The Beau Brummels is a 1928 short film featuring vaudevillians Al Shaw and Sam Lee.
It is a simple recording of a comedy routine by the duo, billed as "Shaw & Lee". They sing a comic song, tell a series of jokes, sing another comic song, and do a little dance, and the film ends. It is perhaps most notable for the manner in which the duo deliver their routine—the jokes are told with the duo staring off into space, making eye contact neither with the camera or each other, this only being interrupted when one partner gives the other a confused look.
Compare Lambchops, another short comedy routine film from the early talkie era featuring George Burns and Gracie Allen.
Tropes:
- Leave the Camera Running: Most of the short is a single uninterrupted take from a static camera. The only cut comes before the dance that closes out the routine and the film.
- Pun: Many of the jokes.Lee: On this porch we keep thirty thousand geese.
Shaw: They must be Portu—geese! - Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion: The first gag, as Shaw and Lee open with a comic song."I was strolling through the park one day/In the merry merry month of June."
- This Is a Song: The silly song that Shaw and Lee sing at the end of the routine.The guy who wrote this song was deaf
He couldn't hear a note...
This is the verse
This is the verse
The bird who wrote the words was crazy as a loon
There's nothing to this song but the tune
This is the chorus to the song
This is the chorus, you're hearing now.
