Generational talent. Laurel and Hardy: The Silent Years (1927), Eureka Masters of Cinema Blu-ray, out now

“Watch these lad, they’re dead funny!”

Jim Joyce, Retired Railway Carpenter, circa 1970

 

Of course, it’s sobering to me now to realise I am far more distanced in time from the young boy about to take his grandad’s advice, than the films that inspired his enthusiasm but all the same, our Jim started me off on this silent film caper with his plea, just as I was thinking of going to kick a ball in the garden. It’s possible that in so doing he prevented me developing the skills to play for Liverpool Football Club but, realistically, I lacked key attributes in that respect plus he was right, and I treasure the memory of laughing along with Jim as the laughter unfolded on screen.

 

Jim was a decade younger than the duo, having been born in 1901 but he grew up during the silent era, so he would have been entranced by Chaplin, Roscoe Arbuckle, Mabel Normand and then Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. Like Buster, his favourite was fellow Lancastrian Stan Laurel and his partner Oliver Hardy and, whilst most of these films feature them detached or developing as a pair, he would have recognised them from their earlier work with Hal Roach and others. By the time Jim was courting my Nan, Jessie, their partnership and personas were established, and whilst I can’t remember her opinion of the boys, I can imagine her disapproving slightly or their foolishness and the way that strong women – like her – were portrayed in their films. That’s not to say our Jessie didn’t like a laugh, just on her own terms – as Stan and Ollie noted, women were getting their way and their say.

 

I think of these two when I watch many films of this era and especially Jim when watching Stan and Ollie – a skilled working man, he loved their comedy and, like most, knew there was a lot of guile and hard work involved for them too. A similar amount of effort has gone into this absolute labour of love, the restoration of the early works in which Laurel and Hardy featured in the same films in the years leading up to their becoming an official double act with Putting Pants on Philip (1927) all restored with 2k scans from the best available materials held by collectors and archives around the globe – in a special two-disc Blu-ray edition for the first time in the UK – previously available in the USA from Flicker Alley.

 

Put ‘em both insect, before I part your hair with lead!

 

Oliver, Stan and the Lucky Dog

From the start, here with Lucky Dog (1921), Stan Laurel is on his game and as polished a performer as you’d expect from a man who first travelled over to the USA with Charles Chaplin when both were part of Fred Karno’s Army. He took over the role in Karno’s stage hit Mumming Birds which had made Charlie a stage star and started making films in 1917 (Nuts in May) without the great man’s impact or unique persona. Success was to take time and even though in Lucky Dog we can recognise a lot of Stan’s core qualities – his timing, brilliance with mime and slapstick as well as those heart-breaking and very Normand-esque, looks to camera – he was not quite there even though producer Broncho Billy Anderson was convinced of his talent.

 

Oliver Hardy appears as a good-for-nothing petty thief in this rather rambling tale who ends up palling up with the villain of the piece, played by Jack Lloyd, whose girlfriend (Florence Gilbert) has been won away by Stan’s charms and his, sadly un-named, found hound. Hardy had been making films since 1914 with Outwitting Dad (1914) and, as with Stan, has the moves but not the persona: both would be refined as they worked together and as their chemistry naturally evolved. It is indeed bad history to view the pair from the point of view of what we now know and just forcing to yourself to imagine the space then between them allows the viewer to enjoy these films on their own merits rather than a prelude to the main event.

 

Common themes begin to develop and it’s fascinating to just binge and play Slapstick Bingo:

 

·         Guns not working - check

·         Despite this, people then being shot in the bottom and jumping around - check

·         Stan screaming – check

·         Ollie at boiling point! - check

·         Stan looking direct to camera appealing to us all with the cheekiest eyes in all film – check!

·         Food fights, bottoms being kicked, GBH, ABH, a blow to the head… check, check, check, check, check!!!!!

