Felix Adler Movies

In 1952, the comedy team of Abbott and Costello entered into a joint agreement with producer Alex Gottlieb and Warner Brothers, whereby two color musical comedies would be produced: Bud Abbott would serve as producer--owner of one of the films, while Lou Costello would do same for the other. Costello's contribution to this agreement was Jack and the Beanstalk, a kiddie-matinee adaptation of the famed fairy tale. Constructed along the lines of The Wizard of Oz, the film begins in black and white. Jack (Costello) is a professional baby-sitter, while Dink (Abbott) is Jack's "agent." After a run-in with a gargantuan cop (Buddy Baer) and a statuesque waitress (Dorothy Ford), Jack and Dink show up at the home of Eloise Larkin (Shaye Cogan), there to look after Eloise's troublesome nephew Donald (David Stollery) while the girl and her boyfriend Arthur Royal (James Alexander) rehearse at their community theatre. While reading the story of Jack and the Beanstalk to the bratty Donald, Jack falls asleep, and begins dreaming himself, and his cohorts, into the story as the impoverished boy sent out to sell the family cow. While en route to town with his cow, he encounters a shady butcher (Abbott) who bilks him out of his broken-down bovine for the price of a few 'magic' beans. In keeping with the traditional tale, Jack plants the beans and from them a magnificent vine grows and reaches into the clouds. Along with the butcher, Jack climbs into a fantastic world inhabited by a terrifying giant (Baer) and other magical creatures, including a gold egg-laying hen, a singing harp, and a distressed prince and princess. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Footlight Varieties was the third and last of a series of RKO all-star musical revues. Unlike Variety Time (1948) and Make Mine Laughs (1949), both of which were largely comprised of stock footage from earlier RKO features, much of the material in Varieties was newly filmed. A young Jack Paar hosted the proceedings, while the guest-star roster included Liberace, Red Buttons, The Sportsmen Quartet, Jerry Murad's Harmonicats, Inetsia and Grace Romanos. "Revived" material included a complete Leon Errol 2-reeler, He Forgot to Remember; an installment of Richard Fleischer's Flicker Flashbacks series; snippets from Radio City Revels (1937) and the musical short Carle Comes Calling. The film's highlight is Jack Paar's reluctant participation in an energetic dance number. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this western, a rancher turns his property into a dude ranch for soldiers after he is drafted. Featured upon this ranch are entertaining shows with music from Tex Ritter, Roy Acuff, and the Mills Brothers. Songs include: "Spot In Arizona," "You Man You," "Wait For The Light To Shine," "Walking Down The Lane With You," and ""Lazy River."" ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Buster Keaton reworked material from his 1932 MGM feature The Passionate Plumber for this two-reeler, the last in his series for Columbia. He plays a plumber who finds a wealthy heiress (Elsie Ames) hiding in a water heater. She's taken refuge to evade an amorous Frenchman (Eddie Laughton) who wants to marry her for her money, and whose kisses make her resistance wither. When her suitor discovers Keaton working on the shower in her bathroom, he challenges the interloper to a duel. Their battle of honor ends ignominiously, however, when a hunter's shotgun volleys scare off the combatants. The heiress proclaims Keaton her savior and learns to her delight that his kisses are even more potent than the Frenchman's! ~ Nicole Gagne, All Movie Guide

