Riley the Cop (1928) stars J. Farrell MacDonald as a warmhearted Irish-American cop who has never made an arrest in his twenty years on the New York City police force. The opening title gives Riley’s philosophy: “You can tell a good cop by the arrest he doesn’t make.” Like so many other Irish immigrants, Riley earns respect in his adopted land by wearing a uniform, but he serves as more of a fatherly figure in his multiethnic neighborhood. This delightful, virtually plotless comedy points forward to the relaxed, character-based style of Ford’s later work. A former director himself, J. Farrell Macdonald had first worked with Ford in the 1919 film A Fight for Love and continued working with him in twenty-five films through When Willie Comes Marching Home in 1950. Ford’s anarchistic Irish streak (his editor Robert Parrish once called him “a cop-hater by religion”) is shared by Riley, who views policing as a form of benign social work and an opportunity for good fellowship with his friends on the streets. When a youthful protégé (David Rollins) of the fatherly but single Riley gets in trouble with the law, the cop is sent to Germany to bring the lad back safely. Since this is the Prohibition era, Riley takes advantage of the opportunity to spend most of his time carousing in a German beer hall, where he meets a spirited fräulein played with great zest by the popular silent comedienne Louise Fazenda. The pair quickly form an oddly suitable couple, and their return trip to America with the boy leads to a hilarious denouement. “This was a story that had actually happened,” said Ford, “and I thought it was a funny idea.” Ford’s ability to draw heartwarming moral lessons from his raucous ethnic humor has rarely been so successfully on display than in the deftly-directed Riley the Cop. Made during the transition to sound, the film benefits from a sprightly Movietone score and sound effects.