Prolific director Grigori Alexandrov scored his first major success with Jolly Fellows (Весёлые ребята). Alexandrov's wife, Lyubov Orlova, stars as Aniuta, a servant who falls in love with musically gifted young shepherd named Kostia (Leonid Utyosov). Aniuta is laboring under the misapprehension that Kostia is a famous conductor, and he certainly isn't about to set her straight.

Alexandrov's bubbling-over ebullience and clever staging of musical numbers is a welcome relief from the dogmatic Russian propaganda pieces then in vogue. The film, one of the first Soviet musical comedies, was distributed worldwide as Jazz Comedy, The Shepherd of Abrau and Moscow Laughs.

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