You Don't Know the Half of It

What is this? This is not funny. This is..... something. The puns are bad, there's not much action going on here. The jokes fall flat. Maybe this was hilarious in 1929, but in 2016..... no. It's completely lost. It's like something out of Seinfeld, but even less so. What is this? This is something, but it's nothing at the same time. The song? She's not singing, she's almost rapping. It's over-rehearsed, it's dull, and it's tiresome. I feel like I'm not missing anything, but I am missing something. What am I missing? "Can You Imagine a Guy Like That?" Yeah, I can. He sounds like the kind of guy this country needs. He sounds like a man perfect for a woman. I consider this piece to be a piece of film history, if only to show that Vitaphone and Warner Bros. had too much film and time on their hands.

Jay Butler is the slightly fey straight man. Ann Butler gives the slightly risqué punchlines with a bit of a Mae West style of speaking, and ends with a similar recitation, all while waving a large, gauzy handkerchief.

It's a back-and-forth two-act that looks like they have done it so many times that there's little life left in it. It depends on its air of naughtiness and in the relatively clean air of 1920s vaudeville was undoubtedly as blue as the major circuits would stand; the Keith-Albee chain in particular prided itself on being a family-friendly venue. To a modern audience, however, with its relatively open and overt sexuality, this would seem disingenuous.

Back in the early 1920s, Bert Savoy and Jay Brennan had a most unusual and very popular stage act. Savoy did a drag act and Brennan was the, pardon the term, 'straight man'. However, in an odd fluke of nature, Savoy was killed by lightning and Brennan didn't want to toss away the act, so he hired several others to play Savoy's part. Oddly, here he is working with Ann Butler who is in essence playing a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman!

So is this act any good? Well, not especially. The jokes are corny and come VERY quickly...too quickly for my taste. Had they just slowed down, I think it would have been better. Not good...but better! An odd curiosity, the team returned to do one additional Vitaphone short.