AllMovie

Real Folks was based on a story by amateur scrivener Kate Corbaley, the winner of a screenwriting contest conducted by Triangle Films and Photoplay magazine. For a first effort, Corbaley's script was surprisingly perceptive and well-constructed, suggesting that adaptor Jack Cunningham had more than a little creative input. The "folks" of the title are the Dugans, a farm family who suddenly become millionaires when oil is discovered on their property. No, the Dugans don't go to Beverly Hills (that particular storyline was still some fifty years in the future!), but they do encounter all sorts of misadventures when they try to crash into society. Francis McDonald and Fritzi Ridgeway were the nominal romantic leads, but the film truly belonged to J. Barney Sherry as the bucolic patriarch of the Dugan clan.