One of those earliest Vitaphone shorts where
performers bow at the end and wait for your applause. For initial novelty
months it was a habit, then audiences became self-conscious clapping for
phantom figures and began jeering instead. A most promising of
Vita-jesters was Joe E. Brown, who has what appears to be a screen debut here. He's
certainly different, if not fall-down funny, with a strong voice that augured
well for features to come. Warners must have looked close at this reel, for
they'd make Brown a comic force and big money farceur right through to the
mid-thirties. Twinkle-Twinkle has a studio setting, Joe as intruder seeking
"Griff," that is, D.W. Griffith, who was still, but for not much longer,
representing Hollywood
hierarchy. Brown's satchel mouth is unpacked; it would take a public years to
tire of that. He's good at comic rehearsal of clinches with a screen vamp,
demonstrating himself as a next big thing in talking comedy. Overall a
priceless reel, thank heaven extant in spite of minor nitrate decomp in an
opening scene. It's part of another Vitaphone Varieties set (Volume
Two) from Warner Archive.
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