Stan Laurel Movies

Laurel & Hardy's second starring vehicle for 20th Century-Fox is arguably their weakest feature film, with the laughs few and far between. Broke as usual, the duo is given 24 hours to get out of town by the local constabulary. In dire need of travelling expenses, they take a job accompanying a coffin to Dayton, Ohio. Unbeknownst to our heroes, the coffin contains a live gangster: one Darby Mason (James Bush), who wants to get to Dayton to claim an inheritance without risking arrest by the Feds. Chugging towards their destination by train, Stan and Ollie lose their money to a pair of slick con artists but are bailed out by another passenger, Dante the Magician (played by "himself", aka Harry A. Janssen), who takes a liking to the boys and hires him as assistants for his magic act. It so happens that one of Dante's illusions involves a coffin -- and you guessed it, this coffin gets mixed up with the one bearing Darby Mason. Aside from a few slapstick contributions to Dante's stage act, Laurel & Hardy barely have any purpose in this picture at all: to paraphrase L&H buff Randy Skretvedt, the two comedians have been reduced to supporting players in their own film. A-Haunting We Will Go seemed much funnier when it was cut from 67 to 9 minutes and released to the 8-millimeter home movie market back in the mid-1960s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In their first 20th Century-Fox vehicle, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are cast respectively as the butler and chauffeur of wealthy young Dan Forrester (Dick Nelson). Tired of being pampered and coddled by his overprotective aunts (Mae Marsh, Ethel Gryffies), Dan is delighted when he is drafted into the Army. To make certain that no harm will befall their "frail" master, Stan and Ollie also don uniform and accompany Dan to US Cavalry training camp. While the boys get mixed up in one disaster after another-at one point, they find themselves behind a moving target on the rifle range-Dan pursues a romance with photo-shop proprietor Ginger Hammond (Sheila Ryan), much to the consternation of Ginger's erstwhile beau Sergeant Hippo (Edmund MacDonald). Convinced that Ginger is a gold-digger, Stan and Ollie try to break up the romance, to no avail. All plotlines are resolved during a climactic "sham battle", wherein Dan proves his courage and grit while Laurel & Hardy end up captured by the "enemy". Obviously inspired by the success of Abbott & Costello's Buck Privates (it's even more obvious in the earlier drafts of the script), Great Guns is a major letdown from Laurel & Hardy's previous starring features at Hal Roach Studios, with Stan and Ollie looking most uncomfortable as they mouth the inanities written for them by Lou Breslow. Still, a few good bits emerge, including a surrealistic routine with a faulty light bulb and an amusing bridge-building sequence. Watch for Alan Ladd in a jaunty bit role as a camera-store customer. ~ 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

At the end of his long association with Hal Roach, comedian Stan Laurel produced three singing Westerns featuring operatic baritone Fred Scott. The second of the three, Knight of the Plains featured such songs as Paradise Valley (the film's working title), by Lew Porter and Harry Tobias, and When We Heard the Music Play Home Sweet Home, by Porter and L. Wolfe Gilbert, as well as the expected comedy routines of the redoubtable Al St. John. In between the songs and comedy, Scott portrayed rancher Fred "Melody" Brent, whose neighbors, the Rands, are in trouble with a gang of land grabbers out to acquire an old Spanish grant. After the usual sagebrush derring-do and a bit of romance with lovely Gale Rand (Marion Weldon, Scott and his sidekick Fuzzy (St. John) can deliver the bad Guys to Sheriff Steve Clark, happy with the knowledge that they have prevented a range war. Scott was to make thirteen singing Westerns for various low-budget producers, all of them released by Spectrum Pictures. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, 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

