Humphrey Bogart… as a film producer cradling an ever-present Scottish Terrier? Don’t let the dog fool you as the famed tough guy also shows his flair for comedy in Stand-In (1937), a riotous, lacerating satire on the motion picture industry.

New York bank Pettypacker and Sons has a problem, a colossal problem, in the form of their investment in Colossal Studios in Hollywood. Prior to selling the failing film factory to scheming financier Ivor Nassau (C. Henry Gordon) for half its worth, the board asks their top number cruncher Atterbury Dodd (Leslie Howard) for his assessment, and he ardently recommends the bank retain ownership of the studio.

At an impasse, the firm sends Dodd out west to investigate the situation at Colossal, where he quickly enlists the help of producer Douglas Quintain (Bogart) and Lester Plum (Joan Blondell), a former child star now working in the occupation of the film’s title. Resistance to Dodd’s scrutiny, however, comes not only from Nassau, but from everyone who stands to benefit from the studio’s sale: temperamental “Russian” director Koslofski (Alan Mowbray), studio diva Thelma Cheri (Marla Shelton) and PR flack Tom Potts (Jack Carson at his obnoxious best).

Directed by Tay Garnett (The Postman Always Rings Twice) and produced by Walter Wanger (You Only Live Once), Stand-In leaves no Tinseltown target untouched while serving up a sprightly mix of slapstick, send-up and sentiment… with screwball-inspired romance for seasoning!

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Bookish bank employee Atterbury Dodd (Leslie Howard) is ordered to investigate the near-bankrupt Colossal Studios in Hollywood, to see if the firm is any sort of good risk. Dodd's first brush with Tinseltown's cuckoo atmosphere occurs when he takes a room in a boarding house for extras, where all manner of eccentrics wander about as they wait for the phone to ring (Charles Middleton comports himself in an Abe Lincoln costume, on the off-chance that Hollywood will go back to making Civil War pictures soon). He befriends Lester Plum (Joan Blondell), a former child star now working as a stand-in for haughty movie queen Thelma Cheri (Marla Shelton), and perpetually soused producer Douglas Quintain (Humphrey Bogart). Aware that the latest epic of autocratic director Koslofski (Alan Mowbray) will ruin the studio, Howard investigates further, discovering that a rival company has bribed Koslofski to pad the budget and thus bring about the foreclosure of Colossal. While his business sense tells him that this is the next logical move, Dodd has fallen in love with Plum; thus, he gives Quintain 48 hours to re-edit Koslofski's fiasco into something workable, and himself staves off the studio's shutdown by rallying all the Colossal employees to stand firm against being removed from the premises. Based on a Saturday Evening Post story by Clarence Buddington Kelland, this is a light-hearted satire of the movie industry, the sort of amiable farce in which everyone--even the most contentious of characters--is shown to be basically decent underneath.