Douglas Fairbanks Jr. stars as Chick, a vagrant just out of jail — and traveling with his partner "Scrap Iron," played by prolific character actor Guy Kibbee (Rain) — who takes advantage of a drunk's forgetfulness to get himself a shave and a change of clothes (and an unexpected pocketful of money) in order to get a hot meal at Union Depot.
His stomach full, he looks to satisfy another need and propositions Ruth (the cherubic Joan Blondell) due to her resemblance to a hooker who had just offered her services to him in the diner — and she takes him up on it (nothing explicit is ever mentioned) because she is desperate for money for a train ticket. Chick soon finds out Ruth is not a pro, however, and after he reprimands her, they hit it off romantically.
Meanwhile, Alan Hale (who had a memorable role in It Happened One Night, and who was the father of Alan Hale Jr., the Skipper on Gilligan's Island) plays a German violinist who turns out to be an American counterfeiter (guess what's in his violin case?). How Chick and Ruth get the case and start inadvertently passing phony money is complex but believable (the police spend the last quarter of the movie trying to figure it all out), as is their burgeoning affair, since they're both such pretty people.
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The story was reportedly a knockoff of the popular play that would inspire Grand Hotel (which followed Union Depot into theaters 3 months later), but I feel that the similarities are few and only on the surface. Director Alfred E. Green (The Goose and the Gander) does an admirable job of making light of Depression-era troubles without being disrespectful. And, best of all, things end the way they should end, not necessarily the way we want them to.
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