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A Laurel and Hardy watch-along

Started by Replies From View, September 11, 2018, 06:09:07 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Durance Vile

This one was the Big Bang, wasn't it? This is the first one where they were properly paired up and the magic is already there. There's no going back now.


New page chump.

Nowhere Man

This thread is a treasure trove so far, and yeah, the Second hundred Years is where it really gets going. I have to be honest in that the 1927 films for the most part don't demand much in the place of rewatches for me, although they do have their moments. Putting Pants on Phillip is a cracker though. Although the L&H formula isn't really there yet, it's just a fun short.

I imagine the next post will be about the tragically lost Hats Off which Randy Skretvedt described as "the holy grail of lost Laurel & Hardy films".

I'll have to do a catch up of the films soon and get back, thanks so much Replies! and also for sharing all those pages of Randy's book, my copy is lost somewhere in my parents house at the moment.

Replies From View

Quote from: Nowhere Man on November 20, 2018, 09:54:21 PM
I imagine the next post will be about the tragically lost Hats Off which Randy Skretvedt described as "the holy grail of lost Laurel & Hardy films".

That'll be the one after next.  Here's the run until Christmas:

Week 12 (27th November):  Call of the Cuckoos (MGM; written and filmed June 1927; released 15th October 1927)
Week 13 (4th December):  Hats Off (MGM; written and filmed late July - early August 1927; released 5th November 1927)
Week 14 (11th December):  Do Detectives Think? (Pathé; written and filmed May 1927; released 20th November 1927
Week 15 (18th December):  Putting Pants on Philip (MGM; written and filmed August 1927; released 3rd December 1927)
Week 16 (25th December):  The Battle of the Century (MGM; written and filmed late September - early October 1927; released 31st December 1927)


Quote from: Durance Vile on November 20, 2018, 08:43:03 PM
There's no going back now.

The out-of-sequence Pathé films may upset the flow a little, and they make a few more cameos yet in films that otherwise have little to do with them, but they're definitely beginning to take flight.


From Skretvedt's book:

 

 

Replies From View

The grey weather is making it quite hard to take readable photos of these pages.  Here's my best attempt.

Everson, The Films of Laurel and Hardy (1967):

 

I'm particularly fond of the observation that Laurel and Hardy are beginning to slow down the tempo of their comedies now, and focus on situation rather than plot.


McCabe, Kilgore and Bann, Laurel and Hardy (1975); here you can see publicity stills that were mentioned in some of the other reviews:

 

   


olliebean

I particularly liked the way the boys pretended to be painters just by randomly slapping paint on everything they passed. Especially how long it went on for - perhaps an early example of the notion that if you keep doing a joke after it stops being funny, eventually it will start being funny again.

I'm so accustomed to Stan's trademark shock of hair, it's a bit disconcerting to see it cropped so short in this film.

Spudgun

Catching up on the last three, I'd describe them as "good", "interesting", and "breakthrough", in that order.

Good = Sailors, Beware, which at least features both Stan and Babe a bit more evenly, though they still aren't sharing many scenes together. Unlike the classic L&H shorts, this is still the era when you could transpose nearly any of the stars of the day into the leading roles and it wouldn't have made much difference, but this is nevertheless one of the funnier ones from before the partnership properly flourished. (I too was fooled and thought it was a child playing an adult, but a quick Google reveals him to be a member of the Lollipop Guild in Wizard of Oz.)

Interesting = Now I'll Tell One, which I'd never seen before. Obviously it's not complete, but it's clear that the boys are peripheral figures in a very different type of comedy. I've only ever seen one full Charley Chase short - the one featuring Laurel and Hardy's cameo - and I didn't think a great deal of it, but I keep hearing about how underrated he was, so maybe I should give him another go sometime. I laughed a few times, at any rate.

