Laurel & Hardy: Year Two | 1928
Oliver Hardy and Stan Laurel in YOU’RE DARN TOOTIN’.
Following their acclaimed Laurel & Hardy: Year One set, specialty label Flicker Alley has released a second look at the early days of their iconic partnership, compiling the ten silent shorts the pair made together in 1928 before transitioning to sound in 1929.
While their sound films are arguably more well-known, the duo cut their teeth on silent comedy and were some of the few silent comedians to successfully transition from silents to the sound era. The physical nature of their comedy retained that silent aesthetic, but their friendship made the pairing so special. From Oliver Hardy’s fussy pomposity to Stan Laurel’s guileless clumsiness, the chemistry between the two was undeniable, and together the two made for one of the greatest comedy duos in cinema history. Laurel & Hardy: Year Two offers a rare glimpse into the origins of many of their gags and schticks, as we witness them settling into the personas for which they would become known., along with newly composed scores, fragments of Laurel and Hardy solo films from the era, and other goodies. Fully restored and looking better than ever, these ten films are a godsend for Laurel and Hardy fans, and a gift to all students of silent comedy and cinema history eager to explore the work of some of the finest comedians of their era.
LEAVE ‘EM LAUGHING
This early Laurel & Hardy two-reeler finds the pair dealing with Stan's incessant toothache. After increasingly ridiculous attempts to extract it on their own fail, they head to the dentist, where a series of mix-ups leads them both to get high on laughing gas and wreak havoc in traffic much to the chagrin of a local cop.
The middle section of Leave ‘em Laughing feels more like Three Stooges than the pair's usual vibe, and the laughing gas gag in the final third doesn't really go anywhere and wears pretty thin, but the opening act bit as the two try unsuccessfully to pull Stan's tooth is classic Laurel & Hardy. The pair were certainly at their best in the sound era, but it's remarkable how much of their comedy still worked in the silent era. Hardy's fourth-wall breaking exasperation and Laurel's guileless clumsiness illustrate what brilliant physical comedians they were. Certainly one of the more mixed bags in their oeuvre, but there are flashes of greatness here. This also marks the first appearance of their iconic car andA long-time foils Charlie Hall as the landlord and frequent collaborator and sometimes director Edgar Kennedy as the increasingly frazzled traffic cop.
THE FINISHING TOUCH
Laurel and Hardy seem to settle into their rhythm here, as The Finishing Touch features them as a couple of repairmen rushing to finish a job to collect an extra $500 tip...to increasingly disastrous results.
This film wisely focus on one overarching gag and builds to a perfectly calibrated punchline, with plenty of fun side gags along the way as the two haplessly try to make repairs for which they are woefully underqualified. Edgar Kennedy also appears as a cop who's had just about enough of their noisy antics, and provides an amusing foil for Laurel and Hardy's bumbling lunkheads.
Watching these silent shorts, having only been familiar with the team's sound-era work, is fascinating because I can almost hear their voices even in the silence. It’s remarkable how seamlessly they transitioned to sound. Their comedy is so physical but so rooted in the camaraderie and mutual antagonism between them that it works both with and without sound, which is a big reason why they're two of the best ever to do it.
Oliver Hardy in FROM SOUP TO NUTS.
FROM SOUP TO NUTS
Laurel and Hardy get hired as waiters at a for a high society dinner party whose nouveau riche hostess is just as baffled by the rules of etiquette as they are. From Soup to Nuts is unusual in the L&H oeuvre in that in spends a great deal of time focusing on the antics of Anita Garvin's Mrs. Culpepper as she attempts to navigate the array of cutlery on her dinner table, fruitlessly (ha) chasing a grape around with various spoons and forks while trying to maintain her proper composure. Some of the gags get repetitive on the way to the inevitable food fight finale, but the "serve the salad undressed" bit is pure gold. This would later be reworked into the duo's 1940 feature, A Chump at Oxford, also featuring Anita Garvin.
