Busy Bodies, The Chimp, The Midnight Patrol

Laurel and Hardy in The Midnight Patrol (1933)

A Laurel and Hardy triple feature on the Movies! network this morning. 

The first two were among the very first Laurel and Hardy movies I saw. Busy Bodies (1933) is one of their very best, as far as I'm concerned. The Boys work at a lumber mill and cause no end of chaos. The final scene, with Hardy being sucked through the scrap lumber disposal, is reminiscent of Chaplin getting pulled through the machine's gears in Modern Times.

The Chimp (1932) is a silly one, and a lot of fun. After a circus shuts down, the owner can't afford to pay his employees, so he gives them all a piece of the circus instead. Laurel gets the flea circus and Hardy gets the dancing chimpanzee, Ethel. In a variation on Angora Love and Laughing Gravy, they spend the rest of the film trying to hide the chimp in a boarding house. My favorite line: when Laurel sees the lion run loose through the streets, he tells Hardy, "I just saw MGM."

Laurel and Hardy are policemen in The Midnight Patrol (1933). It plays like a variation on Night Owls, with the Boys breaking into the police chief's home, except this time they're on the other side of the law -- but they still cause just as much trouble. My favorite scene has the Boys obligingly negotiating a court date with a burglar whom they've caught in the act, checking his datebook for conflicting appointments.

Hollywood Party (1934)

This chaotic mess of a film took over a year to complete, with eight directors (including Richard Boleslawki, Allan Dwan, Edmund Goulding, Russell Mack, Chuck Reisner, Roy Rowland, Sam Wood, and George Stevens) taking turns at the helm. Jimmy Durante plays as a Tarzan-like jungle movie star who throws a big party in order to convince Baron Munchausen (Jack Pearl) to let him use his real lions in his next picture and add some real thrills to it for a change. Polly Moran, Charles Butterworth, Eddie Quillan and June Clyde are among the cast who appear in the various scattered threads of the plot, which is peppered with cameos by Robert Young, The Three Stooges, and even Mickey Mouse, in an animated sequence provided by Walt Disney. Incredibly, the whole thing was shot by the great James Wong Howe, whose talents were certainly wasted here.

 Laurel and Hardy steal the picture when they show up toward the end to deliver the lions, and quickly become engaged in an egg-breaking battle of tit-for-tat with Lupe Velez. This sequence, the highlight of the film, was directed by their old cameraman George Stevens, whose masterful handling of comedy is evident in giving Velez and The Boys room to perform the routine without any unnecessary intrusions. It says so much about Laurel and Hardy's incredible gifts for comedy that they could do more with a little scene like this than MGM could with all of its mighty resources poured into the film.

Laurel & Hardy in "The Devil's Brother" (1933)

The first of Laurel and Hardy's operetta films, and quite possibly the best, adapted from the 1830 show by Daniel Auber. The boys play down-on-their-luck vagabonds in 18th century Italy who reluctantly become the bumbling assistants to the notorious bandit chief Fra Diavolo ("The Devil's Brother"). Comedy highlights include Laurel's "kneesy-earsy-nosey" finger games and Laurel becoming intoxicated while filling bottles in a wine cellar. The soundtrack retains a number of the songs from Auber's original score. Singer Dennis King brings the perfect mix of menace and charm to the title role, supported by a fine cast including Thelma Todd as the bored noblewoman, James Finlayson as her cuckold husband, and Henry Armetta as the long-suffering innkeeper whose inability to imitate Laurel's "finger games" causes him no end of frustration. One of the only Laurel and Hardy films directed by their long-time producer Hal Roach.

Bonnie Scotland (1935)

Laurel and Hardy come to Scotland to collect an inheritance and through a series of misunderstandings find themselves enlisted in the Scottish regiment of the British Army and sent off to India. This one contains at least three classic scenes: Hardy's sneezing fit at the bottom of a lake that leaves it completely dry, the Boys cooking a fish in their hotel room ("it shrizzled"), and their dancing to "The Hundred Pipers" while sweeping up trash, much to the ire of Sergeant James Finlayson.

Swiss Miss (1938)

In to a small town high in the Alps, riding in a mule-drawn sleigh, arrive Laurel and Hardy. This time they are mousetrap salesmen, and have come to Switzerland because, according to Laurel's logical thinking, where there is more cheese than anywhere else in the world, there will be more mice. Like two comic vagabonds, the boys are seemingly as much at home in this fantasy version of a Tyrolean village as they are in the old west or the suburbs of Los Angeles, a testament to their universality and timelessness. During their stay in Switzerland, Oliver Hardy will endure the usual trials and tribulations against his dignity, most of them innocently precipitated upon him by his friend, Stan Laurel.

From the moment they appear, you find it impossible to take your eyes off of them. The boys' masterful comic interplay, which they make look so deceptively simple, astounds with its perfect rhythm and timing, every gesture, every glance and every pratfall performed with expert precision. Every facet of their screen characters is so thoroughly and richly defined to the point where they seem so real, so human that we feel like we are spending time with old friends when we see their films.

