Even if you are one of those for whom the words "every character speaks" constitute an advertisement, "The Dummy", feature picture at the Metropolitan this week, will probably be pretty tiresome for you. It opens up the practically untouched field of child kidnapping. The estranged parents are brought together when little Mickey Bennett rescues their fair-haired daughter, letting himself be kidnapped as the deaf and dumb son of a millionaire.

Zasu Pitts carries the brunt of the work, doing a much more careful job as the gangster's moll than Ruth Chatterton, whose sobs as the mother bereft never equal the gusto of that master of the choked gurgle, Mr. Al Jolson (applause, a little scattered). When Mickey Bennett sits on the sofa with the little girl with the curls, and she attempts to pull his head down on her juvenile and probably bony breast, and he draws away, she says: "Don't you understand?" It's a talkie.

There is a Mack Sennett comedy of the soil, whose continuity appears to have been written by Rabelais, with gags by the author of the travelling salesman joke. It is thoroughly bedridden. It's a talkie.

Boyd Senter, famous something recording artist, plays soprano sax and clarinet with liberal variation and the tone you seldom hear. The entire program is fond of that hilarious device--the kick in the pants. We counted a round half dozen, taking in the two movies and the stage show, and there were lots of times when we might have missed them.

The Publix girls are, as usual, the best thing about the stage show. Their steps may pass through recognizable cycles as the weeks go by, but they are graceful and fair, and their costumes, like the stage effects, are proof of an architectonic imagination somewhere. But this week they sing. It's a talkie.