set-Up

Walter O'Keefe in The Smart Set-Up (1931)

Having nothing else to blog about today, I decided to go through the old DVDs that shorts on them want watch The Smart Set-Up, which is on the DVD of Smart Money that came with the Warner Gangsters Vol. 3 box set.

Walter O'Keefe, an actor/comic/singer I'd never heard of, although it turns out he had a long enough career in radio, is the star, playing Walter Keen. Walter is a nightclub singer in love with Patsy, although Patsy's fellow chorines don't think he's good enough for her. He gets invited to hoity-toity parties in penthouses to sing for the rich folks, and they don't think he's good enough for them either. Oh, he's allowed to sing for them, but he's not supposed to mingle with them. So he tells them off, although not with any bad language that they couldn't have gotten into a movie, even a pre-Code movie.

Since this is a two-reeler, there's not much going on here, but I'd say there's even less going on than in many other shorts. O'Keefe isn't a particularly memorable singer. To be fair, however, it was probably his third or fourth skill so that could easiliy be forgiven if he were one number in a feature film. O'Keefe sings two songs and delivers that one monologue, and that's about it.

Smart Money would be worth the price, and if the Warner Gangster sets are still available, they're definitely worth the price.