Reviews

Saps At Sea was the last film Laurel and Hardy made for Hal Roach, and is considered by many fans the last real L & H film. Working as horn testers, Ollie can't stand all the noise and has a nervous breakdown. He and Stan are sent home, and Dr. James Finlayson comes to examine him. He tests his lungs with a balloon; by pressing down on Ollie's chest, the balloon fills with air. When Stan helps the doctor, the balloon gets bigger and bigger, finally exploding and breaking the bed.

Meanwhile, the plumbing in the building is all mixed-up. Turn on one faucet, and water comes out of the other one. Turn on the bathroom faucet, and water comes out of the shower, and vice-versa. The woman next door has a refrigerator that plays music and a frozen radio. When Ollie phones the plumber, who should it be but cross-eyed silent star Ben Turpin.

All of this is good comedy, but it's not really Laurel and Hardy comedy. The mixed-up plumbing is more like a Three Stooges short than anything we would expect from Stan and Ollie. This is a truly bizarre world. When Professor O'Brian arrives to give Stan his trombone lesson, he enters with "Buon giorno, signore." He's obviously Italian.

In another scene, Stan starts to eat a banana. He peels back the skin, only to reveal a second skin. Underneath that is another one, so that there's actually no fruit at all. What are we to make of this? We might call it the comedy of the absurd, but it's not Laurel and Hardy, and gags like this appear in no other film, with the possible exception of their disaster Utopia.

Getting back to Dr. Finlayson, he tells Ollie he has "hornophobia," on the verge of "hornomania." In other words, he goes berserk whenever he hears a horn. The good doctor prescribes plenty of rest and a diet of goat's milk. An ocean voyage would be perfect. But Ollie refuses to go.

After he leaves, they decide to rent a boat in the harbor and sleep on it. They also somehow manage to get a goat. During the night escaped convict Nick Granger (Richard Cramer), running from the cops, hides out on the boat. The goat, tied to the dock, chews through the rope and the boat drifts out to sea. (Stan: "Somebody moved the dock.") Now there are three of them on board, or rather four: Stan, Ollie, Nick, and Nick Jr. (his gun). He demands that they cook him some food, but they have nothing to eat themselves, so they make him a "synthetic" meal. They use string for spaghetti, sponges for meatballs, red paint for tomato sauce, a kerosene wick for bacon, and soap for cheese. Coffee is a sack of tobacco. Once again, this may be funny, but it's Charlie Chaplin's comedy (The Gold Rush), not Laurel and Hardy! Is it really a good idea, at the end of their career, to start imitating other comedians?

Since Nick has spied on the boys and knows what they did, we have the following dialog:

Ollie: It's just like mother used to make.

Stan: Oh, she never made any as good as this.

Nick: Well, if it's that good, you eat it. In a scene that's more painful than funny, he forces them to eat their meal.

The funniest scene in the film is when Stan decides to practice his horn, and Ollie starts to beat up Nick. Ollie is terrific as long as Stan keeps blowing, but as soon as the music stops, he can only run away, with Nick in hot pursuit. ("Blow the horn, Stan.") Stan blows so hard that smoke comes out of the bell. And when the trombone falls apart, he struggles to re-assemble it, not an easy thing to do when you're in a hurry.

All things considered, as their last watchable film this is a good effort, but it would have been better had they been true to themselves.

In 1940, Laurel and Hardy made their last two movies for Hal Roach, A Chump At Oxford and Saps At Sea. Oxford is the better film, but both are entertaining. In any case, this was the last time the pair had any creative input regarding their own films. (At MGM and Fox, they were handed a script and told to do it "the studio way.")

A Chump At Oxford is really two movies in one. The opening shot shows Stan and Ollie hitchhiking to an employment agency. The only job that's open requires a maid and butler team, so for the second time in his career (the first was in Another Fine Mess), Stan plays Agnes the maid. What follows is a partial re-make of another short, From Soup to Nuts (in fact, as dinner is about to be served, Ollie announces, "We've got everything from soup to nuts.") Stan once again serves the salad undressed, but he is also drunk, having taken Mr. Vanderveer's (Jimmy Finlayson) instruction to "Take all those cocktails" a bit too literally. He chases them out of the house with a shotgun, shooting a policeman in the derriere along the way.

