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Clip description
Mo (Roy Rene) falls for a taxi driver’s confidence trick – a ‘lost’ purse, strategically placed to draw him into the cab. Mo then puts the purse to work on a con trick of his own, when a gullible customer in Lowenstein’s clothes shop feels the purse in the pocket of a suit that he would not otherwise buy. Mr Lowenstein (Bert Le Blanc) is so impressed, he gives Mo a job.
Curator’s notes
A cleverly written sequence that shows Rene’s talents for both verbal and non-verbal (risqué) comedy. His movements are very much those of the silent comedian (the way he bobs his legs before getting into the taxi, and fusses with his suit), but he was equally comfortable with the newer medium of dialogue, because all of his work had been on a stage. In fact, his best scenes in the movie are those where he can bounce his humour off other actors, rather than the camera. He said later that he was never comfortable trying to tell a joke to a camera.