Numerous episodes stand out for their comic ingenuity. Spotting a Saint Bernard with a keg of brandy strapped around its neck, Laurel feigns exhaustion in order to obtain the rescue dog's emergency supply of liquor, on which he becomes hopelessly intoxicated. Indentured to work in the hotel kitchen an extra day for every dish they break, the boys find innumerable ways to add to their misfortune with one new dinnerware disaster after another until it seems that they will spend all of eternity in that kitchen. And there is the moment when Hardy serenades the object of his romantic affection with a rendition of the tender ballad "Let Me Call You Sweetheart", accompanied by Laurel on an oversize tuba, the incongruous booming tones of the instrument oddly complementing the pomp and splendor of Hardy's musical declarations of love.

There are also the delightfully surreal moments that exist free from the constraints of realistic narrative logic. At one moment, animated soap bubbles escape from a pipe organ that produce the notes of a song as they burst, and at another, a punctured gas pipe under the floor causes infernal flames to shoot forth wherever poor Oliver Hardy happens to be standing.

At one point, the boys find themselves trapped on a rickety wooden mountain bridge, perilously high across the Alps, with a piano and a gorilla -- a comic image for the ages. Ours is not to wonder how they got there, or what a gorilla is doing in the Swiss Alps. Laurel and Hardy approach any task with a kind of bullheaded determination and literal single-mindedness, which keep them in pursuit of achieving their goal even when logic or common sense would give anyone else pause for thought, and this is no exception. Suspended high above the gaping mountainous chasm, every twist and turn of the bridge -- swaying to and fro like some kind of insane fun-house attraction -- risks plunging them into the abyss.

Yet they view this predicament as they would any other and, despite the momentary terror of the situation, somehow all seems right in the world when Hardy, left by the oblivious Laurel to dangle from the collapsed bridge on the side of a mountain, gets knocked on the head by a falling rock, expressing mere annoyance at this latest inconvenience. Their universe has regained equilibrium, and they are on to their next misadventure, perhaps to attend Oxford, or join the Foreign Legion.

Great Guns (1941)

Weak service comedy, clearly inspired by the blockbuster success of Abbott and Costello's BUCK PRIVATES earlier the same year. Laurel and Hardy are valets to a wealthy, pampered young man who gets drafted into the army, and enlist with him in order to protect him. The young man quickly adapts to army life, proving there is absolutely nothing wrong with him, but Laurel and Hardy cause no end of troubles for their long-suffering sergeant.

GREAT GUNS must rank as one of the least inspired of the team's post-Hal Roach comedies. There are too many scenes that portray the boys as idiots and simpletons, scenes crafted to make the audience laugh at them, rather than with them. The romantic subplot (involving the young man's romance with an army base shopgirl and his rivalry with the sergeant for her affections) is -- thankfully -- actually not as intrusive as it could have been, but Laurel and Hardy still have too few scenes to themselves, instead often being forced to carry the exposition and fawn over their young master. The "war games" finale allows them a few moments of the old slapstick, however, which give the film a bit of energy toward the end. What they really needed were a few relaxed, extended scenes where they could do the kind of leisurely-paced routines that they did better than anyone else.

Produced by Sol Wurtzel's "B" unit at Fox, it is sloppily constructed with a plodding script which works against the lightness and relaxed pacing that marked their best work. The team would go on to make marginally better films for the studio, though none of them approached the quality that they had achieved with Hal Roach.

The Crazy World of Laurel and Hardy (1967)

A feature-length compilation of highlights from Laurel and Hardy's films, produced by Jay Ward and written by Bill Scott, and obviously modeled on Robert Youngson's anthologies, such as The Golden Age of Comedy and Laurel and Hardy's Laughing '20s. With its more focused approach and drawing on fresh material, it actually works a bit better than the later Youngsons, since the narration (by Garry Moore) is less intrusive and Jerry Fielding's music score is a bit more effective. It also makes good use of clips from the sound shorts, albeit with new underscoring and sound effects (and in some cases, voice dubbing of supporting players!)

Working with the cooperation of Hal Roach Jr. and Raymond Rohauer, Ward and Scott were able to gain access to clips that had not been previously used in any of the Youngson compilations, most notably the silent Bacon Grabbers, as well as highlights from numerous sound shorts and features, including extensive extracts from The Music Box, Towed in a Hole, Way Out West, The Bohemian Girl, and Swiss Miss, which represent some of Laurel and Hardy's very best work. Though there's nothing new here that won't be familiar to long-time Laurel and Hardy fans, it's nevertheless a sincere tribute and a solid collection of some of the team's best scenes.

Babes in Toyland (aka March of the Wooden Soldiers, 1934)

Charming Laurel and Hardy classic that always makes for fun viewing around this time of the year. The second of their three operettas (coming between THE DEVIL'S BROTHER and THE BOHEMIAN GIRL), it's a little different than the other two in that there are fewer isolated comedy routines and it's less obviously a "Laurel and Hardy vehicle", but the boys are fully integrated into the story, and as a result, it stands as a really fine adaptation of the Victor Herbert operetta, albeit tailored for the team's characters.