 

This is forceful comedy and fast-moving, no one is drifting off in this movie theatre. Been working six days flat at Liverpool Lime Street Station, had a few beers on pay day, and fancy a lift, these men know how you feel and the comedy you need!

Stan, Oliver, Mr C Chase and Finn

 

The films are split three ways:

 

A.      Guest Stars and Solo

 

Stan and Ollie appearing as supporting characters in other’s stars films: Priscilla Dean in Slipping Wives (1927), Glenn Tryon in 45 Minutes from Hollywood (1926) and Mae Busch in Love ‘em and Weep (1927). Bush is outstanding, especially when she has to plank and fall face down, sure in the knowledge that Stan, trying to do two things at once, will catch her in time. He does this repeatedly and you wonder how hard her face had to be in the numerous rehearsals - true Aussie grit!

Dean is also a revelation away from her lady crook roles and matching the lads, gag for gag. Meanwhile, Tryon is more of a taste which I have failed to acquire but the film does feature some precious views of Hollywood including Our Gang and a brief glimpse of Theda Bara! Then there’s Max Davidson, in Call of the Cuckoo (1927) which features cameos from other Roach stars at the time including Charley Chase, James Finlayson, Stan and Ollie who play inmates from an asylum forcing Max and his family to move to a new house, any new house, things can’t get any worse can they?

Stan is more in evidence in these films and Oliver more of a standard straight man/heavy, but his face… it’s always a picture!

Mae Busch falls face flat with only Stan to save her...

B.      Prototype pairings: Laurel with Hardy  

These films include the boys in almost as a trio with the great Scot, James Finlayson and there are four films here with them accompanied by Viola Richard, who would go on to co-star with Charley Chase in his brilliant Limousine Love (1928), not to mention Anita Garvin who would feature in many a subsequent short as a woman offended by our bumbling pals.

 

Stans’ the lead in Why Girls Love Sailors (1927) with Ollie as a rough and tough first mate on a smugglers’ ship. As so often in these films Stan cross-dresses, dragging up in golden curls to save his girl (Viola Richard) from kidnapping and worse.  The boys are in the army now for With Love and Hisses (1927) with Stan playing clueless new recruit Cuthbert and Oliver as Sergeant Banner – “bouncer in a café where the ambulance service was free…” Again, the boys are at odds, Ollie a figure of bumbling authority and Stan anarchic and carefree. They compete for the hand of Viola Richard in the historically-confused stone-age romance Flying Elephants (1927) which is an absolute riot – exhibiting some of the contemporary mores we wince about now etc – yet still involving the physical brutality we love. The Elephants are indeed flying south for the winter and Stan is again the master of unmanly behaviour gently lampooning those more masculine signallers all around him.

 

History Stan

In Sailors, Beware! (1927) Stan is Chester Chaste, a taxi driver following some un-paying passengers on board an ocean liner on which Ollie is the Pursar Cryder, who looks after all his passengers, especially the blondes and brunettes… My wife asked about the redheads but what can I say, it’s of its time and intertitles had to be snappy as well as sexist. Interestingly Stan gets to stand up for himself a bit more in this film, pushing a bathing beauty into a pool and upsetting everyone in taking offence… that’s brazen irritation we would see far less of in future.

 

In Do Detectives Think? (1927), the boys are finally on the same side as two detectives assigned to protect James Finlayson’s Judge Foozle and his wife (Viola Richard) from violent retribution from escaped criminal The Tipton Slasher (Noah Young). They succeed as only they can.

James Finlayson

C.      Laurel and Hardy

 

The joy of this set is watching the chemistry develop and their roles finally settling over a relatively short period of time and yet one in which they were making films at pace.

 

Duck Soup (1927) is an outlier and features the boys as down and outs on the run from local authorities who want to forcibly recruit them to fight forest fires. There’s something of Oliver’s airs and graces and Stanley’s morbid fear of femininity – Neil Brand is not alone in spotting a certain reading of his un-masculinity but this was the comedy currency of the day. The two end up trying to sell a house they don’t own to a gullible couple – one of whom wants to play billiards, the other who wants to take a bath and becomes attached to Stan’s cross-dressed maid.

