The pace in Pine Ridge,Arkansas makes life in Mayberry look like an MTV video. Chester Lauk and Norris Goff bring their radio hit, “Lum And Abner” to the big screen. Bashful Lum wants to get married but thinks he should be a hero before he can pop the question.
Lum’s (Chester Lauk) longtime girlfriend Geraldine (Zasu Pitts) reads him a story about the Knights of old. He wants to ask her to marry him but the story makes him feel he has to be a hero first. Meanwhile at the Jot ‘Em Down Grocery store Abner (Norris Goff) continues to make trades. This time he got a horse for the store’s delivery car.
Frequent customer the Widder Abernathy (Constance Purdy) comes in with an order. She really wants to marry Lum. Abner is told to deliver her order. On the way he stops to watch a con man (Benny Rubin) juggle. It’s a scam to sell glasses. He and his girlfriend are hungry and he trades some glasses for the groceries.
Back at the store Abner has his new specs. They distort everything. Lum takes their pal Cedric (Grady Sutton) to deal with the con man, They end up with glasses of their own. They’re no better than Lum’s.
While all this is going on the plot about Lum the hero unfolds. His plan is to rescue Abner after tying him to the railroad tracks. He thinks the passengers will all shake his hand and he’ll be a hero. Time for Plan B.
This time he arranges with Abner to fake his kidnapping. Lum gets two hobos to guard Abner while Lum hangs a ransom note to Abner’s front door. The sheriff gets a posse together led by Lum. The hobos think it’s for real and they’ll be able to steal a thousand dollars. After a shootout Lum is a hero.
Thanks to the glasses he writes a love note to Geraldine but it gets delivered to the Widder Abernathy. He refuses to marry her and she files a breach of promise suit against him.
Squire Skimp has entered his horse Brown Bess into Saturday’s big race. Lum and Abner enter their new horse Abner has named Skyrocket. Lum and Abner are having another argument over what happened with the Widder and have divided the store in two with each keeping to their side. Squire’s niece Marjorie has been putting Skyrocket through his paces. Looks like he could win it all. Squire bets Lum and Abner that his horse will win and convinces them to put up the store. Abner will be the jockey…that it if he can get out of jail thanks to the suit.
Extremely slow paced with storylines that come and go. Those who have never heard the radio show may not be able to make it all the way through.
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