In the next scene, Ollie and Stan are sweeping streets. Ollie, usually the eternal optimist, is more depressed here than in any L & H film. "Well, here we are, right back down in the gutter. We're just as good as other people, but we don't advance ourselves. We never get anywhere." They decide to attend night school, but their fortunes change sooner than they expect. Like W.C. Fields in The Bank Dick, they (quite accidentally) capture a couple of bank robbers. As Ollie explains that they have no education, the bank manager rewards them with the finest education money can buy, at Oxford University.

Arriving in England, our friends are preyed upon by a dreary crowd of students, among them old nemesis Charley Hall and a very young Peter Cushing. They play childish pranks on the boys, getting them lost for hours in a weird-looking maze, and dressing up like a ghost to scare them to death. Soon after they arrive, Stan makes it very clear that he is out of his element.

Johnson (Peter Cushing): Haven't you come to the wrong college? You're dressed for Eton (the famous British prep school).

Stan: Why, that's swell, we haven't eaten since breakfast, have we Ollie?

The worst prank of all is when Johnson disguises himself as the dean and directs them to the real dean's rooms, telling them that these are their quarters. When the dean (Wilfred Lucas) returns and the students are caught, he tells them they will all be expelled. They vow to take revenge against Stan and Ollie.

Shown to their proper quarters, the boys meet their valet Meredith (Forrester Harvey). He refers to Stan as Your Lordship, stating that before a window came down on his head and he wandered away, he was the greatest athlete and scholar in the history of Oxford, and "oh, what a brilliant mind." When Ollie hears this, he bursts into laughter. "Why I've known him for years and he's the dumbest guy I ever met."

Meanwhile the expelled students are heading for their lodgings singing a bizarre "chant of revenge." As Stan looks out the window, it crashes down on his head, and he becomes Lord Paddington. As the students enter his room, His Lordship fights them all, throwing them all out the window (in a rather cruel weight joke, he throws Ollie out, too, and he makes a huge crater in the ground when he lands.)

A certificate on the wall informs us that Lord Paddington has been reestablished as the leading scholar/athlete at the University. He speaks like a cultured English gentleman, and Ollie is now his valet. (This is not too hard to understand when you consider that Stan was the creative genius of the team, writing many of the gags we see in the films.) Ollie is now a humiliated figure, and no other actor can use camera looks to express humiliation like Oliver Hardy. At one point, the dean comes in to tell Paddington that Professor Einstein has arrived from America and is a bit confused about his theory. Could he straighten him out? Ollie is incredibly shocked, muttering under his breath, "If it wasn't for that bump on the head, he wouldn't know Einstein from a beer stein." But he's helpless to do anything about it.

How do you shoot someone with no gun and no bullets? That's the mystery Charlie Chan has to solve in Black Magic (a.k.a. Meeting at Midnight). Helping him (sort of) are his assistant Birmingham Brown (Mantan Moreland), and for a change, his number one daughter (played by Frances Chan?). William and Justine Bonner make a living holding seances, where people can "contact" their recently departed loved ones. During one of these seances, William Bonner (Dick Gordon) is shot. Yet there is no gunshot and no bullet, only a bloodstain on his shirt. But our killer has more than one way of disposing of his victims. When Charlie finds one of the woman at the seance, Norma Duncan (Helen Beverly) in a deep trance, he suspects foul play. Consulting with police lab chemist Dawson (Edward Erle), he finds she was given a drug which will make a victim do anything her killer suggests. However, there is an antidote, which Dawson gives Charlie. All of this comes too late to save Justine Bonner (Jacqueline DeWit), however, who, under the influence of the drug, jumps off the roof of a building when told to do so by the killer. Charlie himself is kidnapped and forced to take the drug, but tricks the killer and takes the antidote as well. He comes to his senses standing on the ledge of the same building.

This is the best Chan movie I have seen among the Monograms. It has a strong storyline which rivals anything that Fox ever did. The acting is poor, but Monogram didn't have the money to hire great character actors.