In their last film for Hal Roach, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy play employees at the Sharp and Pierce Horn Factory, where the workers tend to go beserk at a rate of one per hour. Driven crazy by the cacophonous G-minor horn, poor Ollie begins to tear the factory apart, screaming "Horns to the left of me! Horns to the right of me! Horns, horns, HORNS!" Sent home to recuperate from his nervous breakdown, Ollie is told by his doctor (James Finlayson) that he is suffering from Hornophobia: "In fact, you're on the verge of Hornomania." Advised to take a restful ocean voyage, Ollie nixes the idea, noting that he hates the high sea. Stan suggests that the two of them rent a small boat and keep it tied up on the dock, so that Ollie can get all the fresh sea air he wants without ever leaving port. Alas, the boys' tiny boat is accidentally set adrift, with Stan, Ollie and escaped killer Nick Grainger (Rychard Cramer) on board. Ordered to prepare breakfast for the ill-tempered Nick, the boys hope to subdue their captor by making him a "synthetic meal": String for spaghetti, soap for cheese, sponge for meatball, lampwick for bacon, and so on. Unfortunately, Nick catches on to their scheme and forces Stan and Ollie to eat the ersatz meal themselves. The boys are finally saved from Nick's wrath when Stan remembers that the sound of trombone will transform Ollie into a fighting demon, but don't count on a completely happy ending when Laurel & Hardy are involved. Cowritten by former comedy great Harry Langdon, Saps at Sea looks more like two or three 2-reelers strung together than a coherent feature film; still, it contains some great gags, most of them taking place in Ollie's apartment, where the plumbing and electrical appliances have been bollixed up by cross-eyed janitor Ben Turpin. Though hardly a classic, Saps at Sea earned Laurel & Hardy some of their best-ever reviews, and would turn out to be their last totally worthwhile feature film. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Back at Hal Roach Studios for the first time since 1938's Block-Heads, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy star in the uneven but generally rewarding A Chump at Oxford. The boys are cast as street-sweepers who hope to better their lot in life by attending night school. Fate intervenes when Stan and Ollie are instrumental in the capture of a bank robber, whereupon they are rewarded by the bank's grateful president (Forbes Murray) with an all-expenses-paid education at England's Oxford University. Arriving on the venerable old campus dressed in Eton jackets, our heroes are pounced upon by a group of prankish students and subjected to all manner of practical jokes. After spending most of the night trying to escape from a maze, Stan and Ollie are installed in their "new quarters"-which turns out to be the bedroom of the Dean (Wilfred Lucas). This sort of collegiate nonsense comes to an end when it is discovered that simple-minded Stan is actually Lord Paddington, the brainiest student and finest athlete that ever attended Oxford. According to Meredith the valet (Forrester Harvey), His Lordship wandered away from the university upon being rendered an amnesiac by a blow on the head. An accidental tap on the noggin restores Stan to his aristocratic Lord Paddington status, whereupon he beats up a crowd of bullying students and deposits them one by one in a nearby ditch. Though Ollie is aghast to learn that Stan-er, His Lordship-has no recollection of their previous friendship, he decides to stay on at Oxford as Paddington's manservant. After having been humiliated once too often by his vain and condescending employer, Ollie angrily packs his bags and prepares to head for home, when yet another bop on His Lordship's skull causes him to revert to lovable, bumbling old Stan again. Originally intended as a four-reeler (running approximately 45 minutes), A Chump at Oxford was completed in the spring of 1939, whereupon Laurel and Hardy were loaned out to producer Boris Morros to star in The Flying Deuces. When shooting was finished on the latter film, the team was summoned back to Roach to film a 2-reel "prologue" for Oxford, bringing the film's running time up to 63 minutes. The new footage consisted of a reworking of the boys' 1928 comedy From Soup to Nuts, with temporary servants Stan and Ollie unintentionally wrecking a dinner party held by Mr. and Mrs. Vandevere (played by veteran L&H supporting players James Finlayson and Anita Garvin). The patchwork stucture of A Chump at Oxford works against its overall effectiveness, but the scenes in which Stan Laurel undergoes a complete change of character as the genius-level Lord Paddington more than make up for the film's earlier shortcomings. One of the students (the tall, mustachioed one) is played by Peter Cushing, in his second Hollywood film appearance. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

