Thanks, Mr. Cupid

A print of this long-lost short subject was found and posted on YouTube in June 2023. It stars Fred Lightner (NOT Earl Oxford) in a rather peculiar comedy within the setting of a big beauty parlour where a dozen or so young women are employed. Fred Lightner shows up to oversee the business, where the boss is a hyperactive, rather ditzy male who invents a facial treatment that makes people look twenty years younger. Meanwhile, Lightner and one of the female employees fall in love. There is a considerable amount of singing, which I found tedious, but otherwise the story unfolded rapidly enough to keep me mildly interested. I was surprised to see that Lightner, who was primarily a vaudeville comedian, was given an entirely serious role with no funny lines. This picture may be worth watching by anyone interested in seeing the kind of stuff that Educational Pictures turned out on the cheap at its Astoria studio back when many exhibitors routinely accompanied their feature films with newsreels, short subjects, and cartoons. Also, so far as I know, this is Fred Lightner's only surviving film appearance other than his highly praised roll as Yankees manager in "The Babe Ruth Story." (His more famous sister, Winnie Lightner, was a major Warner Bros. Star in the early talkies.)