Summary
A penniless vaudevillian, Bobby, barters the last shred of his dignity for a tin-cup income: he dons a mangy monkey suit and shuffles behind a hurdy-gurdy, ogling the grinder’s sequined companion, a sylph who pirouettes for nickels on the cobblestones. Fate, in its usual sardonic mood, uncages a hominoid primate from the municipal infirmary—a creature of uncanny stature, Bobby’s doppelgänger in fur—and the city erupts into panicked semaphore. Our hero, still costumed, is mistaken for the fugitive simian; coins turn to screams, the street becomes a blur of fleeing petticoats and upturned collars. Pursued by white-coated orderlies and broom-wielding matrons, Bobby dives into the very cage that once housed his hairy twin, a Kafkaesque ouroboros of identity. On the operating table, under the cold glare of surgical lamps, destiny hiccups: a vial of nitrous oxide shatters, laughter ricochets off tiled walls, scalpels clatter, and the scheduled vivisection dissolves into slapstick nirvana. Exit monkey, enter man—or perhaps the distinction no longer matters.
Synopsis
Bobby hires himself out as a pet monkey to an organ grinder who has an attractive dancing girl for an assistant. A monkey of about Bobby's size and build escapes from a cage in the city hospital, where it was being held for an experimental operation. Bobby is taken for the escaped monkey and instead of giving him pennies, everyone runs away from him. Finally Bobby hides in the cage in the hospital that held the escaped monkey. He lands on the operating table, but an orderly breaks a tube of laughing gas and the operation has to be called off.
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