 

The films come with a rich variety of commentaries from film historian and writer David Kalat, film writers Chris Seguin and Kyp Harness, Patrick Vasey, editor of The Laurel & Hardy Magazine and host of The Laurel & Hardy Podcast, Glenn Mitchell as well as accompanist and L&H specialist Neil Brand. All bring so much love and expertise and its especially interesting to hear Brands’ take as someone who experiences live performances alongside these films on a regular basis: Neil knows where the laughs are and he also understands how the boys still connect with our funny bones a century onward.

Duck Soup... US slang for an easy win!

Putting Pants on Philip and not a moment too soon.

 

“It was certainly the first film in which Stan felt them to be a team… the first at which both men felt to the fullest the chemistry between them…” Professor John McCabe who knew Stan well.

 

For Brand too, Pants is the one “… when they really come together as equals on screen… neither has control over the other… they have the beginnings of an understanding of how their comedy is going to work…” the two understand each other. The laughs arrive unbidden, even when we can see it coming, even when Ollie can see what’s happening and the candle flame burns Stan’s trousers… the helpless look to camera is there, something we can all relate to, an accident taking place in real time, unavoidably slowly. The relentless physicality they display also goes back to the old music hall characters… this is a comedic species’ memory. Not so much a learned behaviour as an adaptation that defines humanity.

 

Neil it is who provides commentary on The Battle of the Century (1927), the almost completely reconstructed film which moves from Ollie managing Stan as an unconvincing boxer to the greatest cream pie fight in history. He highlights the roots of the jokes in the boxing section which reflect the contemporary rematch between the great Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney which became known as The Long Count Fight after Dempsey ruined his chances by not retreating to his corner after knocking his rival down. Tunney got up after 14 seconds and went on to beat Dempsey again, ending his career. Stand faces a similar situation when he accidentally knocks out his fearsome rival… he does a Dempsey and gets flattened soon after.

 

In olden days a glimpse of stocking...

Such snippets are vital in understanding the direction of the humour but when it comes to the choreography of the pie fight, that’s a work of pure art directed by Clyde Bruckman and featuring a cast of dozens all led by the whimsy and chaos of Laurel and Hardy. Here they are pretty much the finished article and, even though Ollie has insured Stan and is trying to collect by arranging accidents, we never lose sympathy for either in their fight for dignity and happiness.

 

And, as my son was having a difficult day, I sat him down in front of the TV and told him to watch these lads, and I guarantee they’ll make you laugh. The cycle continues and, we laughed!

 

The Battle of the Century

SPECIAL FEATURES

·         Limited edition O-Card slipcase featuring new artwork by Scott Saslow

·         1080p HD presentations on Blu-ray from new 2K restorations

·         Scores by a variety of silent film composers including Neil Brand, Antonio Coppola, Eric le Guen and Donald Sosin

·         Brand new audio commentaries on Lucky Dog, 45 Minutes from Hollywood, Duck Soup, Slipping Wives and Love ‘em and Weep by film historian and writer David Kalat

·         Brand new audio commentaries on Why Girls Love Sailors, With Love and Hisses, Sailors Beware and The Second 100 Years by Patrick Vasey, editor of The Laurel & Hardy Magazine and host of The Laurel & Hardy Podcast

·         Brand new audio commentaries on Do Detectives Think? and The Battle of the Century by film writer Chris Seguin and Kyp Harness (The Art of Laurel & Hardy: Graceful Calamity in the films)

·         Brand new audio commentaries on Flying Elephants, Sugar Daddies, Call of the Cuckoo and Putting Pants on Philip by Glenn Mitchell (The Laurel & Hardy Encyclopedia)

·         Brand new audio commentaries on The Second 100 Years and The Battle of the Century by silent film accompanist Neil Brand

