Joe May is exhausted after a long, futile day of auditions for his show. He wants a quiet evening with no show biz talk. His assistant offers to have his wife give May a home-cooked dinner, and cautions her on the phone against shop talk. So of course she has four acts ready for him to see.
This sort of ten-minute variety show was a common one among the "selected short subjects" advertised alongside the feature movie back in the day. For the studios, it was a way of producing something that would play enough to show a profit, and a way of show-casing talent inexpensively to see how the movie-goers reacted to them. A screen test might impress a seasoned producer, but you could never tell about the actual audience.
This sort of ten-minute variety show was a common one among the "selected short subjects" advertised alongside the feature movie back in the day. For the studios, it was a way of producing something that would play enough to show a profit, and a way of show-casing talent inexpensively to see how the movie-goers reacted to them. A screen test might impress a seasoned producer, but you could never tell about the actual audience.