Are You a Failure? on AllMovie

Lloyd Hughes plays a Charles Ray type of character in this comedy-drama. Oliver Wendell Blaine (Hughes) comes from a long family line of fighters. Unfortunately, he's been coddled by a pair of aunts (Jane Keckley and Myrtle Vane) and has grown up to be a timid and cowardly young man. He becomes the laughingstock of the rural village where he lives, and only Phyllis Thorpe (Madge Bellamy), whose father (Hardee Kirkland) owns the paper mill, believes in him. The real problem is that Blaine doesn't believe in himself, so he sends off for a correspondence course which guarantees success in a week's time. As the lessons arrive -- one per day -- he takes the knowledge to heart. He finds the guts to blast a log jam which is about to flood the town, and before he even completes the course, he wins Phyllis' hand and a job at her father's mill.