The Loudspeaker

Ray Walker plays Joe Miller, the town wit of a small town. He's got ambition. He wants to be a radio star. When the girl he wants to marry gets together with another man, he heads off to New York, where he fast-talks his way into a rising career. The problem is he has a swelled head, so as he tries to help and pursue Julie Bishop (still credited as Jacqueline Wells), he alienates the people around him.

It's a common enough show-biz plot and Ray Walker and Miss Bishop try their hardest (with a nice small role for Charley Grapewin), but it's fairly thin. Walker's comedy is of the word-play and "Ain't I funny?" variety; while it's certainly better than the show it replaces, it's not particularly amusing .... although the competing shows he mentions are of exactly the same variety. A couple of songs by Harry Akst and Lew Brown enliven the proceedings, but this cheap Monogram programmer, while decent, doesn't particularly appeal, largely because of the unappealing way Walker's role is written and performed.