Just My Luck

At his tire company workplace, Homer Crow is deflated by the way the big wheels treat him. But despite his bumbling, he becomes the one man keeping the place afloat, combating gangsters and single handedly taking on a mob of rioting strikers!

Charles Ray was a popular silent era film star specializing in comedies in which his country boy characters invariably made good. His status waned in the early 1920s, and an effort to produce his own pictures led to financial ruin. In 1936, Just My Luck was Ray's attempt at a comeback, but at that stage of his career, it was just his luck that it failed. Turning reclusive, he eventually receded into the ranks of faceless Hollywood extras. At age 52 he died a forgotten man in an industry where he had once reigned.

• comedy