·         Alternate Robert Youngson score on Putting Pants on Philip, newly restored by Stephen C. Horne

·         Brand new interview with Neil Brand

·         Laurel & Hardy in the UK – 1932 recording by Laurel and Hardy to promote their UK tour, featuring footage of the duo visiting Tynemouth

·         Turning Point: Stan Laurel – Extensive interview with Stan Laurel from 1957

·         Stan Laurel talks to Tony Thomas – 1959 interview, featuring footage of Laurel & Hardy visiting Edinburgh as part of their 1932 UK tour

·         Sailors Beware – Super 8 version with audio commentary by Chris Seguin and Glenn Mitchell

·         The Bulldog Breed – Super 8 version of Do Detectives Think? with audio commentary by Chris Seguin and Glenn Mitchell

·         The Mad Butler – Super 8 version of Do Detectives Think? with audio commentary by Chris Seguin and Glenn Mitchell

·         The Battle of the Century Pie Fight – Super 8 version with audio commentary by Chris Seguin

·         Stills Galleries for each short

·         A collector’s booklet featuring newly written notes on each film by writer and comedian Paul Merton, and a new essay by silent cinema expert Imogen Sara Smith

 

So, in summary, an essential acquisition for all fans of the boys, silent comedy and laughing in general. Our Jim was not wrong!

 

You can order direct from Eureka themselves and all good stockists.

My kind of pun...

Mr James Finlayson

Viola Richard

Rita, Stan and Babe too… Ballettens Datter (1913), Laurel or Hardy with John Sweeney and Neil Brand, Pordenone Day Eight

And so it ends with a medieval wedding with daft knights and kings dancing to a rag-time band and Stanley Laurel stepping on his princesses bridal train to reveal, “The End”. It ends with belly laughs from the family after eight days of a streamed Limited Edition of Le Giornate and the pledge to return in person next year. They made the best of what we hoped for and it was an experience that as festival director Jay Weissberg said, will have introduced new friends to the experience who will be there for the 40^th Anniversary edition in 2021 even if at this stage, we don’t know where but we do know when.

The final day featured Danish dancing, Hardy romancing and Laurel prancing; it was pure Pordenone.

Rita Sacchetto

Until today I’d never heard of Rita Sacchetto, the German star of Ballettens Datter (1913) but now I know that she was at the forefront of new approaches to modern dance having been inspired by Isadora Duncan and learned ballet only to take her instruction towards freer expression, mixing pantomime with dance to create Tanzbilder (“dance pictures”), aimed at “completing” works of art through movement. She attracted the attention of Loie Fuller, known for her Serpentine Dance, which was captured on hand-coloured films at the turn of the century, and toured America with her.

Sacchetto dances in Holger-Madsen’s film and as accompanist John Sweeney said, it was not ballet and quite unlike anything he’d seen as a dance specialist. Professor Mary Simonson of Colgate University, filled in the dancer’s background in the after screening discussion and made me go back and watch those sequences again.

In a week full of insights into silent film musical accompaniment John explained the difficulties in playing with dance on screen as the performance is quite different in tone and pace to the drama that surrounds it. In this instance, Holger-Madsen’s focus on doorways and general framing, acted as a natural cue between changes in the narrative. It’s a very competently directed film as you would expect from the standards of Danish film at this time.

The Count obsesses before he controls...

Sacchetto plays prima dancer Odette Blant who is being romanced by Count de Croisset (Svend Aggerholm), who watches her performances in love-struck awe. But when she agrees to marry him he tells her that the condition must be that she gives up the stage. A year later Odette’s getting itchy feet and he chides her for dancing in front of the mirror - Holger-Madsen (also known at the time as Holger-Hyphen…), is very fond of mirrors and they give depth to this scene and others.