Of course, it's also got something to offend everyone. Mantan Moreland was a talented comedian, but his performance will not endear himself to many black people. If they appeared in movies at all, black actors could only play butlers and porters, and the actresses were maids. An unwritten rule of the 30's and 40's was that black men all had to be afraid of their own shadow. Mantan is no exception, fearful of being attacked by spooks, and snapping his fingers to try and disappear.

Charlie Chan is perhaps the ultimate Asian stereotype, the inscrutable but always-polite Chinaman. But even in the Fox films there is racism. In Charlie Chan At the Opera, Charlie receives a message in Chinese. Dumb detective William Demerest: "What's that? A laundry list?" The fact that Charlie is bilingual in English and Chinese has no value. But Chan gets the last laugh in the end, solving the crime while the other detectives remain clueless.

Monogram was considered "the lowest of the low" among Hollywood studios. A director could put fear into many an actor's heart by threatening to sell his or her contract to Monogram. (When it happened to Lauren Bacall at Warner's, the story goes, she ran to Humphrey Bogart in tears.) Along with bad acting, you're going to see some extremely cheap sets. But if you can ignore all this and watch it for what it is, a 40's B-picture, you will enjoy it.

Way Out West is unique in two ways. Not only is it the only Western Laurel and Hardy ever made, but it's the only feature with a title card reading, "A Stan Laurel Production." It also has one of the oldest plots since movies first flickered onto the screen, that of a daughter inheriting a gold mine from her father, which Laurel and Hardy have to deliver.

The boys have come west to give the deed to Mary Roberts (Rosina Lawrence), a present from her late father Sy. She works for Mr.Finn (James Finlayson), who runs the local saloon with his wife, singer Lola Marcel(Sharon Lynn). Together they plot to steal the deed from Mary. As Laurel and Hardy have never seen Mary, Lola pretends to be her, full of sweetness and light. Stan is his usual tactful self.

Lola: Tell me about my dear, dear daddy. Is it true that he's dead?

Stan: Well we hope he is, we buried him.

Later, when they meet the real Mary Roberts, the boys are determined to get the deed back. As Stan tells Ollie, "We'll get that deed back or I'll eat your hat!"

A running gag has the two crossing a lake to get in and out of town (on the Roach lot, this was known as Lake Laurel and Hardy). Stan crosses without incident, but Ollie manages to find the deepest part every time. As he sinks into the water, only his hat is left, floating on top.

Meanwhile the boys almost succeed in getting back the deed, but Lola corners Stan in a locked bedroom and tickles him until he hands it over (a very funny scene). Chased out of town by the sheriff, they contemplate their next move (Ollie has fallen into the lake again so his wet clothes are drying on the line). Ollie reminds Stan about the statement he made regarding a certain hat. He then forces Stan to eat it. At first he begins to cry, but after a while he gets a big napkin, sprinkles some salt on it, and begins to enjoy it. Ollie quickly pulls it away, but as Stan goes to check on his clothes, Ollie takes a bite and chews. He spits it out, disgusted. Although Ollie is disdainful of Stan, he's also a little jealous. After all, if ignorance is bliss, Stan must be ecstatic.

Just as he used his thumb as a pipe and smoked it in Blockheads, Stan is able to light a candle with his thumb in this film. All through the movie, a jealous Ollie tries to do it; when his thumb finally goes on fire, he's so terrified Stan has to come blow it out.

Way Out West is also one of their most musical pictures, featuring a duet on "Trail of the Lonesome Pine" and a great dance scene. Ollie had a fine voice, having been trained as a singer early in his career. In fact, as wonderful as their singing and dancing is, it's amazing that it occurs so infrequently in the films.

One problem that somewhat spoils the duo's great dancing is that, for some reason, it was filmed on a sound stage with obvious back projection. The only time back projection should ever be used is when someone is riding in a car or train. But even that can go terribly wrong if not done carefully. The worst back projection I've ever seen is when Lauel and Hardy are driving in the car at the end of County Hospital. It ruins what would otherwise be one of their finest shorts.

Everybody wants to be Cary Grant. I want to be Cary Grant.

