Louis Jarvis Jr. is summoned from his band's radio show to visit his terminally ill father before his father dies. Honey Carter, the daughter of the only woman whom Jarvis Sr. had ever loved, also visits. Jarvis Sr.'s dying wish is that his son marries Honey. He before meeting his son and Honey.
Jarvis Sr.'s shady lawyer Henry Talbot sees a chance to secure a portion of the Jarvis estate for himself by rewriting the will to read that Jarvis Jr. must marry a woman like Talbot's secretary Rusty. Talbot wants to conspire with Rusty to marry and then divorce Jarvis Jr. so that she and Henry will split the estate. Jarvis Jr. is fooled by Talbot's ruse and believes that he must marry soon to avoid the distribution of the estate to charity.
Jarvis Jr. urgently needs the estate money to produce his new stage musical. He does not wish to marry Rusty, but his friend suggests that they cast the show with a lead actress who resembles Rusty. However, Talbot attempts to stop the show by scaring Junior's investors.
Production
Producer-director-writer William Forest Crouch had been making Soundies—three-minute movie musicals for coin-operated "movie jukeboxes". His 20-minute musical made for theaters, Caldonia (1945), starred Louis Jordan, and was so successful that Crouch signed Jordan for three feature films. Reet, Petite, and Gone was the second.
Crouch made his films on low budgets with fast-paced, assembly-line methods at the former Edison studio in New York City. Scenes were rarely photographed more than twice—once for long shots and once for close-ups—and if the actors couldn't remember the scripted dialogue, they said something appropriate anyway, knowing that the schedule didn't call for repeated takes. Most Hollywood "B" features were shot in five to ten days, but Crouch filmed this feature in only a day and a half.[2]