I've seen the film more times than I can count, but I am repeatedly struck by just how well it holds up. The musical comedy plotting works quite well here. The songs are all pleasant enough, and there's scarcely a wasted moment (only the "Castle in Spain" number, occurring after the hilarious sham marriage scene, feels like it could be trimmed with little consequence), and each scene builds quite well to the thrilling climax. The finale, with the stop-motion wooden soldiers marching out of the toy shop, is a tour-de-force of special effects that hold up better than those in the Disney remake.

Part of what makes this film so special is its first-rate supporting cast, especially Henry Brandon as the villainous Barnaby. Brandon was clearly having a ball playing the dastardly villain, and he is the perfect foil for Laurel and Hardy -- managing to play the role with both a sense of genuine menace as well as over-the-top fun. Charlotte Henry and Felix Knight are appealing enough as the romantic leads that we genuinely care about the boys' efforts to help them. William Burress, as the toymaker, has a couple of great scenes with the boys that rank among the funniest in the film.

It's a wonder that the film is such a light, fun affair, given the tumultuous production problems behind the scenes. There were fierce creative differences between Hal Roach and Stan Laurel over this film, but the end result is one of the most beloved, enduring classics that Laurel and Hardy ever made.

The Bohemian Girl (1936)

This comedy version of the Balfe opera starring Laurel and Hardy is not one of the team's best features, but is still quite enjoyable. By this point in their career, they had moved into making features exclusively, and producer Hal Roach was eager to repeat the success of THE DEVIL'S BROTHER from three years earlier by putting them into another lavishly-produced comic operetta.

The result is a funny if uneven film that, despite being based on an established stage property, is ultimately tailored as a vehicle for Laurel and Hardy, and thus is mainly of interest to fans of the team. It follows the general story of the opera with the boys as the gypsies who raise a nobleman's kidnapped daughter as their own, but the comic scenes are for the most part isolated sharply from the main "plot" scenes. It's less a parody and more a straight telling of the story with the comedy sandwiched in.

While it is undoubtedly heavy on plot and music, Laurel and Hardy's scenes contain some excellent comic material. Highlights include the boys' attempt at telling fortunes, Oliver's altercations with shrewish wife Mae Busch, and Stan bottling wine and getting increasingly tipsy in the process (a particularly brilliant scene that ranks as one of Laurel's finest moments in any of their films). The funniest moment is also the simplest: Oliver sees Stan eating a banana and tells him to give him part of it, and Stan casually hands him the peel, which Oliver just tosses away with a resigned shrug. A little gag like that is all they need to reduce me to tears of laughter.

The Laurel and Hardy Sound Shorts (1934-35)

OLIVER THE EIGHTH
A strange little two-reeler, with Hardy answering an ad in the personals to marry a wealthy widow (Mae Busch). He soon learns that she has married seven other men named Oliver before her, all of whom met with death by having their throats cut, and that he is "Oliver the Eighth". English comedian Jack Barty is quite effective as the loopy butler. He plays cards with an invisible deck, and serves the boys an invisible meal (a surreal and funny sequence that looks forward to their synthetic meal in the later SAPS AT SEA). Hardy, ever the gentleman and not wanting to be rude, goes along with the charade, and of course Laurel actually begins to enjoy the non-existent "food".

Next the boys are off to bed, and rig an elaborate set-up to keep eachother awake in case the widow comes in to cut Ollie's throat during the night. Of course, Ollie is soon distracted from the fear of having his throat cut by Stan's constant interruptions and near-fatal accidents with a shotgun ("Isn't it bad enough that I'm going to have my throat cut without you trying to shoot me first!"). This sequence also contains a great line that sums up Stan's ability to convey an odd logic even through illogical-sounding statements: when Ollie finds Stan sleeping instead of watching the door, Stan tells him, "I was dreaming that I was awake, and then I woke up and found myself asleep".

Released in England as THE PRIVATE LIFE OF OLIVER THE EIGHTH, its title a joke on Alexander Korda's hit film THE PRIVATE LIFE OF HENRY VIII, released the year before.


GOING BYE-BYE
Well-constructed and solid comedy with Laurel and Hardy as chief witnesses in the trial of gangster Butch Long that puts him behind bars for life. Butch warns the boys that he will break out and get even with them if it's the last thing he does. Deciding to flee town, the pair advertise for a companion on their journey to help share expenses, and the person who answers the ad turns out to be Butch's girlfriend, who is helping her fugitive boyfriend get away. The ending contains another one of those grim sight gags Laurel liked to include every so often: Butch lives up to his promise of tearing the boys' legs off and tying them around their necks! Despite the grotesque final gag and some pretty brutal slapstick (Walter Long is poked with a drill and scorched by a blowtorch), this is one of the team's funnier efforts.

There's a little moment I noticed for the first time on this viewing, when Laurel opens a window, and a breeze blows the curtains open slightly. It's the kind of thing I have missed through many viewings over the years, and has absolutely nothing to the story or gags, but it's a good example of the care and attention to detail that went into making these films.