Breakthrough = The Second Hundred Years - at last Stan and Ollie are now proper partners in crime! (Pun intended.) It's such a simple thing to have them on the same side, thereby multiplying their ongoing incompetence, but it took them a surprisingly long time to realise this. The scene when the prisoners are lining up outside reminded me of the army inspection in With Love and Hisses, with its slow drawn-out small-things-going-wrong feel and frustrated person in charge. I also enjoyed Stan chasing the cherry around his and fellow diners' plates. See, that's all they needed: not plots and quickfire gags, but basic situations for them to mess up. These are the beginnings of the L&H trademark that set them apart from the rest.

Of course, we're still not quite there yet, as the characters are still near enough just two basic idiots at this point, rather than the two subtler higher class of idiots they'd become. Just those out-of-sequence Pathés to go, and we're into the golden era.

Spudgun

Quote from: Replies From View on November 17, 2018, 01:56:29 PM
In my search for more information about Charley Chase in 'Now I'll Tell One' (1927), I stumbled upon Charles R. Bowers in 'Now You Tell One' (1926).  Apart from the name similarities I don't believe these films are related, but as this week has been a little light on Laurel and Hardy entertainment I thought some of you might like this tangential supplement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cn54BtdnZf8

Thanks very much for that - absolutely fascinating. Everything about it was completely new to me, and after looking him up, I found out that Charles R Bowers was not just a minor film star but an animator as well, which would explain some of those highly impressive special effects.

QuoteHow on earth did they do that one with the cats growing on the tree?
I could be wrong, but it looks to me like stop motion animation shot in reverse. That is, start with the complete model of a cat, and then slowly destroy it back in on itself and up and into the branch it's growing from. The guy hiding inside his own hat at https://youtu.be/cn54BtdnZf8?t=204 caught me completely off-guard.

I'm going to have to look into this Bowers chap - it seems a lot of his works no longer exist, but there is a DVD release of some of his output. It makes you wonder how many forgotten stars of the era were actually every bit as good as the ones we remember, because if Bowers's other films were anywhere near as inventive and well-made as that one, there's no real explanation as to why he's not held in higher renown.




The painting the town stuff gave me a good chuckle. Stan is still being giving top billing over Ollie though.

Replies From View

Week 12

Call of the Cuckoo, released 15/10/1927




Wikipedia:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_the_Cuckoo


Regarding the version on the UK DVD boxset:
QuoteCall Of The Cuckoo - 1927 (silent)- This is a L&H cameo in Max Davidson film.  Again the titles are very clever remakes of the originals.  The intertitles are also remakes.  The print seems to be exactly the same as The Lost Films Of Laurel And Hardy Series in the US, as the same spots and scratches are evident in the opening scenes.  The picture quality is excellent throughout.
(http://www.laurelandhardy.org/newDVDREV.html)


Video source (from the above boxset):  https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x24v4zz

Replies From View


"I'll Punch you in the Chivvy!"

Another new old word for us.

Beast gag this week was man as wheel barrow.

Durance Vile

After reading the bit on the encyclopedia about Jewish stereotypes and catching the first sight of "Papa Gimblewart" I was preparing for the worst, but as it turned out, that wasn't at all bad, with some very good sight gags and nice interplay between the characters, especially when the "tribes" turned up.

The mum and dad were the only same characters in the film. Although Max Davidson's outfit is exaggeratedly Jewish, they could just as well have been overtly Irish or Italian and it would have made no difference to the film. If anything, it looked to me like self-deprecating Jewish humour in places. Davidson himself was a Jew from Berlin, according to his (German) wikipedia page. Having said that, there may have been many nuances I've missed so I'll leave it at that. I will say, though, that I've loved discovering all these other silent comedians who've popped up in this thread that I'd never heard of before.

Laurel, Hardy, Finlayson and Chase seem just to have been roped in to improvise and fuck about for a bit, and a very good job they make of it too.

The inside of that house is getting very familiar. I reckon it's been in at least three or four of the films we've seen lately.


Replies From View

Here's a brief entry on Max Davidson:


Replies From View

Quote from: Durance Vile on November 28, 2018, 09:11:53 PM
Was that man in the nip?

Certainly was, and below is a lovely photo of him in the nip for you to reminisce.


