The first "100% All Talking Picture," Lights of New York is a gangster yarn that made famous the line, "Take him for a ride," which was the "Make him an offer he can't refuse" of its day. The story of small-town wholesomeness versus big-city temptation, the film, as Alexander Walker notes in The Shattered Silents, is "unbelievably naive, especially for an era that had direct acquaintance with the 'public enemies.'" Almost as naive as its protagonists, two country barbers who are lured to New York, where bootleggers use their shop as a front. Before long there is a corpse sitting in the barber's chair, presumably waiting for a shave. Lights of New York began life as one of several Vitaphone shorts directed by Bryan Foy (one of Eddie Foy's boys, brother of Eddie Foy, Jr.); originally titled "The Roaring Twenties," it developed, under Foy's direction, into a two-reel melodrama. Audiences eagerly awaiting full-length talkies made it into a box-office hit.