Prospectors Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy head to the western town of Brushwood Gulch, two men on a top-secret mission. The boys have been entrusted by their recently deceased partner Cy Roberts with a deed to a valuable gold mine, to be delivered in person to Roberts' daughter Mary (Rosina Lawrence). Stan inadvertently spills the beans to crooked saloon owner Mickey Finn (James Finlayson), who proceeds to pass off his own wife, saloon chanteuse Lola Marcel (Sharon Lynne), as Mary Roberts. The ever-trusting Stan and Ollie fall for the subterfuge hook, line and sinker, handing the deed over to Lola. Upon running into the real Mary, who slaves away in Mickey Finn's kitchen, Our Heroes vow to retrieve the deed. A battle royale ensues, with Stan, Ollie, Mickey and Lola passing the deed around like a football. Ultimately, Lola manages to wrest the deed away from Stan by tickling him into helpless submission. Chased out of town by the sheriff (Stanley Fields), who harbors a grudge against the boys from a previous misunderstanding, Stan and Ollie sneak back to Brushwood Gulch in the dead of night, hoping to break into Finn's saloon, steal back the deed, and place it firmly in the hands of Mary Roberts. Upon this foundation is built Way Out West, arguably Laurel & Hardy's best feature film (many aficionados prefer Sons of the Desert). Highlights include the aformentioned tickling and burglary scenes, Stan literally eating his hat after losing a bet, Ollie's perennial plunges into a pothole, and the boys' charming singing-and-dancing interludes. Also take note of Marvin Hatley's Oscar-nominated musical score, and the presence of a young, thin Chill Wills as one of "The Avalon Boys". Even if you're not a fan of The Thin One and The Fat One, you'll be limp with laughter at the end of Way Out West. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The excellent box-office returns for the previous Laurel & Hardy comic operas The Devil's Brother and Babes in Toyland encouraged Hal Roach to cast the team in still another operatic adaptation, a self-styled "comedy version" of William Balfe's The Bohemian Girl. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy play members of a gypsy tribe wandering through middle Europe sometime in the early 19th century. As if he hasn't got enough trouble trying to train dimwitted Stan to be a "first-class pickpocket," Ollie is also saddled with a faithless wife (Mae Busch), who is in love with dashing gypsy robber captain Devil's Hoof (Antonio Moreno). While trying to break into the palace of gypsy-hating Count Arnheim (William P. Carleton), Devil's Hoof is captured and flogged. In retaliation, Ollie's wife kidnaps Arnheim's little daughter Arline (Darla Hood of "Our Gang" fame) and leaves the child in Ollie's care, explaining that the baby is his ("I didn't want to tell her who her father was until she was old enough to stand the shock!") Twelve years later, Arline (now played by Jacqueline Wells) has grown into a beautiful young woman who's forgotten all about her aristocratic childhood, except whenever she dreams "she dwelt in marbl'd halls" (from the song of the same name). By coincidence, Arline one day finds herself wandering around the grounds of her ancestral home. She is captured by the Captain of the Guards (James Finlayson) and sentenced to be flogged, whereupon her foster-daddy Ollie and her drink-besotted Uncle Stanley race to her rescue. There's a happy ending for Arline, but not for Stan and Ollie, who wind up the picture with one of their famous "physical distortion" gags. A troubled production, The Bohemian Girl had to be extensively reshot and re-edited after previews because of the sudden (and still unsolved) death of co-star Thelma Todd, who was originally cast as the Gypsy Queen. It was decided out of respect for Todd to retain only one of her musical numbers and to refilm the rest of her scenes with other actors; as a result, Bohemian Girl is one of the patchiest and most uneven of the Laurel & Hardy features. Fortunately, Stan and Ollie's scenes are well up to par, especially the classic bit wherein Stan inadvertently becomes progressively drunker as he tries to bottle a cask of bubbling wine. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Stan and Ollie play proprietors of an electric store, anxious to make friends with neighboring grocer Charlie Hall. Unfortunately they'd already earned the enmity of Hall in a previous two-reeler, Them That Hills (34), and he is in no mood to bury the hatchet. When Hall accuses Hardy of fooling around with Hall's wife (Mae Busch), the mortified Ollie demands an apology. In the battle that follows, Laurel and Hardy take turns with Charlie Hall in wrecking each other's business establishment--an orgy of destruction which is carried out in a calm, orderly, and hilarious "tit for tat" fashion. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

