User Reviews

Stan and Ollie turn up in Switzerland, of all places. Stan thinks that they will be able to sell mouse traps to the Swiss because there are more mice there than anywhere else in the world. The owner of a cheese factory offers to buy their stock, but pays with counterfeit money. Thinking they are rich, Stan and Ollie celebrate with a slap-up meal at a local hotel. Then comes the crunch - they are unable to pay the bill.

The hotel owner sets them to work as dishwashers. In no time at all, most of the crockery is broken.

Also at the hotel is an American composer, trying to write a new musical. His wife shows up and, in an effort to make her husband notice her, pretends to flirt with Ollie...

One of the weaker Laurel and Hardy features, this still manages to be a lot of fun. Stan and Ollie have some great scenes together, such as their drilling holes in the cheese factory's wooden floor, playing a tune by popping soap bubbles coming out of an organ, and Ollie serenading the Della Lind character.

Switzerland as depicted here is peopled by blonde girls in pigtails, and yodelling men in leather shorts with feathers stuck in their hats, but who cares? 'Bonnie Scotland' was hardly an accurate depiction of that country either.

Funniest moment - a close run between Stan's attempts to get a barrel of brandy from a St.Bernard's neck, or his and Ollie moving a piano across a rope bridge, where they encounter a gorilla ( don't ask ).

Did I hear someone say dated? Well, Stan and Ollie never needed to swear or fart to get laughs, did they, unlike today's 'comics'.

Altogether, a pleasant viewing experience.

It's not a total washout among their feature films. It has some very fine moments - among my favorite Ollie serenading Grete Natzler with, "Let me call you Sweetheart" which Stan is playing on a tuba! There is also Stan and the St. Bernard he fools into giving him a bit of his medicinal brandy. There is also the gorilla and the boys and the piano on the swaying bridge. But the film is a wash-out when compared with SONS OF THE DESERT, WAY OUR WEST, or BLOCK-HEADS.

It should have been better - it was their last attempt at an operetta format. In fact the plot deals with a composer (Walter Woolf King - "Lasparri" in A NIGHT AT THE OPERA) struggling to compose the score of his next operetta for him and his wife (Ms Natzler). Set in Switzerland, like THE BOHEMIAN GIRL the boys get into fun costumes. They are in the alps because they are mouse trap salesmen in Switzerland (because of it's cheese). They are swindled and owe a huge hotel tab. Ollie has insulted the hotel cook (Adia Kuznetzoff) who is determined to make them pay by forcing them to slave for him as busboy waiters until their bill is paid off. When they try to cheat he forces them to break more plates to replace the figures they wiped out.

All this is more than promising, but structurally it is not good. This seems to be the fault of the studio owner, Hal Roach.

Roach was aware that Laurel and Hardy were his biggest star attractions, and he knew that the revenue they generated might give him the chance to expand his production company. Roach did get somewhere in the late 1930s with bigger films. He produced the "Topper" films (the first with Cary Grant and Constance Bennett, as well as Roland Young), and also ONE MILLION B.C. with Carole Landis. But Roach's conservative instincts interfered with his plans here.

For one thing he could not bring himself to treat Stan and Ollie as a unified bargaining unit. He had their contracts end at different dates, in an irritating attempt to keep them in check. Stan in particular had to be kept under control. So in the late 1930s Roach suggested a "Hardy Family" series with Ollie and Patsy Kelly as husband and wife, and Spanky MacFarlane as their son. It sounds interesting, but it got nowhere (one wonders if it was planned to go anywhere). He also made the feature ZENOBIA in 1939 with Laurel replaced by Harry Langdon (Langdon was working for Roach as a gag writer at the time). The boys retaliated by doing THE FLYING DEUCES with producer Boris Morros - a hint to Roach that he was equally replaceable. It was a message that Roach quickly noted, but probably resented.

Secondly there was the issue of being penny wise and pound foolish. Roach kept close watch on film budgets. When Stan and Ollie made the film OUR RELATIONS, Stan was active producer on that film, and he spent money quite freely on it, especially in the sequences set in a nightclub. Compare the really realistic nightclub there with the more spartan ones shown in some of the shorts Roach controlled like BLOTTO. Roach did not care for this at all. So he looked at the script of SWISS MISS and tampered with it.