THEM THAR HILLS
A top-notch, leisurely-paced little short, with Stan and Ollie taking a trip into the mountains while Ollie recovers from a case of gout. With this film, they returned to the kind of escalating "tit-for-tat" sequence that had appeared in many of their best silents, but which they'd never quite figured out how to adapt to sound. Here, they solve that problem, by reducing the scale and focusing on a smaller situation and the reactions by each character after each new attack has been delivered, thereby avoiding the problem of staging large-scale battles that relied on frenetic action and quicker editing between the various participants.


THE LIVE GHOST
Another "fright" comedy, a format that Laurel and Hardy had pretty well exhausted by this point and that was never particularly suited to their style of humor in the first place. Here the boys are shanghaied into sailing on a supposedly haunted ship. Fright comedy requires a certain degree of broadness that was not really compatible with Laurel and Hardy's more subtle, character-driven approach. In order to work, the "scares" must be genuine and effective enough to really be frightening, so that the comedian's reaction then diffuses the horror, and allows the audience to enjoy a nervous laugh out of relief. Abbott and Costello took one approach in their horror comedies, with Costello usually scared speechless, and wildly mugging and gesticulating in panic when confronted by a monster which would be relieved when Abbott re-entered the scene and the monster would disappear. Bob Hope, in films like THE GHOST BREAKERS, took another approach, delivering clever one-liners to diffuse the spooky proceedings.

Laurel and Hardy never needed such situations from which to derive laughs, as this film demonstrates. They created their own chaos to react to. THE LIVE GHOST is not one of their weakest efforts, however, and in fact contains some very funny moments, but the broad, almost cartoonish material could have been played as well by other comedians.

TIT FOR TAT
A sequel to THEM THAR HILLS, with the boys running an electronics store next to Charlie Hall and Mae Busch's supermarket. Continuing their feud from the previous film, the premise runs out of steam a bit before the two reels are over, but there are still plenty of good gags here. The best is a running joke with an affable little shoplifter systematically cleaning out the inventory of the boys' shop. Contains the classic "Laurelism": "He who filters your good name steals trash."


THE FIXER-UPPERS
I've never particularly cared for this one, although I must admit I find it interesting that the premise is so unusual and rather complex, especially considering that it was the second-to-last short that the team made. It's a romantic farce with the boys as greeting card salesmen that come across an unhappily married woman, whose husband - a temperamental artist - has been ignoring her. Ollie agrees to help her out by allowing her husband to think they're having an affair, which will re-ignite the artist's passion for his wife. Instead, it ignites his fierce temper, as he challenges Ollie to a duel to the death. This one feels like a case of compensating for a lack of ideas by creating an unnecessarily complicated plot with an overwritten script, and with its lackluster ending, is one of their most forgettable films.

THICKER THAN WATER
Laurel and Hardy's final starring short is a charming little domestic comedy that contains a rather disjointed and loose plot, but it's funny enough that it hardly matters. There are two sequences in this film that should be mentioned as being among the finest the boys ever did. The first involves Stan, Ollie, Daphne Pollard and James Finlayson trying to track down what happened to the money for a furniture payment. It requires a verbal dexterity and precision of logic that, like the best of the Abbott and Costello routines, is impressive for the comedians' ability to pull it off successfully. The second is the auction sequence that finds Stan and Ollie bidding against each other, which works so well because it's perfectly in character for them.  The final gag, in which the boys swap personalities after a botched blood transfusion, is a cute wrap-up to their last starring short comedy.

The Laurel and Hardy Sound Shorts (1933)

TWICE TWO
After the classic TOWED IN A HOLE, it's disappointing that the team's next effort should be this forced, gimmicky domestic comedy centered around the concept of the boys playing both themselves and their own wives. It doesn't help any that the voices of Stan and Ollie's "wives" are annoyingly dubbed for no good reason, which only distracts from both the performances and the pacing. The highlight of this otherwise lackluster short is the scene in which Stan goes out for ice-cream and uses up all his money calling home to ask what flavors to get. Maybe my least favorite of the sound shorts they made for Hal Roach.

ME AND MY PAL
This is another one of their comedies constructed around milking the potential of a single comic situation; in this case, the piecing together of a giant jigsaw puzzle. The set-up involves Ollie preparing for his wedding to his boss's daughter, which will catapult him into the social stratosphere, when Stan surprises him with a jigsaw puzzle as a wedding present. Before long, the boys get distracted trying to put the puzzle together, and eventually everyone from the butler to the local cop join in, and the wedding is delayed as they search for a missing puzzle piece. It sounds funnier than it is, however, for once the writers establish the situation, it never really quite builds enough momentum as it nears its rather weak and anti-climactic conclusion.

THE MIDNIGHT PATROL
Since their characters were frequently if often inadvertently finding themselves on the wrong side of the law, it was an interesting departure to cast Laurel and Hardy as policemen. There are some very clever moments here, such as officer Laurel coming across a safecracker at work, and - not comprehending the situation - offering to help him open the safe. When Hardy finally intervenes and issues a summons for the charges, the safecracker argues with the boys over which day best suits his busy schedule to appear in court! The second half of the film is an extended slapstick sequence with Stan and Ollie attempting to apprehend the Chief of Police, whom they've mistaken for a burglar trying to break into his own home. Not top-tier Laurel and Hardy, but very funny.

