Beginner's Luck

Spanky has been entered into a kiddie amateur show by his pushy stage mother.She thinks he is the greatest actor of his day. Spanky wants nothing to do with this and would rather not act at all. The gang comes up with a plan to disrupt his recitation with peashooters and noisemakers and make him flop.

At the theater, the mother infuriates the MC saying 'My son is too much of an artist to open a show". Later there is another run in with the MC and the grandmother laughs at the mother as she had put them in way over their heads dealing with a cruel audience and a tough, hard boiled MC. The mother just hopes for the best but little does she know what's in store for her. Spanky befriends a girl called Daisy Dimple "Dancer par excellence" who has bombed her act due to stage fright but needs the prize money to buy a special dress. Spanky has a change of heart and decides to win the prize. He asks permission of his mom who says "All I want is for you to be a hit".He promises her, "Girlie, the dress is in the bag. Now he has to tell the gang. His mom won't let him go into the audience as he's about to go on. Instead, she volunteers to speak to the boys. She has no idea there is a plot and just gives them a pep talk about rooting for Spanky.

Spanky steps out on the stage clad in a Roman centurion costume, reciting Shakespeare's funeral oration from "Julius Caesar". The gang erupt with noise makers and peashooters. Spanky's stoically performing his act with him having an amusing slow burn annoyance while enduring his friends embarrassing him surprisingly makes his act the hit of the show, with everyone laughing and loving it (except his mother). He tries to shut his helmet visor but it gets stuck and he roams around the stage like a Chinese dragon. The mom pleads to have him taken off but is refused. As he is such a big hit. She then tries to run on the stage a take him off but is grabbed by the MC. Then the mother goes behind the curtain trying to pull him off with a pole. The audience can only see the pole coming out from the bottom of the curtain. The mother slides the pole around trying to catch her son but only pulls off the piano players toupee and then inserts the pole into an electrical outlet. This gives her a shock which makes her jump up and is knocked back to sitting on her heels,she accidentally opens the curtain grommet which holds the curtain halves together. The grandmother sees her chance to payback the mother for Spanky's humiliation. She raises the curtain and the grommet hook catches the mother's dress and fits right into her hem and is now impossible to remove. The mother is now the one being humiliated as her dress hikes higher as the audience howl their approval. The dress is yanked off her and goes up the curtain. She freezes from shock kneeling on stage only wearing her slip staring up at her dress. Spanky rushes to hide her from being ogled and places a stage prop in front of her. This backfires as it has a dog's body on it with the mother's head fitting right on top. The crowd are near a riotous level of laughs.

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• Beginner's Luck at IMDb