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This sketch entitled “Little Italy” was twenty-one minutes long.
The sketch is set in New York’s “Little Italy”. A wife convinces her husband to let a male street singer come inside their home to teach her to sing. When the husband leaves, it is revealed that the wife and the singer were lovers back in Napoli. The wife plans to run away with the singer. She will escape through the dumb waiter and he will exit down the stairs. She leaves a note telling her husband to take good care of his daughter through a previous marriage because she has grown fond of her. When the husband returns, the lover comes back into the apartment carrying the body of the wife, who died from falling down the broken dumb waiter. The lover and the husband fight, but the lover convinces the husband not to kill him because he would be taken away from his daughter.
"It is all very trivial and contains no ennobling thoughts, creating a picture both sordid and grewsome [sic]." Varesi's accent does not sounds Italian at all, but her acting was earnest and sincere. The husband was poor and the lover was only adequate. The speech by the young girl playing the daughter was moving and she did well with the little material she had.
Source:
Variety 26:12 (25/05/1912)