College
High school is
easy, in college you have to perform tricks, one’s girl will have it so.
Impossible and
ludicrous as they are, Keaton fails at each one.
His girl is
kidnapped by the expelled college trickster, Keaton runs the Olympic gamut to
rescue her.
They marry, age
and die.
The best analyses
are offered by Dali & Buñuel in Un
Chien Andalou, Lee Marvin in Cat
Ballou, and Rodney Dangerfield in Back
to School.
Big Business
The selling of
Christmas trees has its failures, these are two. The unmarried woman lives in
prospect, she will not buy one. “If you had a husband,” Mr. Laurel
asks, “would he buy one?”
Around the corner
no sale provokes absolute destruction to sellers’ truck and
customer’s home.
Chickens Come Home—
Mr. Hardy, literally
a bullshit politician, has his hopes for City Hall dashed by a fling from his
“gilded youth”. And just as he bore her on his shoulders then at
the beach, so he bears her out of his house now, and so does his business
partner, Mr. Laurel.
Laughing Gravy
“Whom flirts
imagine as a hat, old maids believe to be a cat.”
It does not
entail moral rejoinders on one’s choice of traveling companions, but
simply exists to be enjoyed for its own sake.
Thus Laughing
Gravy, a small dog owned by Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy, and whom their landlord
on a snowy night particularly objects to.
Our Wife
A succession of
wedding jokes based on the everlasting principle of the best man (Mr.
Laurel).
Come Clean
Unwanted visitors
want ice cream, en route Mr. Laurel
and Mr. Hardy rescue a suicide who wants keeping.
The police want
her, too. The wives are ever vigilant.
One Good Turn
Much ado about
something like Babes in Toyland
overheard in rehearsal for the Community Players. Bumbling Laurel and Hardy on
the bum try to save the sweet old amateur actress from Mr. Finlayson, but only
wreck her garage and themselves still further.
Beau Hunks
The single joke
on Brenon’s original derives from the earlier gag on Allah and the French
flag, Jeannie Weenie is truly loved by everyone.
Any Old Port!
Skretvedt’s account of the original film is valuable,
he reports that James Parrott directed the new second reel.
The released film
has no African canary and no beau, only a serene and beautiful formula for
expressing the brutality of the hotelkeeper, and that is the loaded boxing
glove.
Thicker Than Water
The roomer has a
plan to help the household economy. It fails, and Mr. Hardy is struck so hard
by diminutive Mrs. Hardy, who stands on a chair for this, that Mr. Laurel must
give blood at the hospital, too much blood, some must be returned from Mr.
Hardy, and each of the two gentlemen leaves the hospital transformed into the
other.
With the lady at
the auction bidding on a grandfather clock, a comedy about two cents’
worth of minding your own business.
Bonnie Scotland
There has been a
misprision about Bonnie Scotland since its premiere, and even earlier,
at a preview which caused twenty minutes to be removed (according to report).
The missing footage pertained to what Variety described as “the
love strain”, because audiences then and critics
ever since saw this as two films loosely conjoined, a frustrated romance and a
Laurel and Hardy short, as though you were to criticize Shakespeare for
patchwork.
It’s set in
Scotland because MacLaurel inherits a snuffbox and bagpipes, which is as
surreal as Lautréamont gets (Mr. Hardy sneezes himself off a bridge and down to
the bottom of a rivulet, then sneezes all the water away), and in India because
the pipes blew at Waterloo and Balaklava and Mafeking.
The romance is
frustrated by the conditions of inheritance, which send the girl to India.
There’s a plot to marry her off to a serving officer and keep her money
in the family, as it were, but MacLaurel and Mr.
Hardy have enlisted by mistake, thinking to acquire a suit of clothes on tick.
The officer is a
gentleman, however, and Bonnie Scotland is not to be understood as any
sort of mishmash. Horne’s direction is surprisingly acute, as the camera
wends its way in to the reading of the will, the microphone is shifted as well.
Two men are at an anvil, one beats out a familiar tune, and through an open
door in the background, looking onto the gentle slope of a curving village
road, from the far distance Laurel and Hardy gradually make their entrance.
The boy enlists,
too, to be near his girl, and finds himself in the stockade after a
contretemps. “I lost my head,” he explains. “You didn’t
lose your head,” says MacLaurel, pointing at it, “it’s still
there. It’s one of those” mirages
he starts to say before Mr. Hardy squelches him, which are an Indian phenomenon
explained to green recruits by veterans.
