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"A horse is practical -- a horse has got sense -- a horse is an animal, you fool!" Says breeder Russell Simpson (via an inter-title, of course) when confronted with an early automobile in this pleasantly nostalgic silent comedy-drama from Warner Bros. In fact, The First Auto, which has been restored by UCLA, is a nostalgic experience in more ways than one. A charming, if sweetly condescending, depiction of how the "horseless carriage" made its triumphant debut in a small town, Roy Del Ruth's little history lesson was also one of the first feature films to arrive complete with a Vitaphone music score and sound effects. Said effects are mainly funny sounds used to exaggerate the action on the screen -- very much as The Three Stooges would years later -- but also include laughter, applause and even a spoken word or two. Such as Russell Simpson attempting to rouse his sleeping son (Charles Emmett Mack) with a resounding, and slightly disconcerting, "BOB!" Mack and Patsy Ruth Miller) (of Hunchback of Notre Dame fame) act the film's romantic couple but are upstaged by a very young William Demarest performing various juggling routines, several well-chosen hillbilly bit-part players and, of course, veteran race-car driver Barney Oldfield recreating how he in 1902 sat the 60 mph speed record, cigar clenched firmly between teeth. Ironically, young Mack, a discovery of D. W. Griffith and almost a dead ringer for Jack Pickford, was killed in an automobile accident near Riverside, CA, during the making of this film.