Everson, The Films of Laurel and Hardy (1967):




McCabe, Kilgore and Bann, Laurel and Hardy (1975):


Spudgun

Not much really to say about Call of the Cuckoos as the boys are basically extras (what a supporting cast!), but they do make quite an impression in their short appearance. Once again, they're playing different types of idiots compared to the classic Stan and Ollie characters, but there's enough to raise at least a smile as they indulge in some daft slapstick, culminating in a welcome arrow-up-the-bum gag. Top marks for the human wheelbarrow, too.

When it comes to the main body of the short, it's basically a whole slew of visual jokes, most of which are staged well, while some are bordering on surreal. Although it can all come across as rather predictable at times, there's a very good chance that at the time this would have got by on its originality. (I don't know that - I just mean that perhaps we've seen it all before, while the audiences of the day maybe hadn't.) To be fair, a few of the less-expected ones gave me a big laugh, and for some reasons the sliding double doors being just the edges of doors really tickled me.

One thing I will admit is that if no-one had mentioned the whole Jewish stereotype thing, I never in a million years would have twigged. They just looked like an eccentric family in a rough situation to me - perhaps a good advert for letting the past lie rather than... I don't know. 'The past is what the past was' is what I'm saying, and nothing can change that now, so we may as well enjoy these films warts 'n' all. And I'll probably say something similar when that one with the blackface scene crops up in a while.

olliebean

Quote from: Spudgun on December 02, 2018, 08:33:36 PMAlthough it can all come across as rather predictable at times, there's a very good chance that at the time this would have got by on its originality. (I don't know that - I just mean that perhaps we've seen it all before, while the audiences of the day maybe hadn't.)

I have to admit I was somewhat spoiled in this respect by watching this immediately after the Charles R. Bowers film mentioned earlier in the thread, the remarkable originality and inventiveness of which - unlike this film - hasn't dated at all.

Replies From View

Week 13

Hats Off, released 05/11/1927




Wikipedia:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hats_Off_(1927_film)


I have decided to devote this week to 'Hats Off' even though its lost status means that we are limited to experiencing its storyline (rather than its performances) via a series of still images.  None of the reconstructions I've found online are particularly watchable, but for anyone who wants a video this is as good as any other:  https://vimeo.com/165185963


Alternatively (and perhaps preferably) all the extant images are reprinted on the four pages below (from Laurel and Hardy by McCabe, Kilgore and Bann):

 

 


High quality, larger versions of the stills are here:  http://www.lordheath.com/menu1_131.html

Replies From View


Replies From View

A page on lost films:




This is an essential article on the subject of Hal Roach loss and preservation.  Below are the paragraphs that mention 'Hats Off' but I recommend you read the whole lot (link to the article follows the quote):

QuoteStan Laurel's daughter, Lois, remembers the time in the mid-1930s when the Beverly Hills Fire Department drove down streets and went door-to-door asking residents to turn over any volatile nitrate film in their homes! Lois Laurel watched as her mother complied and did so. What films did she relinquish? Perhaps the now lost and partially lost 1927 two-reelers HATS OFF and BATTLE OF THE CENTURY? Daughter Lois never knew the titles involved, only that her mother had second thoughts later in the day and phoned Stan at the studio to discuss what had happened. Wonder how that conversation went?

We know, generally, historically, that even though they were seemingly important corporate assets, film material at studios big and small have seldom been the beneficiary of careful maintenance. Movies were regarded as disposable, perishable entertainment.

...

As part of the procedure of registering the films for copyright protection, Hal Roach Studios and its distributor had to send in to the Library of Congress a pair of brand new 35mm release prints, which they did together with a standard letter that asked the copyright office to "send back one or both prints." Meaning in 1927 the LOC was at liberty to retain at least one pristine new 35mm print each of titles like HATS OFF and BATTLE OF THE CENTURY for its "permanent" national collection. But did they hold onto one of the two copies so submitted? No. The prints were returned to M-G-M as Roach's distributor, went into general circulation, and eventually disappeared.   

