Pete Gordon Movies

March of the Wooden Soldiers is the 1952 reissue title for Hal Roach's 1934 film version of Victor Herbert's Babes in Toyland. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy star as Stannie Dum and Ollie Dee, bumbling apprentices to the master toymaker of Toyland. This joyous fairy-tale community is populated by all the colorful Mother Goose characters we know and love; the one sour apple in the barrel is mean old Silas Barnaby (portrayed by Henry Kleinbach, aka Henry Brandon). Barnaby holds the mortgage on the outsized shoe where Widow Peep (Florence Roberts) and her daughter Little Bo Peep (Charlotte Henry) reside, and where Stannie and Ollie pay room and board. Bo Peep will be forced to marry the odious Barnaby if the rent isn't paid, so Stannie and Ollie try to raise the money by asking the toymaker for a raise. But the boys are fired when Stannie messes up an order from Santa Claus: instead of making six hundred toy soldiers one foot high, the dumb Mr. Dum makes one hundred toy soldiers six feet high. The wedding between Barnaby and Bo Peep goes on as planned--except that it's Stannie, disguised as the bride, who ends up walking down the altar. Publicly humiliated, Barnaby vows revenge. He steals one of the Three Little Pigs and places the blame on Bo Peep's boy friend, Tom-Tom the Piper's Son (Felix Knight). The penalty for pignapping is banishment to Bogeyland, a fearsome subterranean world populated by hideous bogeymen (look closely and you'll see the zippers on their costumes!) Stannie and Ollie expose Barnaby's perfidy and rescue Tom-Tom from Bogeyland, whereupon Barnaby rallies the bogeymen and leads an all-out attack on Toyland. Taking refuge in the toy warehouse, Stannie and Ollie activate the 100 6-foot wooden soldiers (a neat bit of stop-motion photography, courtesy of Hal Roach's "fx" wizard Roy Seawright), who vanquish the Bogeymen and save the day. One of the best of all the Laurel and Hardy features, March of the Wooden Soldiers has been a television holiday perennial ever since the cathode tube was invented. Only a handful of Victor Herbert's songs are utilized, but these lilting compositions more than compensate for the omissions (one song, "I Can't Do That Sum", is used as the leitmotif for the clueless Stannie and Ollie). For years available only in the 70-minute reissue version, March of the Wooden Soldiers has recently been fully restored to its full glorious 78 minutes. The parent property Babes in Toyland was remade by Disney in 1961 (with Gene Sheldon and Henry Calvin as Laurel and Hardy wannabes) and for television in 1986, with new songs by Leslie Bricusse. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

By 1925, the formula for Richard Talmadge features was down pat: give the actor a lot of impressive physical stunts, keep the action moving along briskly, and get it over in five reels. This well-made little programmer followed the pattern. Reggie Dillingham (Talmadge) spends his time squandering his fortune, much to the disgust of his attorney. Dillingham bets that he can support himself, but fails miserably at every job he tries. Then his lawyer informs him that he really does need to go to work because all his money has been lost in a bad investment. Dillingham catches political boss/newspaper publisher Clint Taggart (Joseph Girard) with a chorus girl and takes a photograph which winds up in a rival paper. Taggart hires Dillingham as manager of one of his newspapers in the hopes that it will keep him quiet, but Dillingham can't be controlled. He falls in love with Mary Ryan, Taggart's stenographer (Margaret Landis), and they find out that their boss is involved in bootlegging. Mary goes to the police while Dillingham is left to fight it out with Taggart's thugs. Taggart gets his just desserts, Dillingham wins Mary, and his lawyer informs him that the supposedly bad investment has actually doubled his money. ~ Janiss Garza, Rovi

Comedian Larry Semon borrows heavily from two of his prior films, Between the Acts and The Stage Hand, for this mediocre comedy. Semon, the prop man for a high-class variety theater, has a crush on the leading lady (Lucille Carlisle who, in real life, was Semon's fiancée). The show involves a number of impressive acts, but one audience member derides the magician's performance. A rooster, part of the magician's show, goes after the guy and Larry has to catch the unruly bird. Meanwhile, the stage manager (Oliver Hardy) plans to steal some jewelry belonging to the leading lady. He's interrupted, however, when a barrel of black powder gets blown into the audience. When the leading lady comes out to see what is going on, the stage manager uses the opportunity to take the jewelry. The performers chase after him, and Larry is the one who retrieves the jewels. Before he can revel in his victory for too long, Larry wakes up to discover it was all a dream. ~ Janiss Garza, Rovi