Everybodys Doing It (1938 film)

Plot

Bruce Keene works in the advertising department of Beyers and Company, which produces cereal, among other things. When he gets into trouble at work due to his heavy drinking, he and his fiancé, Penny Wilton, who also works in the advertising department, come up with an idea to boost the sales of Beyers' cereal. Keene will draw a series of pictograms, which will serve as clues. The pictograms will be included on boxes of cereal over a 30-week span. Customers who solve all 30 pictograms will be eligible to win a $100,000 prize. Willy Beyers, the company president, agrees to the concept, and the contest is launched.

The contest is a huge success, but as the weeks wear on, Keene becomes bored with the idea. Falling back into his drinking ways, he begins spending more and more time in bars, and not creating the pictograms for the final weeks of the contest. Wilton, fearing for her fiancé's future, hires a small-time hood, Softy Blane, to pretend to kidnap Keene and take him to the country to finish the series of pictograms. However, Blane works for Steve Devers, a gangster who has taken an interest in manipulating the contest in order to win the $100,000. Blane doublecrosses Wilton, and kidnaps Keene for real, taking him to Devers' hideout.

In order to thwart his kidnappers, Keene draws pictograms to send in to Beyers which actually give clues about his circumstances. Wilton understands the clues, and uses them to puzzle out where Keene is being held. She leads the police to the hideout, and after a shootout, Keene is rescued. Reunited with his fiancé, he promises to reform his drinking ways and marries Wilton.

Cast

(Cast list as per AFI film database)

Production

In June 1937 it was announced that B. P. Schulberg and Vivienne Osborne had been cast in the picture. By the middle of November 1937 the film, still known by its working title, Easy Millions, had finished production and was in the editing room. A November Variety article listed Christy Cabanne as the director, as well as William Sistrom as the producer. The screenplay was by J. Robert Bren, Edmund Joseph, and Harry Segall, while the cinematographer was announced as Paul Vogel. The cast list was described as Preston Foster, Sally Eilers, Paul Guilfoyle, Cecil Kellaway, and Lorraine Krueger. In early December the title of the film was changed to Everybody's Doing It, from its working title of Easy Millions. In mid-December, it was announced that the picture was to be released on January 14, 1938, and RKO did release the film on that date. The National Legion of Decency approved the picture for all audiences, rating it class A-1.

Reception

Harrison's Reports gave the film a mediocre review, stating that the plot was "so thin that, in order to pad it out to a full length feature, the producer had to use up some of the footage in the most stupid type of slapstick imaginable". Motion Picture Daily's opinion was quite lukewarm, saying that the film was an "inexpensive fabrication that may be unusual enough to satisfy the moderate taste moderately." The Motion Picture Herald gave a very ambiguous review, wherein they neither praised nor spoke negatively about the film, instead speaking about the film's structure and relation to recent films written along similar lines. They also linked the plot of the film to a recently past advertising scheme, called "Gold Coast", which bore a striking resemblance to the advertising gambit portrayed in the film. Finally, the magazine did comment that the audience's reaction at the showing they viewed was "spotty".