In the original script, apparently, Natzler is having a marital dispute with King which involves their rival egos and his refusal to let her help him with his operetta work. She is ordered to leave. She disguises herself and becomes a maid at the hotel that Stan and Ollie are stuck working their bill off at. Ollie falls for the new maid. But so does the boys' adversary Kuznetzoff, who is furious watching Ollie trying to ingratiate himself with her. He also notes that King is trying to ingratiate himself with the maid (King recognizes Natzler, but is pretending he is in love with the "maid" to make Natzler furious and jealous). So Kuznetzoff tries to get rid of all three of them by putting a bomb in the piano that they have to carry across a swaying rope bridge to King's chalet. This part of the famous sequence was cut out by Roach, trying to cut costs and time. There is a still photo showing Stan arguing about the cut sequence, and it shows him as really angry. He was right to be angry - the sequence is still very funny with that gorilla, but it had moments of Stan and Ollie crashing into the keyboard that were meant to make the audience expect a premature explosion.

For a musical it lacks any memorable tunes - unlike WAY OUT WEST with "In the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia" and "We're Going to Dixie", or with THE SONS OF THE DESERT with "Honalulu Baby" or THE BOHEMIAN GIRL with "I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls" (or even unlike the later THE BIG NOISE with "Maizy Doats"!). Instead, King cooks up a little ditty called "The Cricket Song" which has the opening line, "Crick, crick, crick goes the cricket...singing merrily, all day long!" Like the ridiculous conclusion of the Don Ameche biopic on Stephen Foster, wherein everyone hearing the music - supposedly - of "Old Folks At Home" for the first time sing it standing as the film ends, here the entire village is singing this ditty. At least Foster's tune was a great one. I assure you "The Cricket Song" is not!!

Little else positive to add except for those few good bits I mentioned - and the brief appearances of the always welcomed Eric Blore (as King's butler). It barely rises above the bulk of the films of the 1940s for MGM and 20TH Century Fox, but enjoy it's best moments without any second thoughts.

A Hal Roarch musical comedy that features Stan and Ollie initially as mousetrap salesmen in Switzerland, thanks to Stan's brainless brainstorm. Stan assumed there must be more mice in Switzerland, since they make much cheese : an idiotic assumption. In the first place, most cheeses don't attract mice, and some smelly ones repel them. Most cheeses are just another food that mice will eat. They love chocolate too, as I discovered. Thus, Stan has fallen for an old myth, perpetuated by cartoon makers. It's generally agreed that the odor of peanut butter is a strong attractant for them, as it is for our gray squirrels, who tear open trash bags to get at it. I have found that pure peanut butter, with only peanut oil, generally works best........The boys haven't sold one mousetrap after 2 weeks of trying. Perhaps the Swiss tend to keep house or barn cats, instead. Thus, when they enter a cheese factory, they bore a bunch of holes in the floor, supposedly to let the mice easily travel in and out : pure lunacy! Stan happens to bore a hole into a gas pipe below, and when he lights a match to see what he has hit, a flame shoots out, then alternately shoots out of other holes, searing Ollies rear, as he stands over them. Incredibly, after this display, the proprietor offers to buy all their traps, giving them a large denomination paper bill in francs. The boys go to the Alpine Hotel restaurant, and celebrate by ordering big meals. Ollie even chides the waiter for not having his favorite, apple pie. When time to pay the bill, Ollie whips out his bill, but the waiter laughs. Seems this currency is worthless in Switzerland, or anywhere else. Hence, they are put to work in the kitchen, especially washing dishes. For every dish they break, they have to work another day. Well, you know this will be an endless job for them!........Now, there is a composer and singer(Walter King, as Victor), staying at the hotel, hiding from his prima donna operatic wife Greta Natzler, as Anna), who has been bothering him too much lately. But, soon, she tracks him to this hotel. Victor tells her to go home. She pretends to comply, but meets the boys in the lobby. They tell their story to her, and she gets the idea of imitating them in ordering a dinner, and supposedly not being able to pay for it. Thus, she is also made to work off her debt. This provides an excuse for her to stay near her husband. However, she pretends she's romantically interested in Ollie, to make her husband jealous........ Now, Victor wants his piano moved to the treehouse, just on the other side of a very deep gorge, that is only reached by a swaying rope bridge. Guess who is elected to get the piano there? They do a good job getting the piano to the bridge, with the aid of a small dolly under the piano. However, in crossing, the dolly comes out from under the piano and Ollie slips on it, wrecking several slats, and nearly falling down the chasm. They continue onward, but a pet 'gorilla'(man in ape suit) comes out of the treehouse, and begins to cross the bridge. When the boys realize this, they shake the bridge in their panic what to do. The combination of excessive weight, and jostling, is too much for the supporting ropes on the treehouse side, and they snap, sending the 'gorilla' and piano to the bottom of the gorge, while Ollie hangs on precariously, and Stan tries to help pull him up. We will meet this 'gorilla' again in the final frames of the film, hobbling on crutches, and scaring the boys out of town.........Then, there's the gag where Stan is plucking feathers from a series of chickens. A Saint Bernard rescue dog with a small barrel of brandy tied around his neck shows up. Stan tries to get at the barrel, but the dog backs away when he tries. This goes on for too long, before Stan gets the idea of throwing the little pieces of feather in the air, so that they somewhat resemble snow, then lying down, and moaning that he is injured. This breaks the dog's resistance, and Stan gets his reward. Later, when Ollie is clinging to the broken rope bridge, this dog walks by, and Stan leaves his mission to get Ollie up, to chase this dog........There are a number of musical productions, featuring the singing of our two songbirds, plus usually a chorus of the hotel workers. Unfortunately, there is no 'keeper' song among them, except Ollie's serenading of Anne with the standard "Let Me Call You Sweetheart". Unfortunately, this is largely ruined by Stan's accompanying tuba playing. The new songs were composed by the combination of Phil Charig and Arthur Quenzer. This included such memorable tunes as "The Mousetrap Song" and "The Cricket Song"(Of course, I'm being facetious).......In conclusion, there are few highlights in either the comedy or the musical performances. The rope bridge caper was the only one that really excited me.