BUSY BODIES
Certainly one of the team's finest shorts. The premise of Laurel and Hardy working at a sawmill is all the set-up they need for one brilliant sequence after another. The opening scene, with the boys happily and casually driving to work, exemplifies the kind of joyful simplicity that marked their best work. This one also contains an exceptional number of really funny and inventive sight gags, from Hardy being caught in the debris disposal system, to the boys' car being sawed in half. Like TOWED IN A HOLE, this one demonstrates the kind of material that Laurel and Hardy excelled at more than anything else.

DIRTY WORK
Almost certainly the strangest film the boys ever made, right up there with OLIVER THE EIGHTH. Laurel and Hardy are chimney sweeps called out to the home of a mad scientist (Lucien Littlefield), who is experimenting with an age-reversal formula. The scenes of Stan and Ollie cleaning the chimney with characteristically disastrous results are perfectly funny and enjoyable; why they felt compelled to add the mad scientist subplot is a bit of a mystery, as it's neither particularly interesting nor particularly funny. The whole film is really quite uneven, moving between straight slapstick and cartoonish, slightly surreal fright comedy with mixed results.

The Laurel and Hardy Sound Shorts (1932)

HELPMATES
Ranks alongside BIG BUSINESS and THE MUSIC BOX as one of the truly great Laurel and Hardy films. The boys' inability to clean up the house without reducing it to a shambles in the process sums up the essence of their comedy, and the endless succession of assaults on Hardy's dignity take on epic proportions here. Perhaps the highest compliment one can pay is that they make it look so easy.


ANY OLD PORT
Never cited as one of the team's better efforts, usually due to its grim tone and unpleasant atmosphere. With its story of the boys rescuing a cleaning girl from a forced marriage to brutish Walter Long, the film plays like a send-up of old melodramas. The unpleasantness of the first half is offset a bit by the comic boxing-match that takes up the second half, though this scene too is a bit of a disappointment, and lacks the grace and timing of the prizefight sequence from their earlier THE BATTLE OF THE CENTURY. Overall one of their least inspired efforts, not helped by the uncharacteristically dark tone.

THE MUSIC BOX
1932 was certainly a good year for Laurel and Hardy. The team managed to produce not one but three of the very best works of their entire career. So much has already been written on this film that it is difficult to add anything new. From as simple a situation as trying to move a piano up a staircase, Laurel and Hardy mine the depths of the comic possibilities to be found in the eternal struggle of trying to succeed at a task and failing. Like some of the best W.C. Fields comedies in this respect, the boys' humor remains as fresh and relevant as ever because it speaks to something universal and timeless.


THE CHIMP
One of the team's stranger efforts, though still pretty funny. When James Finlayson's circus closes down, the employees each get to take home a part of the show in lieu of payment. Laurel gets the flea circus, while Hardy is stuck with Ethel the performing chimp. Looking for a place to stay, the boys sneak Ethel into a seedy boarding house while hiding her from the landlord. A slight re-working of their earlier comedies ANGORA LOVE and LAUGHING GRAVY, this one works as well as it does because of the expressive and funny performance of Charles Gemora, Hollywood's number one gorilla impersonator, in the title role. Other highlights include Hardy in a tutu being chased by a lion, Laurel's flea circus getting loose in bed, and Ethel's impromptu ballet number, which borders on the surreal. It also contains some decidedly risque pre-code humor, such as the landlord believing that the boys' are hiding his wife in their room, and the chimp snuggling with Hardy in bed.


COUNTY HOSPITAL
This one gets less funny with each viewing for me. The idea of Stan visiting Ollie in the hospital is loaded with potential, but they just never quite make the most of it. And the finale, with the wild car chase shot entirely in front of a process screen, fails to deliver either the necessary thrills, or the kind of reflexive humor that W.C. Fields got out of similar back projection scenes in THE FATAL GLASS OF BEER or MAN ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE. Still, it's a solid if minor effort, and there's plenty of fun moments to enjoy here -- it just doesn't hold up as well for me over repeated viewings compared to their best work. It does contain one of Laurel's best "food" sequences, where he manages to reduce me to hysterics just by eating a hard-boiled egg on screen.

SCRAM!
Like OUR WIFE, this is another one of the team's situation comedies that tends to get overlooked when mentioning their funniest films. It's an expertly written and performed farce, and is one of their few films that feels almost like an ensemble piece, with the fine supporting performances of Vivian Oakland, Rychard Cramer and Arthur Housman contributing greatly to the fun.


THEIR FIRST MISTAKE
Another one of those films that seems to be as much about Laurel and Hardy exploring their characters as it is the gags and situations. Ollie adopts a baby thinking it will help save his marriage; however, when he comes home with the baby, he finds his wife has left him, and he talks Stan in to staying to help him raise it. Not one of the team's more inspired or memorable efforts, and the situation never quite builds much comic momentum. Contains the classic pre-code exchange in which Ollie tells Stan that his wife complains that he thinks more of him than he does of her. "You do, don't you?", Stan asks. Ollie replies, "Well, we won't go into that."