-Archie Leach

I doubt that the above quotation is on Cary Grant's tombstone, but it should be. Just as "On the whole, I'd rather be in Philadelphia" should be on W.C. Fields' stone (unfortunately, it isn't), Cary's quote would make a fitting epitaph to a career that spanned more than three decades.

All of which has nothing to do with My Favorite Wife; it's just one of my all-time favorite quotes and I love to use it.

What would you do if you declared your wife legally dead after seven years in order to marry another woman, and she came back? Furthermore, what would you do if you found out that during those seven years she was alone on a deserted island with another man? That's the situation facing Nick Arden (Grant), and while some men may relish the idea of having two wives, it nearly drives him insane!

Ellen Wagstaff Arden (Irene Dunne) has just returned after seven years to find that her husband Nick has married Bianca Bates (Gail Patrick). Stephen Burkett (Randolph Scott)is the athletic gentleman (check out the way he dives into a swimming pool) who spent seven years alone with Ellen.

Both Stephen and Ellen (or "Adam and Eve" as they called each other) insist that nothing happened, but Nick isn't so sure. When Ellen explains that Stephen was out of commission with a broken leg for the first six months, Nick replies, "That still leaves six and a half years." To allay his fears, Ellen introduces a short, bald, shoe salesman to Nick and claims he is Mr. Burkett. The humor in the scene arises from the fact that Nick has already met the real Mr. Burkett at his club.

Adding to the mix are the two children Ellen left behind when they were still infants. So now we have two problems: Nick has to tell Bianca that he's already married, and Ellen must tell the children that she's really her mother.

Cary Grant was a master of this type of comedy, and the film's screenwriter and producer is Leo McCarey, who began his career making Laurel and Hardy shorts (when McCarey directed the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup, he took the title from a 1927 L & H short; Groucho considered him the only first-class director the Brothers ever had). Randolph Scott, whom we usually associate with Westerns, does a fine job as Nick's rival. And Gail Patrick, who played Carole Lombard's snobbish sister in My Man Godfrey, really makes us feel sorry for her. The poor girl had no idea what she was getting into.

As implausible as this whole scenario is, a fine cast makes it work.

Contrary to popular belief, Cocoanuts was not the first Marx Brothers movie. That honor belongs to Humorisk, a silent film which no longer exists. It was greeted with such hostility that one master reel was burned, and the other deteriorated in a producer's closet. It is difficult to imagine Chico and Groucho in a silent film, and while one might envision Harpo as the ultimate silent comedian, his whistling and horn-honking formed an essential part of his act.

By 1929, however, sound was here to stay, and many silent comics suddenly found themselves out of work. In fact, the only two comedians to successfully make the transition from silent to sound were Laurel and Hardy (Chaplin didn't make his first sound movie until 1940, and was never comfortable with sound). Comedy teams like Stan and Ollie and the Marx Brothers needed dialog; even Harpo communicated with his brothers using broad gestures and the aforementioned honks and whistles.

The biggest story of 1929 (besides the stock market crash) was the Florida land boom. Mr. Hammer (Groucho) is the manager of a struggling hotel, trying to lure customers so that he can sell them Florida lots. Of course, Astoria, Long Island, where this movie was filmed, is not exactly the Sunshine State, and the opening tribute to "sunny Florida" shows us some sand poured on a sound stage to simulate a beach and a painted backdrop of palm trees and coconut. Groucho pursues the rich Mrs. Potter (Margaret Dumont), whose daughter Polly (Mary Eaton) is in love with Bob Adams (Oscar Shaw). Also interested in Polly (or rather, her mother's money) is Harvey Yates (Cyril Ring). Together with his parter Penelope (Kay Francis), they decide to steal Mrs. Potter's expensive necklace and blame it on Bob, easing the way for Yates to marry Polly.

The highlight of the film is the famous "Why a duck?" routine. It's Chico versus the English language, and guess who wins? When Groucho tells Chico that there's going to be an auction, he replies: "I come from Italy on the Atlantic Auction." When Groucho talks about levees, Chico thinks that's the Jewish neighborhood. When he asks him what a radius is, Chico responds that it's WJZ, at that time a popular New York radio station. And when it comes to the word "viaduct" he is totally lost.

Groucho: "Here's a little peninsula and here is a viaduct leading over to the mainland."

