Plot Summary for
Stand-In (1937) More at IMDbPro »

Atterbury Dodd is an efficiency expert who believes everything can be reduced to mathematics. He is sent to Hollywood to see whether Colossal Pictures is a good investment. He soon learns that movie production doesn't fit his formulaic mindset. Written by Ed Stephan {stephan@cc.wwu.edu}

Atterbury Dodd, an employee of Pettypacker & Sons in New York, has numbers and figures flowing in his blood along with the corpuscles, to paraphrase a girl he's about to meet. He clashes with the eldest Pettypacker himself over the sale of Colossal Studios out in California. Dodd argues against selling it, so Pettypacker sends him to Hollywood to find out why the movie factory is losing money. Back at Colossal, Koslofski, a director with a cheap foreign accent, is making a jungle picture called "Sex and Satan" with Thelma Cheri, a leading lady whose hips do all her acting. That's according to her producer and former lover, Doug Quintain, a guy who always carries his Scottish terrier under his arm. Dodd finds himself schmoozed by a publicist and harassed by an aggressive stage mother the moment he arrives, sending him fleeing to somewhere no one can find him: Mrs. Mack's boarding house for broken-down actors. There he lives next to the former child star Lester Plum, a.k.a. Sugar Plum, who is now a stand-in for Thelma Cheri. Soon he discovers there's a plot to sabotage the studio and sell it to the unscrupulous Ivor Nassau. Meanwhile, Plum becomes Dodd's secretary, falls in love with him, and is annoyed to find that he admires her - for her mind. Written by J. Spurlin

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