Edward Boulden complains that he knows no one in New York. Arthur Housman offers to introduce him to Nellie Grant -- but first tells each privately that the other is deaf.
Edison produced several short talking pictures, which he called Kinetophones, in 1913, but they never caught on. Largely forgotten, they languished for a century, but eight of them have recently been issued on DVD by Undercrank Productions in Cooperation with the Library of Congress and Greenbriar Picture Show.
All five of the actors in this movie were regulars at the Edison Studio. Housman would have a long career in the movies, specializing in comic drunks in the 1930s. This appearance marks him as the first comic in the talking pictures!
Like many of the short comedies of the era, it's a simple practical joke. Even so, it's amusing for its age, its historic importance and the fact that everyone talks very loudly even in the sequences when people are not trying be hear by people they think are deaf -- the sound equipment was not yet that good.