Gabbo (Eric von Stroheim) is a ventriloquist travelling the country
with a second rate vaudeville show, but he thinks the is destined for
something bigger - yet his ego and his arrogance are much bigger than his
talents, to a point where the only nice words he says come from his dummy
Otto (voiced by George Grandee). His ego and his arrogance also get him
into an argument with his girlfriend/stage partner Mary (Betty Compson)
after she bungled up a bit on stage ... which ultimately makes her leave
Gabbo - for good she thinks.
2 years later: Gabbo has meanwhile made it to the top with his
ventriloquist act and plays the New York Broadway, with his name in big
letters on a posh theatre's Marquee. Fate has it that Mary works as a
dancer in the same show. When the two meet again, Gabbo seems to be much
tamer and nicer, as if he has really changed in the meantime, and it seems
Mary falls for his charms all over again ... until she confesses to him
she has in the meantime married her stage-partner Frank (Donald Douglas),
and is very much in love with him. Gabbo is devastated by that news, and
in anger smashes his dummy Otto. Later he ruins the show's finale when he
appears with his smashed dummy and wants to interrupt Frand's and Mary's
song-and-dance routine ... until he is pulled off the stage by security,
and immediately fired. And even while he leaves the theatre, his name in
big letters is taken off the marquee and he has to realize that his ego,
that once made him achieve everything, has now destroyed averything ...
Like much of early sound cinema, The Great Gabbo is too stagey
and utterly unimaginative in direction. But at the same time the film
features a wonderfully ham Erich von Stroheim and a ventriloquist
storyline that is nowadays a staple of the horror genre - even though
you'd be hard-pressed to call The Great Gabbo a horror film, it's
rather a clichéd melodrama, with even a few musical numbers thrown in.
In closing, one might not call The Great Gabbo a particularly
good film - but quite an interesting one.
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