Chico: "OK, why a duck? Waya no chicken?" Having been told by Groucho to keep the bidding high during the auction, Chico, in a very funny scene, takes over the whole show, refusing to let anyone else in on the action.

As far as the music is concerned, it is difficult to imagine Irving Berlin writing such drivel as "When My Dreams Come True" and "Monkey Doodle-Do." The former is sung in a duet between Mary Eaton and Oscar Shaw (whom Groucho described as "strictly no-talent"). Indeed it's hard to determine which is worse-Shaw's acting or his singing.

There was a song written for "Cocoanuts," however, that was rejected because it made the show too long. It became one of Berlin's greatest hits. The song was "Always."

The print quality varies from good to fair. It appears that Universal spliced together scenes from several different prints to make one entire movie.

Sons of the Desert is certainly the best feature Laurel and Hardy ever made, without any extraneous sub-plots or music to get in the way. L & H belong to a lodge called the Sons of the Desert. During a special meeting every man stands and pledges to attend the annual convention in Chicago next week. If any man is unsure whether he can keep the pledge, the "Exalted Ruler" continues, he will pleased be seated. Stans sits down, and a shocked Ollie quickly gets him up (Ollie knows better than to trifle with the Exalted Ruler; in his Arab costume, in the dark, with only a spotlight on his face, he looks like Boris Karloff in The Mummy).

On the way home, Stan explains that he sat down out of fear that his wife wouldn't let him go to the convention. Ollie immediately launches into his "King of the Castle" speech. "Why don't you pattern your life after mine? I go places and do things and then tell my wife."

Of course, once they arrive home it is clear who wears the pants in Ollie's household, and it isn't him. His wife Lottie (Mae Busch) tells him in no uncertain terms that he's not going to the convention, he's going to the mountains with her. And to solidify her position, she aims a few glass bowls at Ollie's head (the way she throws, she should be pitching for the Yankees).

Stan is even more dense than usual, if such a thing is possible. He eats Mrs. Hardy's wax apples, all the while wondering why they don't taste quite right. Ollie, naturally has a scheme; he'll pretend to be sick and they'll get a doctor to tell Mrs. Hardy he needs an ocean voyage to Honolulu; then Stan and Ollie will go to the convention. As much as he tries, Stan just doesn't seem to get it. He asks Ollie, "Why do you want to go to Honolulu?" He sends for an animal doctor to examine Ollie. (Ollie: "Why did you get a veterinarian?" Stan: "Well, I didn't think his religion would make any difference.") When Lottie asks Stan if he can go to Honolulu with Ollie, he says he can't, because he asked his wife Betty (Dorothy Christie) and she said he could go to the convention.

At the convention, Stan and Ollie watch a number called "Honolulu Baby", a satire on the Warner Brothers musicals of the early 30's. Normally such an interlude should be dismissed out of hand, but here it serves to advance the plot. With great satisfaction, Ollie tells Stan, "You see, we've killed two birds with one stone. We're seeing as much here as we could have seen in Honolulu."

Special mention needs to made of Charley Chase, who does a terrific job as the raucous conventioneer everyone tries to avoid. His idea of a great time is to drop a wallet on the floor and hit someone on the behind with a paddle when they stoop to pick it up.

Meanwhile, unbeknown st to them, the ship that the boys were supposed to be on has sunk in a typhoon, and survivors have been picked up by a rescue ship. Lottie and Betty, often so critical of their husbands' antics, are now nearly panic-stricken. They go down to the steamship company to get a list of the survivors, but it hasn't come out yet.

In a great scene which again helps to move things forward, the girls try to relax by taking in a movie. On comes a newsreel, showing the parade of the Sons of the Desert through the streets of Chicago. Just as Lottie tearfully proclaims that she wishes she had let Ollie go to the convention, on screen come Stan and Ollie, mugging for the camera. Grief turns to rage in a matter of seconds. And another Lauel and Hardy outing is about to become a disaster.

