In this 1930 talkie L&H short, Stan and Ollie are a couple of cat burglar stooges for officer Kennedy, who blackmailed them into robbing the police chief's house in exchange for his not reporting them for sleeping on a park bench. Kennedy's plan was that he would receive credit for capturing the boys, thus allaying the chief's complaint that ,last week, there were 42 burglaries on his beat, with no arrests. At one point, the boys even meow like cats, to convince the chief's live in assistant, Meadows (James Finlayson), that they were, indeed, alley cats, probably looking for scraps in the collection of garbage cans the boys had accidentally knocked over, creating a racket. This is one of the funniest scenes in the film. Also, Meadows threw a couple of shoes in their direction, hitting each in the head. Laurel unwisely threw one shoe back at Meadows, hitting him square in the face(funny). Instead of going to investigate, Meadows pulled down the shade, as if that would make them go away. ......To get to the chief's house , the boys had to climb over a high wall. They had quite a time accomplishing this, and when they got to the top, they crashed trough a mini-greenhouse on their decent, to make more noise........Eventually, they got to the front of the house, where they found 2 ground floor-windows unlocked. They had a time going in the windows and out the front door(why?) before they put some silverware in a sack. About then, Kennedy, who had been knocked unconscious by a loose street light globe, showed up. The boys thought he was another cop, panicked, dropped their silverware, and fled over that wall, Ollie's pants being ripped off, as he went over. Kennedy is in the house, looking for them. Meadows and the chief, who had been awakened by the player piano mysteriously playing, came down the stairs, and caught Kennedy with the sack of silverware. The chief suggests that maybe he is the burglar who committed those 42 robberies? Kennedy makes to effort to deny this accusation. Thus, wea're left to make up our own minds whether the chief was correct. ....See it in it's colorized or B&W form at YouTube.
Review of Night Owls
