MR. BOGGS STEPS OUT (1938) Stuart Erwin, Helen Chandler & Toby Wing | Comedy, Romance | B&W

Mr. Boggs Steps Out is a 1938 American romantic comedy film directed by Gordon Wiles. The film is based on the Clarence Budington Kelland Saturday Evening Post short story Face the Facts. The working titles of the film were Face the Facts and Mr. Boggs Buys a Barrel.

SYNOPSIS
Government statistician Oliver Boggs wins a large monetary prize from a cinema for correctly guessing the amount of beans in a barrel. His elder business associate advises him to leave his dead end depressing job and do something rewarding. When the pair's boss abuses the elder man, Boggs quits and decides to purchase a barrel manufacturing company in a small town. Boggs discovers that all the business in the town is dead due to the Great Depression. Boggs and his barrel company adviser Oleander Tubbs bring in a variety of unusual methods and ingenuity to bring prosperity to the town.

Oliver Boggs, a typical office drone, with no success in sight, who can spout statistics about anything and everything, wins $1500 in a bean-guessing contest at the movie theatre, quits his job and sets forth for the seedy, down-at-the-heels town of Peckham Falls. There he buys a barrel factory and falls in love with Irene Lee, the snobbish niece of crusty old Morton Ross, the town's only rich man and owner of the closed canneries. Oleander Tubbs and her inventor father Angus, who sold Oliver the factory, tell him it has no future but he disagrees and says he will have everything booming again. Oleander thinks he is daffy but she and her father agree to help him. Angus invents a collapsible barrel and Oliver, seeing fame and fortune just ahead, spends all of his money just keeping the factory going. Oliver persuades old man Ross to re-open the canneries and to use the ground-breaking barrels and things appear to be going okay, until Dennis Andrews, Ross' slick attorney, tries to double-cross both Ross and Oliver by bilking Angus out of the patent rights to the barrel.

CAST & CREW
Stuart Erwin as Oliver Boggs
Helen Chandler as Oleander Tubbs
Toby Wing as Irene Lee
Tully Marshall as Morton Ross
Spencer Charters as Angus Tubbs
Otis Harlan as Abner Katz
Walter Byron as Dennis Andrews
Peter Potter as Bob DeBrette
Harry Tyler as Sam Mason
Milburn Stone as Burns
Nora Cecil as Widow Peddia
Harrison Greene as Mr. Pry
Elliot Fisher as Tommy Mason
Eddie Kane as Theatre Manager
Wilson Benge as The Butler
Mike Jeffries as Chauffeur
Isabel La Mal as Mrs. Mason
Betty Mack as Miss Feathrewell
Otto Hoffman as Jenkins

Directed by Gordon Wiles
Written by Clarence Budington Kelland (story: Face the Facts), Richard English (screenplay)
Produced by Ben Pivar
Cinematography John Stumar
Edited by Gene Milford, Guy V. Thayer Jr.
Production company Zion Myers Productions
Distributed by Grand National Pictures
Release date February 18, 1938
Running time 68 minutes
Country United States
Language English