The snuffbox was
a gift from Mary Queen of Scots to a muchly great ancestor of
MacLaurel’s, whose gag portrait is a famous resemblance. “Why
don’t ye come up and see me sometime,” says a blonde Scottish lady
to an acquaintance, and MacLaurel blurts out, “Mae West!”
Mary Gordon as an
innkeeper delivers her first line with an impeccable brogue, “I can give
ye th’ rroom, but ye’ll
have to take the bath y’rrself.” James
Finlayson as the sergeant major, David Torrence as the lawyer, Anne Grey as the
scheming aunt, Vernon Steel as her brother, Colonel McGregor, and Maurice Black
as Khan Mir Jutra, are all superb.
Bonnie
Scotland is certainly an
inspiration of the Road pictures, and even has music and dancing—one
famous bit anticipates the roadmending scene in Rosenberg’s Cool Hand
Luke—and one of Mr. Hardy’s scowls
shows a startling resemblance to Spencer Tracy.
Way Out West
It all takes
place in the fairy-tale realm of Brushwood Gulch, where the saloon is named
Mickey Finn’s Palace after its proprietor, with a line of lovely girls
and a Serio-Comic Entertainer, Lola Marcel.
This is the
version of Cinderella on which The Magnificent Seven (dir. John Sturges)
was based, to all appearances. Stanley and Ollie have
come to tell poor Mary Roberts, who works at Mickey Finn’s, that her
father has bequeathed her a gold mine. They spill the
beans to Finn, who passes off his wife Lola as the girl. The boys are wheedled
out of the deed, and sent packing.
As a consequence,
Stan eats Ollie’s hat, at first with great reluctance, then with a little
salt. Ollie, emulating Tom Sawyer’s schoolchums,
tries it himself, briefly.
They resolve to
obtain the deed and restore it to Mary. This involves a block and tackle and
Dinah, their mule (cp. The Music Box,
dir. James Parrott). Lola tickles it out of
Stanley’s shirt again and says triumphantly, “ha-ha!” Her
husband answers, “ho-ho!” Ollie snatches
it and makes off, shouting, “hee-hee!”
Aside from the
scene of their dejection, Stan and Ollie have another shock in the gradual
apperception of their extreme poverty, the former’s holey shoes and the
latter’s patched dungarees, whereas a sign at the saloon reads,
“Griano—Rarest of Wines”.
Variety was not at all impressed, but once in a thousand
films Halliwell finds something to admire, something to beguile him, and this
was such an occasion, “seven reels of perfect joy.”
He particularly mentions the musical numbers and the dance scene, which
is first filmed by Horne against a rear projection of the busy Western street,
then a reverse angle places the boys in the immediate context of the saloon
where the Avalon Boys are out front strumming and crooning.
Stanley
throughout displays an ability to flick his thumb up in such a way as to set it
afire, which is useful for lighting the pipe he smokes with the stem in his
mouth, removing the bowl as occasion warrants. Ollie
tries the trick and fails, repeatedly, until success is the best revenge.
All Over Town
The joke that
killed vaudeville (“murdered during a dress rehearsal”) leaves
behind a jinxed venue and “the true vanishing Americans” at a
theatrical boarding house. Olsen and Johnson sell
their filling station and are thought to be millionaires, the show must go on.
Sally the singing
seal is but Laughing Gravy with a
career. Franklin Pangborn the costumier “on the bias”. There are designs upon the theater...
Another dress
rehearsal, another murder, this time Sally is suspected, “she had a
guilty look on ‘er conscience.”
“What’re
ya doin’?”
“I’m puttin’ the gun in the fish. Now remember,
mum’s the word and keep your mouth
shut.” A game of cat’s cradle, “hey, ya wanna try it? Take my end.” Sally’s taken for a ride and cleared of
suspicion. Scenery repossessed, off on the radio. “Who are you?”
“Well, we’re
not Amos ‘n Andy.” MacDougal’s Mackerel
sponsors the revelation on The MacDougal
Theatre of the Air. The sponsor is a murderer’s shield or not, as the
case may be.
Hal Erickson (All Movie Guide), “never really
pulls together.” Halliwell’s
Film Guide, “routine”.