The Cheerful Fraud (1926) DVD-R

Starring Reginald Denny, Gertrude Olmstead, Otis Harlan, Emily Fitzroy, Charles K. Gerrard
Directed by William A. Seiter

Print: black/white
Runtime: 70 min.
Genre: action

Silent film comedian Reginald Denny's regular leading lady Laura La Plante had gone on to bigger things at Universal in 1927, thus Denny was co-starred with Gertrude Olmstead in A Cheerful Fraud. Denny plays a wealthy young man whose one true love (Olmstead) chooses to keep her distance. To get closer to the girl, Denny takes a job as her family's butler. Complications ensue when Denny is forced to be in two places at once without exposing his harmless deception. Like most of Denny's Universal vehicles, A Cheerful Fraud brought home the box-office bacon, enabling the studio to finance such chancier projects as The Man Who Laughs. The director was William A. Seiter, Denny's favorite, who always managed to pluck something fresh from the most banal and timeworn of plot devices.