(1926)2.5Hans J. WollsteinDespite the fact that her alluring countenance decorates the video cover, Louise Brooks is not the star of The Show Off, a rare surviving example of director Malcolm St. Clair's flair for sophisticated satire. In fact, Brooks isn't even the comedy's leading lady (unlike the less-remembered Lois Wilson, but from the moment she enters, quite literally as the "girl-next-door," her remarkable beauty commands attention. But in 1926, Brooks was merely a Paramount starlet and perhaps even slightly miscast as the girl who sees through Ford Sterling's bluster. The real star of The Show Off is, of course, Sterling himself as the insufferable Aubrey Piper, all talk and no action. For those who know the corpulent funnyman only from his frenetic work with the "Keystone Kops," this comedy may prove an eye-opener. Under St. Clair's masterful direction, Sterling is subtle, smooth as velvet and letter-perfect, whether "saving" poor Lois Wilson at the threshold of spinsterhood or explaining how he, through no fault of his own, happened to hit a police officer with his newly acquired roadster. Sterling's coup de grâce, however, comes at the end of the film when in a last ditch attempt to redeem himself, Aubrey persuades a steel company to buy brother-in-law Joe's rust-preventing paint. "Take it or leave it, leave it or take it," Aubrey bluffs, "Act now! That's the slogan that has made me the man I am today!"
