Many of the old Vitaphone sound shorts have been recently restored and they are a great collection of old musical and vaudeville numbers. In many cases the only examples of these acts you could ever see and hear. However, in a few cases, perhaps it would have been better had they not restored a few of them--or perhaps saved them for last. This is definitely the case with "Conlin & Glass in Sharps and Flats". It's an incredibly bad act--one that makes you wonder how the pair managed to find employment doing this act!
To give you a bit of background, Jimmy Conlin and Myrtle Glass were a married couple who traveled the country doing musical comedy. I have no idea how much Myrtle actually got to sing, as Jimmy pretty much bumbled around on the piano--a bit like Victor Borge decades later. Unfortunately, Myrtle died in her 40s and Jimmy went on to a long career playing bit characters--particularly in Preston Sturges films. He died almost two decades later.
As far as the film goes, Myrtle is mostly trying to sing a song entitled "Morning, Noon and Night" and Jimmy keeps bumbling about the piano in a random and seemingly unfunny manner. Perhaps they were a laugh riot on stage---here they just seemed to make up for the lack of humor and singing by being loud.
By the way, Jimmy sports a pair of large spectacles and looks a lot like Robert Woolsey (of Wheeler and Woolsey fame). I've actually seen several clients with a similar getup and assume that must have been a popular type of character on the vaudeville circuit.
