For its fourth release, the still-young RKO picture chose to adapt William LeBaron's 1917 Broadway flop about the kinder, gentler side of eugenics. A popular field of study in the early 20th century, eugenics fell out of favor by the end of World War II, with revelations of its use by the Nazis to eliminate what they considered "undesirables." This comedy focuses instead on what were called positive eugenics, the strengthening of the species through the matching of people based on their genes. Character comedian Frank Craven stars (under his own direction) as a eugenics expert who wants to help his sister and her husband become parents. Since the usual methods have failed, he hires his chauffer and their maid to create a child, only to have the experimental subjects fall in love and decide to keep the child. The plot would have been impossible five years later, with the arrival of strict Production Code enforcement, and may have been too much for audiences even in 1929, when the film flopped. Yet it provides a rare glimpse of Craven, who usually played supporting roles on film, in the kind of leading part that had made him a star on Broadway, often directing himself in his own scripts.

By Frank Miller