TOWED IN A HOLE
The third Laurel and Hardy classic released in 1932. The boys are fish sellers who decide to cut out the middleman by catching their own fish, so they pick out an old boat to restore and go about repairing it with predictably disastrous results. Watching this film, one gets the sense that the team really had reached an artistic peak around this point, at least as far as their sound films are concerned (certainly their work in the late silent period of 1928-29 achieved a remarkable consistency of high quality, and produced at least two classics). Every movement, every gag and every bit of slapstick is so perfectly choreographed, timed and executed that you really do get the sense of watching two great artists at the very top of their game, working with utter confidence and mastery of their craft. Due in no small part to Laurel's creative guidance and expert filmmaking craftsmanship, it's remarkable how seamless the formal aspects of their films had become by this point compared with their earlier talkies of just a couple years prior. Their best directors achieve a real invisibility of style that never calls attention to itself and always works to emphasize the performances and gags.

The Laurel and Hardy Sound Shorts (1931)

BE BIG!
One of the team's least inspired efforts. This is another film frequently cited as a contender for their weakest, specifically for its protracted sequence with Stan trying to remove a tight boot from Ollie's foot. Usually they could mine a simple situation like this for all its comic potential, but in this case, the results are only mildly amusing and wear thin quickly. The fact that it's a three-reeler doesn't help the pacing issue. Unlike an early talkie such as BERTH MARKS, say, where they were still adapting to sound film, this one feels like a step backward after they had already made great progress in the new medium.


CHICKENS COME HOME
This is one of Laurel and Hardy's more interesting films, and probably their best film from 1931. It's a remake of their silent LOVE 'EM AND WEEP (1927), with Hardy as a mayoral candidate who finds his campaign threatened by the re-appearance of an old flame. Laurel has to keep her at bay while Hardy entertains important political guests at his home. Mae Busch is especially effective here as the woman from Hardy's past, and James Finlayson has one of his funniest roles as Hardy's suspicious butler. Usually in their comedies, the boys start out with nothing and end up with nothing again at the end of the film, whereas this one begins with them as successful businessmen in positions of power and prestige, providing an added gravity to the pitfalls they encounter.


LAUGHING GRAVY
A re-working of their silent ANGORA LOVE, this is another poignantly funny comedy, like BELOW ZERO before it, that focuses as much on their characters as it does the gags and situations. The premise is simple: the boys try to hide their beloved dog in a seedy boarding house whose landlord has a strict "no dogs allowed" policy. Charlie Hall, playing the landlord, brings the perfect mix of humor and menace to the part. It does contain one of those grim endings - with the landlord blowing his brains out after learning that he and the boys will have to be quarantined inside the house together for two months - that represents the kind of dark comedy the team dabbled in occasionally. An alternate ending was discovered in which Laurel inherits a fortune on condition that he sever all ties with Hardy, which is another indication that they were just as interested in exploring the characters here as they were in creating solid laughs.


OUR WIFE
An oddly overlooked title in the Laurel and Hardy canon. It seems that their farce comedies tend to inspire less passionate reactions from fans and critics, probably because they do not contain the kind of really dexterous slapstick and distilled, almost poetic simplicity of shorts like HELPMATES or THE MUSIC BOX. But this is one of their very best in the farce tradition. Unlike ANOTHER FINE MESS or CHICKENS COME HOME, the situation here is simple: Ollie can't marry his sweetheart because her father (James Finlayson) objects, so they decide to elope (with Stan's help, of course). There's a great sight gag when Laurel hires a tiny car for Hardy and his fiancee to make their escape in, and the three of them are forced to pile inside, with Laurel pressed up against the windshield. But the highlight is the cameo appearance by Ben Turpin as the justice of the peace who performs the marriage ceremony with predictably mixed-up results.

COME CLEAN
Of all the Laurel and Hardy comedies, this was one of the very last ones that I saw. For some reason, I never came across it on TV, nor on any of the video releases, and only saw it for the first time a decade ago, in a 16mm print at a Sons of the Desert tent screening. Perhaps because of this, it doesn't stick in my mind as clearly as their films I've seen many times over the years. The pacing lacks the requisite energy, and the situations feel underdeveloped and even tired. It also features one of those strange, surreal endings the team employed occasionally, with Laurel disappearing down the bathtub drain after Hardy pulls the plug. Contains the classic "ice cream shop" routine, where the boys proceed to ask Charlie Hall for every flavor that he's out of.

ONE GOOD TURN
One of the Laurel and Hardy's more interesting efforts, if not one of their funniest. The exposition required by the plot contrivances slow things down a little, but the comedy is good-natured and gentle, at least until the unexpectedly violent climax! Here the boys are even more down-on-their-luck than usual, victims of the Depression, which gives the comedy an air of pathos.

