Director William Beaudine earned the derisive nickname "One-Shot" because of the speed with which he could complete a production, flubbed takes or not. But it's not fair to lump him in with other truly excrable directors like Ed Wood or Dwain Esper: even though much of Beaudine's output was merely acceptable to audiences, he could handle any genre project handed to him by studios in the US and UK, and his lifetime total of over 400 movies he worked on as a director in some capacity is a tough record to beat. In this, an adaptation of Booth Tarkington's Gay Nineties stories about the misdeeds of small town boy pals Penrod (Leon Janney) and Sam (Frank Coghlan Jr.), the two rapscallions reluctantly haze squealers into their In-Or-In club, squabble over their grade school object of desire, Marjorie Jones (Margaret Marquis), and weather the death of Sam's dog and the loss of their beloved clubhouse. Beaudine directed the first adaptation of this story in 1923 for First Republic, but this time around got to include his daughter Helen in a small role.

By Violet LeVoit