You Don't Know the Half of It

A New york producer sends a spy to a nightclub to report back on the musical acts.

The scene is a parlor out West, with Ray Mayer sitting at the piano in is cowboy duds - hat, scarf, and chaps. He plays a little barrel-house music and then introduces Edith Evans, who enters wearing fur. She sings - her voice a light-opera soprano - while Mayer plays.

The comedy team of Jack Born and Elmer Lawrence perform their vaudeville act.

Comedian Chaz Chase performs his vaudeville act.

Jack Waldron performs his stand-up vaudeville act.

Ben Bernie and his orchestra play a few songs for a vitaphone recording.

Comedian Pat West performs his vaudeville act.

Harry Fox performs his vaudeville act.

Foreign investors converge on a luxury hotel in China to bid on a new kind of radioscope. But, this is a hotel where Burns and Allen are the in-house medical staff, a measles risk sends the whole building into quarantine, and a madcap millionaire crashes dinner in his autogyro. Hotel and radioscope become a stage for an all-star cast of comedians and musicians, from vaudeville to the new generation.

An "Out of the Inkwell" cartoon featuring Ko-Ko the Clown.

Camera iris opens to six ponies with decorated harnesses and plumed halters, standing in the center of a stage with a painted backdrop of mountains. Cuts to two ponies on a seesaw, with a moustached man in a white uniform with dark piping and a white cap holding their leads. A second trainer in a dark suit can also be seen occasionally with the ponies. Individual ponies perform a variety of tricks, including rolling a slatted barrel across the stage with front legs and then with a nose, knocking over the barrel, "limping" across the stage with one front leg held off the ground, and pushing the trainer over with a nose-butt.

Georgie Price tells Bryan Foy, who is to direct his short film, that he is nervous about performing to a camera and microphone instead of an audience. He then sings a couple songs, in an Al Jolson/Eddie Cantor style.

A woman shows off her trained dogs.

Val and Ernie Stanton make their second appearance in a Vitaphone short. This time out the two basically stand in the same spot as they re-create their vaudeville act, which includes a few songs as well as a couple comedy routines.

Old Nat Moyer is a talker, a philosopher, and a troublemaker with a fanciful imagination. His companion is Midge Carter, who is half-blind, but still the super of an apartment house. When he is threatened with retirement, Nat battles on his behalf. Nat also takes on his daughter, a drug dealer, and a mugger in this appealing version of a really 'odd couple'.

Construction worker Buzz Blackwell becomes the guardian of 12-year-old Pat Johnson after one of his buddies, her father, is killed. Buzz and Pat, along with their chum Axel Swensen, head to New York to look for the girl's uncle. The trio soon unexpectedly become owners of a tired restaurant.

Vaudeville act performed by husband and wife team Russ Brown and Jean Whitaker.

Vaudeville comedians Foottit and Chocolat hop and dance around and occasionally fight.

The pursuit of Hop Lee by an irate policeman.

The film concerns a family vaudeville troupe headed by patriarch Pete Monahan. Because of his love affair with the bottle, Pete manages to get himself and his family blacklisted from every major vaude house in the country. Though Pete's kids Jimmy and Patsy love their dad, they're forced to break away from the act and go off on their own to survive. Eventually, the whole gang is reunited in a shamelessly lachrymose musical finale.