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Although Monogram Pictures hadn't yet reorganized as a separate entity in 1936, a few of its releases still managed to make their way to the public through the auspices of Republic. One of these was The Cheers of the Crowd, in which character actor Russell Hopton heads the cast as public-relations expert Lee Adams. Our hero gets in on the ground floor of the chain-letter craze, all the while battling over ethics with pretty female reporter Mary (Irene Ware). Things take a sinister turn when the recipient of a chain letter is murdered, a crime tied in with the long-lost wife of the film's villain. Corpulent Harry Holman, best known to modern viewers as the high-school principal in Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, steals the film as the misleadingly named "Honest John."