"I would like to make some pictures with you fellows. I mean real pictures." When producer Irving Thalberg said that to the Marx Brothers, he was immediately challenged by Groucho. Name any movie with more laughs than Cocoanuts, Animal Crackers, or Duck Soup. Sure, those pictures were funny, Thalberg conceded. "But they weren't movies. They weren't about anything." I'll make a movie with half as many laughs, he continued, and a solid storyline, and we'll make twice as much money as Duck Soup. Turns out he was right. Night At the Opera was the best movie the Marxes ever made, and it doubled Duck Soup's gross. Margaret Dumont is Mrs. Claypool, a wealthy widow (what else?), who hopes Otis B. Drigtwood (Groucho) of the New York Opera Company will get her into society (is she kidding?). Ricardo Baroni (Alan Jones) is an obscure tenor trying to make a name for himself; he's in love with the female star of the opera, Rosa Castaldi (Kitty Carlisle). Also interested in Rosa is the obnoxious Rodolfo Lassparri (Walter Woolf King), the leading tenor, but she wants nothing to do with him. When Groucho hears that Lassparri gets a thousand dollars a night for singing, he utters a line that apparently went over the head of the censor: "You can get a phonograph record of Minnie the Moocher for seventy-five cents. For a buck and a quarter you can get Minnie." There are two scenes in the picture that qualify as classics. The first is the stateroom scene, where about fifty people try to cram into a cabin the size of a large closet. The other is the contract negotiation between Chico and Groucho ("The party of the first part shall be known in this contact as the party of the first part."), where they continue to rip off sections of the contract until both wind up holding small slips of paper. A closing word regarding Margaret Dumont. Apparently she really was the prim Victorian lady she portrayed on the screen, or as Groucho put it simply, "She never understood the jokes." As Groucho and Maggie leave the boat, the following dialogue ensues:

Mrs. Claypool: "Otis, do you have everything?"

Driftwood: "I've never had any complaints yet." After the take, Maggie turned to Groucho and asked: "Groucho, what does that mean?" In Duck Soup, when Groucho tells his men, "You're fighting for this woman's honor, which is probably more than she ever did," Dumont had no idea what he was talking about. The fact that half the time, she didn't have a clue as to what was happening makes the pictures even funnier.

After filming their Broadway shows Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers in New York, the Marx Brothers headed to Hollywood to make Monkey Business. This was their first original screenplay, and it shows how difficult it was to write for the team. Starting with the premise that they are stowaways aboard a ship, much of the film consists of the ship's officers chasing them around the deck, which quickly becomes tiresome. Add to this mix a satire on popular gangster movies of the day (Little Ceasar and Public Enemy), and you have a funny, but rather confusing movie. Of course Groucho is going to pursue beautiful Thelma Todd (even the fact that she's a gangster's wife doesn't deter him), but it's more fun watching him make love to Margaret Dumont, since we know the only thing he could possibly be interested in is her money. My favorite scene in the movie is the one where Groucho wants to be a gangster's bodyguard. "Let's say there are two men trying to attack you and two men trying to defend you, why, that's 50% waste. Why can't you be attacked by your own bodyguard, your life'll

be saved, and that's 100% waste. You've still got me and I'll attack you for nothing. So it's settled, I'm to be your new bodyguard. In case I'm going to attack you, I'll have to be there to defend you too. Now let me know when you want to be attacked and I'll be there ten minutes later to defend you." Unfortunately, this brilliant comedy writing is diminished by jokes which seem to be left over from the Brothers' vaudeville act, circa 1917. At one point, Groucho tries to give Chico a history lesson by telling him the story of Columbus. Columbus sailed on a vessel, and of course you know what a vessel is. Chico: "Sure, I can vessel (whistles a tune). When he tells him Columbnus' men were going to mutiny at night, Chico replies: "Nah, no mutinies at night. Mutinies Wednesdays and Saturdays." Zeppo gives his usual wooden performance while romancing the daughter of Joe Helton. Groucho always felt that Zeppo never got an opportunity to show what he could do. "He had talent, but there were three brothers ahead of him." Yet his successors, the bland Alan Jones, the awful Kenny Baker, and the hideous Tony Martin, fared no better (if you can stand it, listen to Tony sing "The Tenement Symphony" in The Big Store; it's perhaps the worst piece of music ever written). In short, this is an enjoyable outing for Marx fans, not their best, but worth watching.