The Nut Farm (1935)

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This amusing lampoon of low-budget filmmaking is set in motion when fly-by-night entrepreneur Bradley Page talks small-towner Mrs. Bent (Betty Alden) into financing a movie. Mrs. Bent's shiftless brother Willie Barton (Wallace Ford) is appointed director of the film, which turns out to be a big-time… More This amusing lampoon of low-budget filmmaking is set in motion when fly-by-night entrepreneur Bradley Page talks small-towner Mrs. Bent (Betty Alden) into financing a movie. Mrs. Bent's shiftless brother Willie Barton (Wallace Ford) is appointed director of the film, which turns out to be a big-time bomb. The day is saved when the film, a "serious" desert melodrama, is re-edited as a slapstick comedy. The winner in this instance is Mrs. Bent's long-suffering husband (Oscar Apfel), who'd wanted all along to invest his wife's money in the nut farm of the title. Based on a 1929 play by John C. Brownell, The Nut Farm is an interesting precursor to such later moviemaking satires as After the Fox and Sweet Liberty. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi