Rhapsody in Brew

Billy Gilbert takes a rare turn behind the camera and plays one of the Schmaltz Brothers -- Billy Bletcher is the other. Gilbert used "Schmaltz" (Yiddish for "chicken fat") as his character name a few times when he was playing a German-accented character.

The Schmaltz Brothers buy a busy-looking beer garden, only to discover they have been swindled. They try to make a go of it with the usual Roach-style problems. In fact, this looks like it was intended as a Laurel & Hardy short at one point, but the Boys were moving into feature films and so the plot and some of the gags were recycled.

Either this was intended to fill in some contracts that Stan and Ollie were too busy to do or Roach wanted to find a substitute "the Boys" for short subjects. He had done this before; when Harold Lloyd moved into features and eventually became independent, Roach tried to find someone to star in a series of shorts as a young, normal-looking comedian, trying out several people before settling on Charley Chase. This one didn't take, although it's very watchable.