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, All Movie Guide

Hollywood Party was planned as a lavish, star-studded MGM musical titled Hollywood Revue of 1933. Under the less-than-sterling guidance of "kicked upstairs" MGM producer Harry Rapf, production dragged on interminably, using up the talents of five directors (none of whom were credited) and seven writers. The "all star" cast lineup slowly dwindled down to comparatively inexpensive contract players Jimmy Durante and Jack Pearl (radio's Baron Munchhausen) and a passel of non-MGM personalities. The final product wove a goofy story about The Great Schnarzan (Durante), a jungle-movie star whose films are suffering at the box office because his lions are anemic. Schnarzan schemes to purchase several healthy lions from Baron Munchhausen; to get the baron into a bargaining mood, Schnarzan throws a huge Hollywood party in Munchhausen's honor. Liondora (George Givot), Schnarzan's "hated rival", hopes to purchase the Baron's lions for himself, and crashes the party disguised as a Greek Baron. Also figuring into the plot are the members of the Klemp family (Charles Butterworth, Polly Moran and June Clyde), who are filthy rich and thus quite attractive to both Schnarzan and Liondora; poor-but-honest Eddie Quillan, who romances the Klemp's daughter; and Schnarzan's ex-girlfriend Lupe Velez, who shows up at the party in an astonishingly revealing gown for the express purpose of making trouble. In an amusing animated sequence courtesy of Walt Disney, Mickey Mouse introduces the Technicolor musical exploits of "The Hot Chocolate Soldiers." Shortly before the end, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy make a welcome appearance as a pair of lion-farm owners who wish to collect a debt from Baron Munchhausen. This segues into the classic egg-breaking sequence involving Stan, Ollie, and Lupe Velez. Now we've reached the 65 minute mark, with no logical ending in sight. Director Allan Dwan, brought into the project at the last minute, took a look at the existing footage and declared "It's a nightmare!" Inspired, Dwan directed a closing sequence which suggested that the whole plot had been dreamed by Jimmy Durante; Durante is wakened from his slumbers by his wife--played by Mrs. Jimmy Durante. Hollywood Party makes no sense at all, but it's a must for comedy lovers and 1930s film buffs. Don't miss that opening number, written by Rodgers and Hart and performed by Frances Williams and a chorus of barely dressed telephone operators; and keep an eye peeled for a lengthy uncredited appearance by the Three Stooges. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Although this Laurel and Hardy short is quite funny, it's often neglected. The boys, playing chimney sweeps, don't appear right away -- first the stage is set in the laboratory of a mad scientist, Professor Noodle (Lucien Littlefield). He has been working intensely for the past 20 years to create an elixir of youth and he is just moments away from success. At this significant moment, Stan and Ollie arrive to sweep the chimney. The butler, Jessup (Sam Adams), directs them to the fireplace and they go to work while, in another room, Noodle is adding a few drops of this, a half drop of that (he uses a scissors to cut off the last half drop). The professor's work goes far more smoothly than Stan and Ollie's efforts -- in fact, by the time they're done, the room is ankle-deep in debris, and both the boys and the butler are black with soot. Jessup looks at the wreckage and promises that somewhere "an electric chair is waiting." While he is upstairs washing off the grime, the professor proudly appears with his successful elixir and since no one else is around, he decides to show it to the boys. He places a duckling in a big tub of water, adds just a few drops of the potent solution, and the duck reverts to an egg. When Noodle disappears in search of Jessup, Stan and Ollie wonder if there's any validity to what they've just witnessed. They decide to try it out with a fish, but as Ollie stands over the tub holding the full beaker, Stan accidentally knocks him in. The water violently bubbles and churns and finally Ollie emerges -- as a chimp, wearing the inevitable bowler hat. His reply to Stan and the whole situation: "I have nothing to say!" ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Based on an 1830 opera entitled "Fra Diavolo" by Daniel F. Auber, the parts of two bit bandits were built up for Laurel and Hardy, but this was still just a minor effort--a few good laughs but nothing spectacular that wasn't done better elsewhere. Released later as Bogus Bandits and The Virtuous Tramps, changing the title didn't improve the product. A classic impersonation film, it has the comic duo servants to a bandit who is impersonating a Marquis to get his hands on the jewels worn by the upper crust. Standard dual identity film is similar to The Scarlet Pimpernel. ~ Tana Hobart, All Movie Guide