Stunning sets and some truly hysterical moments highlight this operetta spoof which takes Laurel and Hardy back to what they had done three times before, top bill in enlarged supporting parts as the attraction that the producers knew would bring the audiences in. They are incompetent mouse trap salesmen who create more harm as they try to make a living than make a sale. As a result of their stupidity, they end up as equally incompetent handymen who create more chaos than getting things done, all with hysterical results, almost preventing operetta writer Walter Woolf King from completing his intended masterpiece.

The Swiss Alp setting is stunning, highlighted in the classic comedy scene where laurel and Hardy spoof "The Music Box" when they try to deliver a piano across a Swiss mountain range with their way blocked by the strange sudden appearance by a gorilla. Laurel befriends a St. Bernard and gets drunk off a keg of rum; an organ filled with soap suds, making its own kind of music, and they pretty much turn an entire house into Swiss cheese while trying to sell one of their mousetraps. The operetta songs are pretty upbeat, but a few gags don't seem to land as well as they could have. Fine support by Eric Blore adds charm, and the musical numbers are pretty lavish. It was one of my favorites as a kid, but really hasn't stood the test of time as well as I thought it would.

Laurel and Hardy-fans are easily spoiled. Having made such masterpieces of mirthmaking like HELPMATES and WAY OUT WEST, it is easy to dismiss SWISS MISS as a rather minor work. Perhaps that is the case; but only, I think, when seen in relation to the very best of the Boys' output in the 1930s. Boss Hal Roach tended to have a different view on public taste than Stan Laurel; arguing that audiences preferred not to be fed with gags and slapstick for an entire hour on end, Roach reportedly ordered several of his comedies to include so-called subplots, romances involving other characters than the feature's main comedians. This was clearly a decision inspired by the output of comedians from larger studios; the Marx Brothers and W.C. Fields were also cast in such films, much to their frustration. Whether or not Roach's view was accurate for its time, these subplot-comedies have generally aged much less vigorously than features in which our favorite comedians are allowed to do their act throughout all the reels. In SWISS MISS, the subplot involves a handsome opera singer named Victor Albert (Walter Woolf King), whose desire to work in his hotel suite is constantly put to task by his annoying wife Anna (Grete Natzler). As Mr. Albert's profession suggests, we are treated with several musical numbers. While this subplot is not necessarily less interesting than other subplots from comedies of the same era, that really isn't saying much; one longs for Laurel and Hardy to turn up while they are absent. Stan Laurel is reported to have complained about the singing acts himself during production. The combination of comedy and operetta is less effective here than in, say, the earlier film THE DEVIL'S BROTHER.

However, while one may find the subplot rather unnecessary or even annoying at times, Laurel and Hardy themselves are no less delightful here than usual, when given screen time. Here, they try their luck (or defy their obvious lack of luck) in Switzerland selling rat traps; a simple plot with plenty of potential for comic invention, which is utilized in several hilarious sequences. There is the rather famous scene having the Boys doing a noble attempt to deliver a piano over a suspension bridge when a gorilla turns up; the projection-work may not be very convincing, even by 1938-standards, but this is hardly of much significance, as it is the performances of Stan and Ollie which grab our attention. Also particularly memorable is the part with Stan coaxing brandy from a St. Bernard; the similarity between Laurel and former silent comedy great Harry Langdon has hardly ever been more evident than here, especially as this scene is nearly a solo performance from Stan, omitting the presence of the dog. The bit with the "snow" had me howling with laughter. All in all, SWISS MISS is certainly worth the time of any Laurel and Hardy-fan, spoiled though we may be; but newcomers should check out certain other titles first.