Leave It to Henry

This was the second of a five-film series produced by Monogram featuring the Latham family based on the Cosmopolitan Magazine stories by D. D. Beauchamp. No, Nellie, the Cosmopolitan Magazine in this era had little resemblance to what it later became under Helen Gurley Brown.

Here, Henry Latham (Ramond Walburn) and town Mayor Colton (Walter Catlett), two veterans of vaudeville, stage, films and radio who first worked together on stage in San Francisco in 1906---the year of the Big'un--- continue their misadventures in Smalltown, America. This time out, twelve-year-old David Latham (Gary Gray) is testifying at the trial of his father, Henry, who is accused of burning down the McCluskey bridge. It seems, in flashback, that David and his friend Georgie Colton (George McDonald) couldn't pay the excessive toll---two dollars American---charged them for walking across the bridge recently purchased by Mr. McCluskey (Houseley Stevenson), so the old coot took Henry's watch from David as security until the toll was paid.

Meanwhile, back in town, Henry, not invited to his wife's Pioneer Committee planning the town's centennial celebration---bumbling Henry was not on anybody's Must-Be-Invited List---talks his friend the Mayor into the two of them doing an re-enactment of the burning of the steamboat "Prairie Queen" at the celebration. Nothing good can come of this.

In some more mean-and-between time Henry is planning revenge on McCluskey in lieu of bailing out his watch, but McCluskey's grandson, Jim (Pat Phelan, who has the hots for Henry's daughter, Barbara (Mary Stuart), has given the watch back to Barbara.

After weeks of slapstick building of the boat, Henry and Colton are forced to swim to safety after firing the boat...just before it drifts under McCluskey's toll bridge and burns it down. Henry is jailed for arson, plus running through town in his underwear...don't ask.

Colton saves his hide by testifying that Henry is too dumb to have deliberately destroyed McCluskey's bridge. No argument there, and Henry is freed.