BEAU HUNKS
In order to forget the lover who has jilted him, Hardy enlists in the Foreign Legion, and insists that Stan join up with him. Much of the humor is pretty standard service comedy stuff, combined with very mild satire of legionnaire pictures such as BEAU GESTE. The best scenes are the boys' interactions with stern commandant Charles Middleton. There doesn't seem to be enough material to really justify the four-reel length, and the ending is disappointingly weak stuff, though the running joke of all the men joining the legion to forget the same woman results in a funny wrap-up gag. Overall, it's one of their weakest efforts. The basic premise was later re-worked as THE FLYING DEUCES (1939).

The Laurel and Hardy Sound Shorts (1930)

NIGHT OWLS
This one has a lot of potential, but never seems quite as funny as it could have been. Officer Edgar Kennedy is warned by the Chief of Police that unless he makes an arrest soon in the string of burglaries that have been occurring in the neighborhood, he's out of a job. So he recruits vagrants Laurel and Hardy to break in to the Chief's home and will save the day by arresting them. The idea of the boys as burglars and their various failed attempts to enter the house without making a sound seems like the kind of thing that could have resulted in a minor classic, but for some reason the gags never quite pay off. This one was also shot simultaneously in a Spanish-language version titled LADRONES, which features an alternate and slightly extended ending.


BLOTTO
This is one of my favorites. The boys sneak off for an evening to a swanky new nightclub that's just opened in town, and bring along a bottle of Mrs. Laurel's best liquor (not realizing that she's swapped its contents with raw tea, as revenge for their little scheme). Watching it this time around, I was struck by the comparatively high production values that Hal Roach put in to these short films. The Rainbow Club set is an elaborate Art Deco affair, filled with extras, and Laurel and Hardy's entrance into the club is shot with a high-angle dolly shot that takes advantage of the full scope of the production design. It also contains one of the boys' most infectious "laughing" routines, as they become intoxicated by the phony liquor. The surviving copies derive from a 1937 reissue print, featuring the musical underscoring that would become standard. A simultaneously-shot Spanish language version, LA VIDA NOCTURNA, features extended nightclub acts among other differences.

BRATS
Despite its gimmicky premise (the boys play both themselves and their infant sons), this one works very well, and is impressive for its forced perspective in shots involving oversized props. Another example of the extreme care and expense that went in to making these films at this time. Contains one of the best "Laurel-isms": "You can lead a horse to water, but a pencil must be lead." And the build-up to that final gag, with the bathtub overflowing, delivers big on its payoff. One of the Laurel and Hardy comedies that was reissued later in the '30s with a new bed of musical underscoring, featuring the familiar LeRoy Shield tunes that had become a staple of Hal Roach comedies. The difference between the new soundtrack and its 1930 counterpart reveal how much those melodies contributed to the films and worked with the image to create a unique rhythm all their own.

BELOW ZERO
One of the strangest, and yet also one of the most interesting, comedies the team ever made. It's one of those films that is as much about their characters as anything else, a poignantly funny examination of their friendship. This is also perhaps the first of their films that clearly presents their characters as childlike outsiders alone in a cruel world, a dynamic they would explore more often especially in their features. The setting is a particularly tough and seedy part of town, where Laurel and Hardy attempt to scrape together enough to eat by working as street musicians. Their luck turns when they find a lost wallet, but this quickly attracts the attention of local pickpockets. Saved by a policeman, they offer to take their new friend out for dinner to show their gratitude, but it turns out the wallet they found just happens to belong to the cop. Unlike Chaplin's Tramp, who would have immediately been suspicious of the cop and would never have invited him to dine in the first place, or Keaton, who would have accepted the situation with a bemused shrug, Stan and Ollie are much more trusting, and see the officer as a friend and protector in their rough surroundings, which makes the final outcome all the more poignant. Contains one of those surreal sight gags Laurel was so fond of: dumped in a barrel of water, he proceeds to drink the entire contents, emerging with a giant, swelled belly.


HOG WILD
One of their very best. Taking as simple a premise as trying to install a rooftop antenna, the result is a sublime masterpiece of construction. Not much more to say about this one except that it's one of the few truly perfect comedy films. This is the kind of material Laurel and Hardy could do better than anyone else and that made them so special.

THE LAUREL-HARDY MURDER CASE
This one gets a bad rap in some quarters, and indeed I've frequently seen it cited as the worst film the team ever made. I'm certainly in the minority on this one, but I find it to be a quite funny send-up of the "old dark house" genre that was so popular at the time. I must admit I'm partial to "fright humor", and when it's done right (Abbott and Costello were masters of it, and Bob Hope's THE GHOST BREAKERS and Don Knotts' THE GHOST AND MR. CHICKEN are classics of this kind), it leaves me in stitches. The boys go to an old mansion to hear the reading of the late Uncle Ebenezer Laurel's will. A detective (Fred Kelsey, of course), suspecting foul play was involved, places the guests under house arrest while he investigates. When Laurel and Hardy retire to their room for the evening, they are so jumpy and on-edge that every little creak sends them into hysterics. Some may find this tiresome, but the atmosphere is genuinely creepy and spooky enough that it works for me. The funereal pacing is eerie and unsettling, taking its cue from the kinds of films it was sending up. The "dream" ending is certainly weak, though. Certainly not a minor classic or anything, just funnier than its reputation might suggest.