YOU’RE DARN TOOTIN’
The boys are in a band, but are quickly ejected once their hijinks ruin their bandleader's farewell concert. So they strike out on their own to play on the streets, much to the chagrin of a grumpy beat cop, who makes it his job to put them out of business. Much of this would later be reworked into one of their talkie shorts, Below Zero, a few years later, but neither film is exactly their finest hour, this one culminating in a massive street fight in which a bunch of men tear the pants of one another. It's a terrific bit of goofy surrealism but goes on a bit too long.
Stan Laurel in THEIR PURPLE MOMENT.
THEIR PURPLE MOMENT
Being henpecked husbands was one of the longest-running themes throughout Laurel and Hardy's work. That really begins here in Their Purple Moment, which finds the pair hiding away bits of their paychecks then heading out to the club for a night on the town on Stan's, only to discover that his wife has discovered his stash and left him penniless, sticking him with a large tab for two ladies they meet at the club.
The boys' cluelessness is often the root of their wives' exasperation, but there's a strange whiff of misogyny that runs through this one that feels somewhat different than their more affable stabs at the idea in subsequent films. It is funny to watch Stan's increasing panic as the bill continues to climb, but the food fight climax feels all too familiar.
SHOULD MARRIED MEN GO HOME?
Stan and Ollie want to go golfing, but Ollie's wife wants a nice day at home, so the pair hatch a scheme to get Ollie out of the house and onto the green. Once there, they encounter a couple of ladies who need escorts, and hijinks inevitably ensue.
The bit where the boys try to treat the girls to sodas but only have 15 cents would be recycled to greater effect in Men o’War the next year. This one starts strong, with Stan as a pest who can't take a hint, but once they hit the green it loses steam a bit. Still, it's fun to see seeds of later films being planted in this early short.
EARLY TO BED
Ollie comes into a bit of money and hires the down-and-out Stan as his butler, but torments the poor fellow so much that he finally snaps and ransacks Ollie's new mansion. Early to Bed is surprisingly mean-spirited, and it's a bit unexpected to see them at odds like this. They were, of course, terrific foils for each other, the comedy deriving from their penchant for getting in each other's way, but their mutual friendship made their partnership so enduring. The antics are less fun as adversaries, lacking the good-humored antagonism that informed their stronger work. It's the last time they would appear on screen as anything other than friends.
TWO TARS
After renting a car with their dates, Laurel and Hardy head off for a day in the country, only to end up in a massive traffic jam that threatens to put an end to their amorous plans. A sustained sequence of pure L&H silliness ensues as the road rage escalates into a battle royale between increasingly frustrated motorists. Two Tars (“tars” here being a southern pronunciation of “tires”) features a wealth of terrific gags, the slapstick humor ratcheting up as the boys try to one-up their fellow motorists. This is the kind of thing Laurel and Hardy did best, a tit-for-tat style escalation of petty grievances that culminate not in victory but in continued humiliation for our put-upon protagonists. Perhaps their best film of the silent era.
Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy in HABEAS CORPUS.
HABEAS CORPUS
Desperate for some cash, the boys get snookered into a scheme by a mad scientist who asks them to go dig up a body from the local grave yard for one of his latest experiments. While Laurel and Hardy head off to collect, the professor's assistants call the cops and head off to stop the boys from making good on their promise. Naturally, our heroes think the graveyard is haunted, leading to a series of mix-ups that ends in the boys hauling a "body" out of the cemetery that is very much alive.
Quite a bit of Habeas Corpus would be recycled into later L&H films (including Night Owls and The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case, both from 1930), but it's actually one of their most streamlined silent works. Strong gags and a solid through-line make this one of their funniest and most engaging films of the era.
WE FAW DOWN
Leo McCrary steps into the director's chair in We Faw Down, one of the pair's final silent films. It's fairly standard fare - Stan and Ollie want to go out to a poker game with the boys, so they make up an elaborate lie to tell their wives, only to get caught red-handed when unbeknownst to them, the theatre they're supposed to be at burns down. Some fun moments as Stan realizes their error and desperately tries to keep Ollie from digging his hole deeper while he's lying to their wives, but they did this sort of thing better in earlier films, and would certainly do it better again.
