The best William Pawley’s comedy movies

Two destitute New Yorkers meet cute in Central Park and then separate and independently get tangled up with some gangsters only to be reunited again in the end.

A professor gets mixed up with chorus girls in a Broadway musical.

The Big Noise is retired textile manufacturer Julius Trent (Guy Kibbee). Seeking a new outlet for his entrepreneurial energies, Trent buys a half interest in a thriving dry-cleaning establishment. This gets him mixed up with a gang of protection racketeers, who promise dire consequences if Trent doesn't dance to their tune.

Sgt. Renfrew and Constable Kelly go aloft to search for a plane missing with a shipment of gold from the Yukon Mine Company. Inventor Speavy has devised a power ray which disrupts electrical impulses, and Morgan and his gang of crooks has brought in Prof. Lewis to increase the ray's range, telling him he's helping the government develop this new weapon. Speavy spills the beans to Prof. Lewis and his daughter Madeleine,and Morgan threatens to implicate them in his crimes unless they cooperate. Morgan kills Speavy when he tries to warn Renfrew, but when Madeleine stows away on board the doomed plane Renfrew is piloting, will the crooks be able to make Prof. Lewis use the power ray to bring the plane down?

An alcoholic film star attempts a comeback. Director Walter Lang's 1940 comedy stars John Barrymore, Mary Beth Hughes, Anne Baxter, John Payne, Lionel Atwill and Edward Brophy.

Addie Fippany, her father Jean Paul Batiste Fippany, her mother Josephine and her sister Cecile roam the country-side in a mule-drawn wagon, trading trinkets to farmers for chickens which they sell in the cities. Addie and her father love the care-free life, but Mrs. Fippany and Cecile want to settle down in New York City. As soon as the "chicken wagon family" reaches New York, Addie gets into mischief and a policeman, Matt Hibbard, helps her and falls in love with Cecile. He helps the family settle into a deserted firehouse which is up for public sale.

Innocent Sally Brown thinks men are only attracted to experienced women, so she poses as the wife of an unmarried businessman on a trip to Paris.

The Daring Young Man is hotshot-reporter Don McLane, played by James Dunn. Always on the prowl for a good story, McLane is persistently outscooped by his rival, sob sister Martha Allen (Mae Clarke). After several reels of double-crossing one another, hero and heroine give in to the inevitable and fall in love. But as Martha waits at the altar in her wedding gown, McLane is off on another crusade, this time getting himself arrested to expose corruption within the prison system.