Robert Youngson Movies
- 1970
Robert Youngson once again compiles scenes from the golden age of comedy's silent film era. Laurel and Hardy are shown battling a gum machine, and Hardy is a debaucherous Romeo whose amorous plans are thwarted by Rex, the Wonder Horse. Charley Chase is hampered by hiccups and a female professor, and he fleeces a drunken Oliver Hardy with a mannequin in a nightclub. The third part finds bachelor Buster Keaton desperately trying to get married by 7:00 PM in order to collect a $7-million-dollar inheritance. Keaton is pursued by money-hungry prospects in one of the best chase scenes ever filmed. Narration is provided by Jay Jackson. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, (more)
- 1967
The second of Robert Youngson's compilations of the silent comedies of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, The Further Perils of Laurel & Hardy suffers a bit from too much repetition and gee-whiz obvious narration. Still, the vignettes offered herein are first-rate, as fresh and funny as they were when first released seven decades ago. Among the L&H shorts represented in this collection are Do Detectives Think and Sugar Daddies, two 1927 releases made before Stan and Ollie were an official team. We are also treated to generous portions of such rib-tickling 2-reelers as Should Married Men Go Home? (1928), Early to Bed (1928), That's My Wife (1929) and Angora Love (1929). The film is rounded out with choice selections from the work of such Hal Roach contractees as Charley Chase, Jean Harlow and Snub Pollard. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, (more)
- 1965
Five of Laurel and Hardy's best features from the silent film era are compiled in this collection by Robert Youngson. Included are From Soup To Nuts, Wrong Again, The Finishing Touch, and iberty. On hand are legendary comic foils like James Findlayson and Edgar Kennedy, both masters of the "slow burn" when showing their disapproval. Watch for Margaret Dumont, famous for her characterization as the flustered dowager in many Marx Brothers films, in the pie-fight scene. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jay Jackson, Stan Laurel, (more)
- 1964
This compilation film is one of the few Robert Youngson productions to incorporate sound as well as silent excerpts. All the clips are culled from 40 years' worth of MGM comedy material. The silent scenes spotlight such funsters as Marion Davies, Buster Keaton, Karl Dane and George K. Arthur, while the talking sequences feature the likes of Jean Harlow, Wallace Beery, Jimmy Durante, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, Abbott & Costello and even the Three Stooges. Highlights include Laurel & Hardy's egg-breaking sequence with Lupe Velez from Hollywood Party (1934), the train-chase climax from the Marx Brothers' Go West (1940), Red Skelton's two-sided flag bit from A Southern Yankee (1948) and the Robert Benchley short subject A Night at the Movies (1935). Current prints of Big Parade of Comedy end with a montage of actor/stuntman Dave O'Brien's scenes from the Pete Smith Specialties; when the film was originally released in 1964, snippets from several then-current MGM films were also included. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, (more)
The fourth of Oscar-winning short-subject director Youngson's comedy compilations (the earlier ones were Golden Age of Comedy, When Comedy was King, and Days of Thrills and Laughter) is, amazingly, almost as full and fresh as those earlier efforts, containing highlights from such silent comedy classics as Chaplin's Floorwalker, Easy Street, Pawnshop and, best of all, Rink; Buster Keaton's Balloonatic and Daydreams; Harry Langdon's Smile Please, and the prototypical Laurel and Hardy team-up, Lucky Dog. Youngson's choice of material is unquestionably fine, and equally satisfying is the quality of the film clips, courtesy of archivist Paul Guffanti. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
- 1961
This is one in a series of entertaining cinematic compilations by Robert Youngson that reviews aspects of the history of film (The Golden Age of Comedy and When Comedy Was King directly preceded this release). As in its predecessors, this compilation looks back on the more distant past. Renowned comics like Charlie Chaplin, Mack Sennet and the Keystone Kops, Fatty Arbuckle, Stan Laurel, and others are featured in some of the best moments in their filmic careers. As for the thrillers, those times when the heroine was tied to the train tracks or the hero's car balanced on the edge of a cliff, they are as hilarious in retrospect as the comedies were to that generation. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