ANOTHER FINE MESS
A remake of their earlier silent DUCK SOUP, itself based on a music hall sketch by Laurel's father. The premise is a bit more complicated than usual, and even at three reels, there is still a lot of plot to cram in. Laurel and Hardy are tramps on the run from the cops, who seek refuge in a house belonging to big game hunter Col. Buckshot (James Finlayson). While Buckshot's away on safari, the servants have put the place up for rent, and an interested wealthy couple have come to take a tour of it. To avoid capture, Ollie is forced to pose as Col. Buckshot, and Stan pulls double duty as both his butler and maid. They get a lot of mileage out of the comic role-playing, but it runs out of steam by the end. Laurel's appearance in drag as Agnes the maid is a lot of fun, and his scenes with Thelma Todd are a delight, but all in all, the premise wears thin by the time Finlayson shows up at the end and a chase ensues.

The Laurel and Hardy Sound Shorts (1929)

UNACCUSTOMED AS WE ARE
Laurel and Hardy's first talkie is a domestic farce of the kind they had done a number of times before, but demonstrates how instinctively and naturally suited they were for the sound film medium. Unlike other clowns, such as W.C. Fields or The Marx Bros. who relied primarily on their distinctive delivery for full effect, Laurel and Hardy found creative ways of using sound itself as a source of humor -- probably moreso than any other comedian until Jacques Tati. While still technically primitive in terms of the recording quality, the film contains a number of inventive sound gags, such as Mae Busch haranguing Hardy in rhythm with a blaring phonograph record. They later re-worked the premise of this film into their 1938 feature, BLOCKHEADS.


BERTH MARKS
This is frequently cited by critics and fans alike as one of the team's lesser efforts, particularly for its protracted sequence in which Laurel and Hardy get tangled up in eachothers' clothing while changing in an upper train berth. They were still clearly struggling with adapting their pacing to sound at this early stage. The best part is the opening scene, with the boys continually missing eachother at the train station. This sequence features a great sound gag, with the train conductor rattling off the names of the destinations at an intelligible speed.


MEN O'WAR
I enjoyed this one less this time around. It used to be one of my favorites; now, I find it bogged down by the forced chaos of the boating sequence that ends the picture, though it's an improvement over BERTH MARKS' clothes-ripping finale. The "soda fountain" scene is of course a classic, itself a re-working of a scene in their earlier silent SHOULD MARRIED MEN GO HOME? Abbott and Costello did a similar routine years later, and while their version is certainly funny, it also feels somewhat mechanical, a fine performance by a talented comedy team, whereas Laurel and Hardy's version works so well because it stems naturally from their characters. The second half, consisting one of those tit-for-tat battles that had worked so well in their silent films, suffers from serious pacing issues due to the new challenges presented by sound. Unlike the tightly-edited finales of YOU'RE DARN TOOTIN' or THE BATTLE OF THE CENTURY, this sequence is comparatively clunky and clumsy, a decided disappointment after the relaxed pace of the first half.


THE PERFECT DAY
With this film, Laurel and Hardy prove once again that they needed only the simplest of situations on which to build a sublime comedy. Considered their first really great sound film in some quarters, it's certainly a big improvement on the pacing of their previous talkies, and demonstrates how effectively the team could milk a single situation for maximum comic potential. Edgar Kennedy works especially well with the boys here, as their cantankerous uncle whose gouty foot manages to get stomped on and slammed in the car door at every opportunity. Kennedy was a great foil for the team, and it's a shame he didn't work with them more frequently in the sound shorts. Brilliant use of sound effects in this one, especially when Hardy hits Laurel over the head with the clutch. I can only imagine the uproarious reaction that must have provoked from audiences in 1929. The final sight gag, with the car sinking into a giant puddle, is a perfect topper to this fine little comedy.


THEY GO BOOM!
A minor effort from their first year of making sound films, this one shows how quickly and naturally Laurel and Hardy adapted to talkies. The pacing and technical issues that had marked their early sound shorts are nowhere to be found here. The premise is simple: the boys are tenants in a seedy boarding house. Ollie's sick in bed with a cold, and Stan's attempts at helping him lead to one disaster after another. Contains the great sight gag of the over-inflated air mattress that finally explodes when Hardy sneezes. They had used the boarding house setting before in ANGORA LOVE, and would return to it a couple years later in LAUGHING GRAVY (1931).


THE HOOSE-GOW
This little prison comedy seems to be rarely regarded as one of the team's better efforts, probably because it lacks any really memorable gags or scenes (though I've always been partial to the moment when Hardy accidentally chops down a tree containing a prison guard station). The rice-throwing finale, between the prisoners and the board of governors, fails to build the necessary pace in order to really work effectively. Still, the film is overall leisurely-paced and pleasantly funny enough, especially when Stan and Ollie get to play with axes and picks, which is always good for some laughs.