American mousetrap salesmen Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy journey to Switzerland, reasoning that where there's cheese, there's mice. When they innocently try to pay their dinner bill with phony money, Stan and Ollie are put to work in the kitchen of the Alpen Hotel. Their enforced stay coincides with the visit of famed composer Walter Woolf King, who has come to Switzerland to soak up "local color." He also hopes to write an operetta that will succeed on its own merits, without the lovely voice of his lovely actress wife Della Lynd winning over the audience. But Lynd is determined to star in King's latest opus, and to that end she finagles Stan and Ollie into getting her a job as a hotel chambermaid. As the plot rolls along its merry way, Ollie labors under the misapprehension that Lynd is in love with him. Swiss Miss is, on the whole, one of Laurel and Hardy's weaker feature films, with far too much emphasis on the romantic leads and way too many forgettable songs ("Crick Crick Crick Here the Cricket" is a particular low point). But the team's individual scenes save the show, even though Stan Laurel, who'd been ill during production, looks like he's about to fall asleep at any moment. Best bits: Stan hoodwinking a St. Bernard out of a cask of brandy; Ollie serenading Lynd while Stan accompanies him on tube; and the legendary sequence, immortalized by film critic James Agee, wherein Stan and Ollie try to transport a piano across a rope bridge high above an alpine chasm--only to confront a gorilla! One of the screenwriters of Swiss Miss was Jean Negulesco, later the director of such memorable films as Mask of Dmitrios, Three Strangers, Titanic and How to Marry a Millionaire. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Directed by Jack White (under his usual pseudonym of Preston Black), this two-reel courtroom caper is, by many, regarded as the best of the Three Stooges' early comedies. Moe, Larry, and Curly are witnesses in a murder trial involving a dancer (Suzanne Kaaren) from "The Black Bottom Cafe," the club where they work. Curly is called on the stand to explain "Who killed Kirk Robin?" and the rest is pandemonium. Court clerk James C. Morton's toupee is mistaken for a tarantula, a supposedly unloaded revolver kills Moe's boutonniere, the entire courtroom becomes the victim of an errand fire hose, and the real killer is proven to be the hoofer Buck Wing, who in the meantime has shuffled off to Buffalo. Moe and Curly's real-life parents are briefly spotted among the courtroom spectators. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Working on the theory that the only thing funnier than Laurel and Hardy is two sets of Laurel and Hardys, Our Relations milks its central mistaken-identity situation for all it's worth. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are two solid citizens, happily married and highly respected in their community. One morning, Hardy receives a letter from his mother, containing an old photo of himself and Laurel with their twin brothers, Alf Laurel and Bert Hardy. Mamma also reveals that Alf and Bert turned out to be "bad lads" and ran off to sea, and that reportedly they'd been hanged for taking part in a mutiny. "Isn't that calamitous!" remarks Hardy, who conspires with Laurel to hide the facts about their no-good brothers from their wives. Meanwhile, in another part of town, the S.S. Periwinkle pulls into port. Among the crew members are the selfsame Alf and Bert, who have decided to entrust their pal Fin (James Finlayson) with their month's salary. Fin has promised to invest the dough so that the boys will become millionaires "before you can say Jack Robinson". Alf and Bert are then summoned to the cabin of their captain (Sidney Toler), who orders them to pick up a valuable package for him, then meet him later at Denker's Beer Garden. While waiting for the captain at Denker's, Alf and Bert are captivated by a pair of waterfront floozies, Alice (Iris Adrian) and Lily (Lona Andre). Talked into buying the girls a huge meal for which they haven't the necessary funds, Alf and Bert decide to go back to Fin and reclaim their money, leaving the contents of the captain's package-a valuable pearl ring-with tough waiter Joe Groagan (Alan Hale) as security. Later, Laurel and Hardy take their wives Betty (Betty Healy) and Daphne (Daphne Pollard) to lunch-and, inevitably, they end up at Denker's Beer Garden, where the equally inevitable mix-ups begin to occur. Things snowball from bad to worse before both sets of twins, an angry captain, a disgruntled Fin, the wives, the floozies, a genial drunk (Arthur Housman) and a brace of smooth gangsters (Ralf Harolde and Noel Madison) all converge at the upscale Pirate Club. Several slapstick complications later, Laurel and Hardy are captured by the gangsters, who threaten to dump the boys in the river with their feet encased in cement if they don't cough up the pearl ring. Alf and Bert come to the rescue, and all is well, at least until the film's boffo punchline. Based on W.W. Jacobs' short story The Money Box, Our Relations is perhaps the most plot-heavy of Laurel and Hardy's features for Hal Roach Studios. It is also one of their funniest, as well as their most lavishly produced. The film was officially listed as "A Stan Laurel Production"-as if Laurel hadn't been the prime creative force behind all of the team's previous films. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Three Stooges are in fine form for their fifth Columbia short. Clyde Bruckman, who worked with silent luminaries Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, was the director, and it's obvious that he added quite a bit to the fun. The boys are working for the Hyden Zeke Detective Agency, as evidenced by their Sherlock Holmes-style hats and pipes. While the boss explains their next assignment -- going out West to save a girl's ranch from the evil Double Deal Decker -- Curly's eyes seem to be glazed over. It turns out he has eyes painted on his eyelids to hide the fact that he's napping. A mouse, however, sends him into a hyperactive fit, which is only cured when Moe and Larry feed him cheese. Soon enough, the Stooges arrive at the gambling hall run by Decker. They take a few turns on a dance floor in an attempt to lift Decker's wallet, which they assume contains the I.O.U. they're looking for. But they're caught and strung-up, only to be saved at the last minute when Curly sees a mouse and knocks everyone unconscious. He comes to the rescue again when the Stooges are found breaking into Decker's safe. Two mice are inside and as a result, Decker and his henchman get floored. Unfortunately, this time the cheese cure also knocks out the other Stooges when they get a whiff of Curly's Limburger breath. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

This is one of the earlier Three Stooges shorts, and one of the funniest. It opens on an exclusive restaurant where two wealthy gents are having an argument -- what really makes the man, heredity or environment? They wager ten thousand dollars and take off in search of three men to use in their experiment. They haven't far to go -- right outside the establishment they are pelted with garbage flung by none other than Larry, Moe and Curly. But when the pair offer to make gentlemen of the boys, they aren't interested -- "I'll disgrace us!" bemoans Larry. Reluctantly they finally agree to go along with the plan and spend three months at the home of one of the men while he tries to teach them some manners. After two months, they are little better than when they started -- in fact their benefactor resorts to slapping them! Dancing lessons are even less effective when a bee flies into the instructor's cleavage and the boys try to imitate her St. Vitus dance. Nevertheless, the Stooges make their debut in society, and it is predictably manic. The highlight is Curly's dance with a extra-large maiden. -- a couch spring has affixed itself to his behind, so whenever his partner knocks him down with her heft, he bounces right back up. Although the Stooges' benefactor loses the bet, there apparently is something to be said about the effects of environment because by the end, everyone at this fancy dress party is gleefully knocking each other about, Stooges-style. The idea for this short came from Moe Howard and his wife, Helen. Helen was offered either screen credit or money -- she went for the cash. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

In their fourth two-reeler for Columbia, the Three Stooges are mistaken for college football heroes by a beautiful gangster's moll. The latter was played by a very young Lucille Ball, who would always credit the Stooges with introducing her to "slapstick and physical comedy." According to Jack White, brother of Stooges producer Jules White, Lucille quickly left the studio because "Harry Cohn didn't want to bother with her. He didn't think she had any talent!" ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide