The Stolen Jools
1931 short film directed by William C. McGann
The Stolen Jools is a 1931 American pre-Code comedy short produced by the Masquers Club of Hollywood, featuring many cameo appearances by film stars and featured players of the day. The film was distributed by Paramount Pictures to raise funds for the National Vaudeville Artists Tuberculosis Sanitarium. The UCLA Film and Television Archive entry for this film says—as do the credits—that the film was co-sponsored by Chesterfield cigarettes to support the "fine work" of the NVA sanitarium.
The film, being made for charity, has an unusually large cast of actors who volunteered to appear. Studios represented included Paramount, Warner Bros., RKO, MGM, Fox Film, and Hal Roach.
For decades the film was unavailable for viewing, although at least one 35mm release print was known to survive in private hands. Home-movie distributor Blackhawk Films offered reprints to the collectors' market in the 1970s. Another print was found in the United Kingdom in the 1990s, under the British release title The Slippery Pearls.
Plot
At the "Screen Stars Annual Ball", Norma Shearer's jewels are stolen. The police must find them and return them to her.
“The Stolen Jools” enters the record as 1931 short film directed by William C. McGann. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Stolen, Jools and short can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“The Stolen Jools” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Stolen, Jools and short provides the most credible route into that argument.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1544930. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1931.
Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Stolen Jools” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.