...

All the while, the merged number of prints and pre-print material just sat there, quietly, inside darkened vaults, subject to indifference and the ravages of time. Some resided on the lot in Culver City. More were stored in depots like Bekins and Bonded back East. And in film labs like Fox, Pathe, M-G-M, Consolidated, Du-Art, Deluxe, Guffanti, Movie-Lab, and Mercury Laboratory in New York (where the 35mm negative for HATS OFF was sent by M-G-M in 1945 before turning to powder, or at least taking a powder). All this, just in the United States alone.

...

From 1957 through 1970 filmmaker Robert Youngson mined the Roach library of silent comedies to produce a succession of wonderful compilation films, including THE GOLDEN AGE OF COMEDY (1957) and WHEN COMEDY WAS KING (1960). By then HATS OFF was already lost, and BATTLE OF THE CENTURY was decomposing. Youngson wasn't intending to do so, nor was it his responsibility, but by converting, selectively, the deteriorating nitrate he wanted to use onto safety film stock, he preserved it. Youngson only copied, however, what he wished to excerpt for the movie he was making. So he only saved the footage from BATTLE OF THE CENTURY that he included in his anthology feature. He had the opportunity to run a complete fine grain and preserve the entire film, but then so did his licensor, Hal Roach Studios, which did nothing. Not long after Youngson pulled what he needed from reel two, which was an abridgement of the pie fight footage, the balance of the reel decomposed while in the custody of Bonded Storage in New York, was counted out, and then junked.

...

HATS OFF and BATTLE OF THE CENTURY were handled by M-G-M, not by Pathe. Before Blackhawk Films was really active in home entertainment and library sales in the 1960s (although its first agreement with Roach was in 1952), the M-G-M silents were never licensed in substandard film gauges for non-theatrical exhibition, and therefore were never printed for the 16mm market. No complete, vintage 16mm print of either title will ever surface because they were never printed in 16mm. At least such two-reelers as MIGHTY LIKE A MOOSE endured and remain in some form.

Here is that article in full:  http://www.laurel-and-hardy.com/archive/articles/2011-04-ucla/ucla-1.html


This is also worth checking out:  https://www.filmpreservation.org/

https://twitter.com/stan_and_ollie/status/1068322942478663681?s=21

Had never seen this before. Genuine belly laughs on the bus, would be hard pressed to find a better example of perfect comic timing.

Replies From View

A couple of the reviews above have mentioned 'It's Your Move', a 1945 two-reeler starring Edgar Kennedy, which lifts so many ideas and gags from the staircase portion of 'Hats Off' that it's often described as a remake.

It's no substitute for the missing Laurel and Hardy, but it's a curiosity nonetheless:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfa3nUop2Cc


QuoteRemakes
There have been several remakes, among them It's Your Move in 1945 starring frequent L&H foil Edgar Kennedy.  The Director of It's Your Move was none other than Hal Yates, director of Hats Off 18 years previously.  What is unusual here is that in 1945 the 35mm negative of Hats Off was sent by MGM to the Mercury Laboratory in New York for printing, perhaps to assist the production team on It's Your Move?  After this Hats Off was never officially seen again, and the negative was presumably not returned to MGM.

That quote is from here:  http://lostlaurelandhardyfilm.blogspot.com/


An entry on Edgar Kennedy:

 

Spudgun

I still live in hope that a copy of Hats Off will surface somewhere in the world (my money's on Germany for some reason) sooner or later. Obviously for simple completist reasons, but especially because it's basically the birth of the hats-fall-off-pick-up-wrong-one trademark mix-up routine. There just must be a print out there. There has to be.

Until then, that Edgar Kennedy quasi-remake can leave us guessing. Incidentally, I had to look up that final 'over the ceiling' joke, and just in case it baffled anyone else reading this... Turns out it's a wartime gag, when you weren't allowed to sell rationed or hard-to-source items above a certain price, to discourage profiteering and the driving up of inflation. The inspector is from the OPA, which was the Office of Price Administration, and it turns out that Edgar had only gone and charged too much for that washing machine. Pretty much lost in the mists of time that one, but there you are.

