The Great Gabbo (1929)

An egotistical ventriloquist (Erich von Stroheim) is abusive to his girlfriend and stage assistant (Betty Compson) and uses his dummy named Otto as his only means of self expression. Tired of his constant abuse, his girlfriend leaves him. Several years later, they meet again when the ventriloquist is a big headliner on Broadway and he attempts to woo her back. Based on the short story THE RIVAL DUMMY by Ben Hecht and directed by James Cruze (I COVER THE WATERFRONT). The earliest of the dummy becoming the dominant personality movies (the best known are probably the Michael Redgrave sequence in DEAD OF NIGHT and Anthony Hopkins in MAGIC), this is an oddity in that it's actually a musical. However, the musical numbers seem like padding as they don't actually contribute anything to the movie. Several sequences in the film were shot in two strip Technicolor but apparently those sequences are lost and the surviving movie is all B&W. Erich von Stroheim gives a good performance but like many early sound movies,  the film is visually stagnant. A curiosity that should be of interest to film buffs but not many others. With Donald Douglas and Marjorie Kane.