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So you want to be in a remake! Change the setting from a movie studio to the New York stage, and this short is little more than a revamp of So You Want to Be in Pictures -- right down to Joe's corny Charles Boyer impression and the same dyspeptic director (Ralph Sanford).
One wouldn't mind watching Joe ham it up or messing up a stage production, but there's nothing here that's particularly novel about the way he does it. He just sort of stumbles through and tears down the scenery in the process, even though we're told at one point that he's already been in the production for three weeks.
The funniest touches come from veteran character actors Fred Clark and Ralph Nelson, as stage producers who make it quite clear that they have minimal interest in Joe's talents. Other than that, Joe's most amusing scene is right at the start when, nearly penniless, he sashays into a local beanery and orders an "actors' special" -- a bowl of hot water that he dollops with some ketchup.
And here, let us say hail and farewell to the wonderful Clifton Young, whose last McDoakes short this was. He died just two years later, at the tender age of 33.
Our rating: 
(C) 2012, Steve Bailey.
Go to:
The Joe McDoakes Shorts