Robert Youngson's second feature-length compilation of silent comedy highlights (the first was The Golden Age of Comedy), When Comedy Was King covers the years 1914 to 1929. Using snipettes from the 1929 Charley Chase 2-reeler Movie Night as a framing device, Youngson offers vintage clips from the silent era's greatest clowns. The film's first section is devoted to Charlie Chaplin's formative Keystone comedies, notably Kid Auto Races at Venice and His Trysting Place (the humor in this sequence is slightly dampened by the narrator's sanctimonious comments concerning Chaplin's political views). We are next regaled with Fatty Arbuckle and Mabel Normand in the riotous Fatty and Mabel Adrift (1915), followed by top-hatted Wallace Beery chaining 17-year-old Gloria Swanson to the railroad tracks in Teddy at the Throttle (1916). From Sennett, we move to the studios of Hal Roach, where wacky inventor Snub Pollard holds court in It's a Gift (1923) and Edgar Kennedy, Stu Erwin, Anita Garvin and Marion Byron try and fail to purchase four ice cream cones in A Pair of Tights (1928). Baby-faced Harry Langdon is next on the docket, dealing with aggressive kitchen help, unwelcome old pals and a mysterious spy in The First Hundred Years (1925). Next up, Buster Keaton inadvertently lays waste to a police parade in the brilliant 2-reeler Cops (1922). Brief snippets of such mid-1920s Mack Sennett stars as Billy Bevan, Andy Clyde and Ben Turpin follow Langdon and Keaton. The closing sequence of When Comedy Was King consists of the 1929 Laurel and Hardy tit-for-tat classic Big Business, virtually in its entirety. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
The first of documentary producer Robert Youngson's feature-length silent comedy compilations, The Golden Age of Comedy began life as a short subject, consisting of vintage clips from the Mack Sennett vaults. When Youngson struck a deal with the Hal Roach studios, he was able to expand the film's running time with pristine-quality vignettes from the Roach catalogue. While many past greats are highlighted in Golden Age, the compilation's true "stars" are Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, shown at their very best in lengthy excerpts from such 2-reel classics as The Second Hundred Years (1927), You're Darn Tootin' (1928) Two Tars (1928) and Double Whoopee (1929) (the latter featuring a 17-year-old starlet named Jean Harlow). Thanks to Youngson, the legendary pie fight scene from Laurel and Hardy's Battle of the Century (1927) was saved from the brink of extinction and is included herein. The rest of the film offers choice comic bits from the likes of Ben Turpin, Billy Bevan, Will Rogers, Charley Chase, Harry Langdon, and even Carole Lombard. Our only carp is that the narration is frequently superfluous; we can see the gags, we don't need them explained to us. The Golden Age of Comedy was the surprise hit of 1958, spawning several future Youngson compilations, including a brace of 1960s films devoted almost exclusively to Laurel and Hardy. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Harry Langdon
- 1928
Directed by a young Michael Curtiz, this Warner Bros. epic had aspirations of becoming another Intolerance (1916). In the end, Curtiz' treatise of man's inhumanity to man was ironically sabotaged by the enormous success of yet another studio release, the groundbreaking The Jazz Singer (1927). Basically a quaint romantic melodrama set during World War I, Noah's Ark opens with American George O'Brien falling in love with German Dolores Costelllo while travelling on the Orient Express on the eve of war. The train wrecks and the two seek shelter at a nearby hostelry. Russian military officer Noah Beery tries to molest Miss Costello but is repulsed by O'Brien. The three meet again near the end of the war in a little French village, where Beery accuses Costello, now Mrs. O'Brien, of being a German spy. Placed before a firing squad, Dolores is saved in the nick of time by her husband, a member of the squad.The Germans use this very moment to bomb and all are soon entombed in the basement of a demolished building. Comparing the war with the Biblical account of the Flood, screenwriters Anthony Coldeway and Darryl F. Zanuck flash back to Miriam (Costello) and Japheth (O'Brien) at the festival of Jaghut. The climactic Flood (the filming of which brought Miss Costello a severe case of pneumonia) pulls out all the stops and is magnificent in UCLA's lovingly restored print. After the deluge, the story shifts back to war-torn France, where Costello and O'Brien are rescued by the Red Cross on the eve of the Armistice. Ready to be released, Warner Bros. withdrew the film in order to add several scenes of dialogue, considered a necessity after the unprecedented reception of The Jazz Singer. The results were doleful: Ever so often, Noah's Ark comes to a screetching halt as the characters leave the realm of silent movies to speak stolid lines of dialogue. The cumbersome Vitaphone sound-on-disc made for pedestrian drama as everyone were forced to speak slowly and enunciate carefully. Dolores Costello, Warners' blonde leading lady and the off-screen Mrs. John Barrymore, suffered the most and would see her flourishing career all but evaporate. But UCLA's restoration of Noah's Ark proves once and for all that the rumors of Miss Costello having trouble with sibilants were highly exaggerated. It was Costello's line-reading of "Merthy, merthy, have you no thisther of your own?" in Tenderloin (1928) that supposedly sealed her fate in talkies. But even though the restored Noah's Ark shows little sign of the dreaded lisp, the hapless Miss Costello is visibly ill at ease before the microphone and her stilted dialogue, by Coldeway, is of no help whatsoever. "Part-talkies" like Noah's Ark were mercifully only a stop-gap measure; by the time of M-G-M's Broadway Melody (released June 6, 1929), "all-talking, all-dancing" features had already freed themselves from the constraints of early sound technology. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dolores Costello, George O'Brien, (more)
