Make 'Em Laugh (The Funny Business of America)
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Featuring Joe DeRita (Solo)
16.8 min. (Short Subject)
Life's patsy Joe Bates (Joe DeRita) manages to destroy his kitchen before heading to work at his dress shop. Accidentally accosting a customer (Dorothy Granger), he runs afoul of her jealous fiancee (Dick Wessel). Assuming that Joe is a womanizer, Mrs. Bates (Christine McIntyre) leaves him and moves into the women-only Hotel Amazon. Hoping to win his wife back, Joe registers at the hotel in drag. But the woman from his dress shop also lives there, and Bates finds himself on the run from the boyfriend and a brutish hotel matron named Violet.
A remake of Andy Clyde's Columbia short A MAID MADE MAD (1943).
Emil Sitka filmed a brief scene as Mrs. Bates' lawyer, but it was not included in the released cut of the short.
Joe DeRita
Joe Bates
Christine McIntyre
Mrs. Bates
Dorothy Granger
Honey
Dick Wessel
Honey's husband
Jean Willes
Shoe customer
Symona Boniface
Hotel desk clerk
Florence Auer
Violet, hotel matron
Frank Scannell
Fast talker
Nancy Saunders
Bellhop
Emil Sitka
Mrs. Bates' lawyer, scene deleted
Edward Bernds
Director
Hugh McCollum
Producer
Monte Collins
Story
Elwood Ullman
Story
Edward Bernds
Screenplay
George F. Kelley
Director of Photography
Henry DeMond
Film Editor
Charles Clague
Art Director
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