Slow as Lightning

Jimmie March (Kenneth McDonald) is a good-natured but hopelessly inefficient employee in the office of E.J. Philips. He's also in love with Philips' daughter Eleanor (Edna Pennington), but the chances of their ever being able to acknowledge, much less act on those feelings, are rendered rather remote by two developments: Jimmie is fired for his inefficiency and seeming ineptitude when it comes to such basics as getting to work (or back from lunch) on time and not getting distracted by life's joys; and Eleanor is being courted by Mortimer Fenton (William Malan), a wealthy would-be suitor who would stoop to anything to come out on top in any competition he's in, especially with Jimmie. Let go from his job, Jimmie decides to try and achieve success on his own, encouraged by a Gypsy fortuneteller who predicts that his hunches will pay off big. With help from some of his friends; an Irishman, an Italian, and a Jewish man from the neighborhood where he lives, he gets involved in investing in the stock market, and he starts to succeed -- this, in turn, makes it possible for him to try and impress Eleanor with his acumen and his abilities as a self-made man, but it also brings on the enmity of Fenton who, before this is over, will involve Jimmie in a plan involving stock manipulation and fraud, and get him targeted by a gang of toughs.