Business tycoon Mr. Wallace (Reginald Barlow) is sick and tired of his hard-drinking, hardy-partying son refusing to act in a responsible manner.  Hoping to teach Dick Wallace about the value of hard work, Mr. Wallace sends Dick to a small town with instructions to collect a debt from the local preacher (Alec B. Francis).  Dick, however, is more interested in the preacher’s daughter, Marion (Evelyn Knapp).  After Dick finally convinces Marion that he’s not as bad his reputation, they got married.  Mr. Wallace is disgusted and refuses to meet his new daughter-in-law, convinced that she’s a golddigger.  Without revealing his true identity, Marion gets a job as Mr. Wallace’s private secretary and attempts to repair the relationship between father and son.

This is a creaky romantic comedy from the early days of sound film and it would probably be forgotten if not for the fact that Dick Wallace is played by John Wayne.  Wayne was 26 when he played Dick Wallace and already a screen veteran, though most of his roles had been in B-westerns and had featured Wayne riding a horse and carrying a gun.  Wayne actually gives a pretty good performance as Dick.  He’s better and more natural here than he was in many of the singing cowboy films that he was making at the time and this film suggests an alternate timeline where Wayne become known as a romantic comedy star instead of a screen cowboy.  Wayne is especially good in the early scenes, when he’s still a no-good, hard-drinking, no-account lout.  I get the feeling he enjoyed not having to be the upright hero for once.

His Private Secretary definitely shows its age but it’s worth watching for a chance to see a young John Wayne in an unexpected role.