Replies From View

Quote from: Spudgun on December 10, 2018, 11:56:56 PM
especially because it's basically the birth of the hats-fall-off-pick-up-wrong-one trademark mix-up routine.

'Do Detectives Think?' (filmed in May 1927, between 'Sailors, Beware!' and 'Flying Elephants' but held back by Pathé until after the release of 'Hats Off') has one as well.  Look forward to that tomorrow!

The sense I have is that 'Hats Off' elevated the hat mix-up routine to the next level, just as 'The Battle of the Century' was soon to do with the pie fight.

Replies From View

Week 14

Do Detectives Think?, released 20/11/1927




Wikipedia:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Detectives_Think%3F


Viewing options:

Regarding the version on the UK DVD boxset:
QuoteDo Detectives Think? - 1927 (silent)- Remade main and intertitles (they do exist!) mar what is otherwise a satisfactory print of this film.  Picture is quite good with a Beau Hunks score.
(http://www.laurelandhardy.org/newDVDREV.html)


Sourced from the above boxset:  https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x24v8j3



http://www.lordheath.com/menu1_132.html


Here's the US version, with its more natural running speed and what appear to be the original titles and intertitles (it restores intertitles that are missing from the UK version, eg. "Where have we seen that face before?" at 15:59):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9yGPJFIdWc

Durance Vile

We're really getting there now. L&H are in something like their familiar roles (and outfits) and a lot of the elements are already there: the bickering, the hats routine, Stan's cry face and Ollie's look to camera.

The plot bowled along nicely, we got the obigatory spike-up-the-arse routine and the supporting cast were good. Especially Fin, of course, leaping behind the couch, and hiding in the bathwater. Noah Young was a terrifying-looking man, wasn't he?

Durance Vile

Edgar Kennedy was another staple of half-term television in the seventies, along with the Boys, Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd and Langdon.

Does that kind of thing ever get shown on TV these days? When I was a kid, ancient stuff was on all the time (presumably because it was cheap) but it's hard to imagine anyone under the age of about 30 every coming across it by chance. My daughter only knows Laurel and Hardy because we used to watch the boxed set when she was little, and I imagine she'd have no idea who any of the others are, apart from maybe Chaplin.

I can't remember the last time I saw a black and white film on television, let alone a silent one.

Quote from: Durance Vile on December 14, 2018, 07:31:31 PM
Edgar Kennedy was another staple of half-term television in the seventies, along with the Boys, Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd and Langdon.

Does that kind of thing ever get shown on TV these days? When I was a kid, ancient stuff was on all the time (presumably because it was cheap) but it's hard to imagine anyone under the age of about 30 every coming across it by chance. My daughter only knows Laurel and Hardy because we used to watch the boxed set when she was little, and I imagine she'd have no idea who any of the others are, apart from maybe Chaplin.

I can't remember the last time I saw a black and white film on television, let alone a silent one.

There were several of their films shown on BBC around 2000 - 04, especially around Christmas and the New Year holidays, but sometimes other times of year too.  Last showing to date of a Laurel and Hardy film on the BBC seems to have been in 2005.  Talking Pictures TV has been repeating some more recently though, within the last year or so.

Replies From View

From Everson's book:

 


From Skretvedt's book:

   

Replies From View

Week 15

Putting Pants on Philip, released 03/12/1927




Wikipedia:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putting_Pants_on_Philip


Viewing options:

Regarding the version on the UK DVD boxset:
QuotePutting Pants On Philip - 1927 (silent)- Replacement main titles (the originals do exist) but original introductory and intertitles.  Picture is a bit grainy but with a nice Beau Hunks score.
(http://www.laurelandhardy.org/newDVDREV.html)


Sourced from the above boxset:  https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x24v7vf



http://www.lordheath.com/menu1_155.html


Here's the (superior) US version; it's less grainy and runs at a more natural speed:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JRUV46WvQw