Penny a Peep, A (1934)
** 1/2 (out of 4)
Leo Donnelly narrates this Vitaphone short that has a family going to the movies but these are the early days and they must drop in a penny to view the shows out of a box. We then get Donnelly stepping in to add narration over a couple silent movies including D.W. Griffith's THE SONG OF THE WILDWOOD FLUTE with Mary Pickford playing an Indian princess and Annette Kellerman in THE PERFECTLY FORMED WOMAN. This is a mixed bag in terms of entertainment because on one hand the narration is quite poorly written and the jokes are never funny. They're actually bad enough to make you want to skip the movie but the reason this is a must see is because of the two silent shorts. The Griffith film is available but extremely hard to see and I'm really not sure if the Kellerman movie is out there or not. Being able to see them is certainly a major plus as is the early stuff of seeing these old-time movie machines.