Odette goes to the Theatre where she used to dance and meets old friends including Delage, the manager and, when their leading dancer injures herself, he calls Odette to stand in – obviously they couldn’t afford an understudy… She agrees and lies about seeing her sick aunt whilst the Count, happy to enjoy watching other women dancing but not for others to enjoys his wife… goes to the theatre and the inevitable happens.

Love this sequence, it explains so much.

The Count then compounds his illogical position by accusing Odette of having an affair with Delage, a duel is arranged and things look like taking a dark turn, all because of his old school pride.

Ballettens Datter is another fine restoration from the Danish Film Institute and whilst the plot creaked to jaded modern eyes it’s a very entertaining window on contemporary mores and the eccentrically wonderful performance art of Rita Sacchetto.

With joyful synchronised serenades from maestro Neil Brand, Laurel or Hardy (US 1916-1925) raised the whole issue of fate and predetermination in slapstick comedy. Living in the era of hot-take history, many folk have difficulty understanding the nature of events, I mean, what took Stan and Ollie a decade to find each other? Didn’t they know?! It’s one of cinema’s great journeys and, whilst it’s always odd to watch one without the other, they were always a class act and it’s fascinating to view them on their way up when you’re constantly reminded of Buster Keaton’s comment, “Chaplin wasn’t the funniest. I wasn’t the funniest. Stan Laurel was the funniest.”

Runt and Plump

The Serenade (1916) was first up and was part of the period when the duo were “seeing” other comedy partners in this case Billy Ruge as Runt to Oliver Hardy’s Plump. Now clearly this is sizeism of the worst order but it is bloomin’ daft and very funny and it’s exactly why my Granddad Jim (yes, he was James Joyce, but the amateur boxer and carpenter variant) loved these men. I always think of Jim watching Mr Hardy’s work and here he oozes comedic charm as a tubby tuba player annoying his neighbours and fighting with Ruge’s Runt for the hand – and other parts – of the Bandleader’s daughter played by Florence McLoughlin.

Sermon on the mount...

Forward five years and Oliver was at Vitagraph for The Rent Collector (1921) and this was the first in a six-year period as part of writer-director Larry Sermon’s company. Sermon was Vitagraph’s biggest comedy star and here he gives himself the difficult task of becoming a rent collector in one of the roughest parts of town. Hardy is Hurricane Smith, a beardy hoodlum not given to polite negotiation having thrown the previous rent officer out of his window to his braying gang below. It’s the same moves from Ollie just different intent – he’s a lot more violent - and he cuts a darker figure than usual as the fearsome Hurricane bopping the opposition at will, winging them over his head and taking advantage of the charitable women of the mission. At Vitagraph Babe worked mostly as “chief comedy support”; he was always a team player and worked very well with Sermon who reputedly taught him golf!

Santa knows Stanley, he knows...

Over to Stanley and Detained (US 1924) from Selznick Pictures where he made a dozen films with Joe Rock after leaving Hal Roach. Rock tried to avoid paying him his due and so, fed up with trying to get blood out the stone, Stan went back to Roach.  In his notes Rob Stone therefore gives credit to the parsimonious Rock for driving Laurel back to the place where he’d end up with Hardy. In Detained, Stanley is rudely interrupted from his task of watering trees in the park by an escaped convict who swaps clothes leaving him to be arrested by the cops and interred in the con’s place. In his own way, Stan Laurel was Kafka…

“Shakespeare said it – No woman can make a fool out of a man. But she can give him a wonderful start.”

Clyde Cook and Noah Young hedge their bets

Moonlight and Noses (1925) sees our hero back at Roach, co-scripting and directing Australian comedian Clyde Cook as well as a young lass name of Fay Wray. Rob Stone says that Cook influenced Laurel and vice versa, and here he is in a duo with Noah Young as a couple of bungling burglars, showcasing a similar slow-paced delivery and relationship to the camera. James Finlayson’s in it too as Professor Sniff, “goofy half the time and cuckoo the rest…” and Laurel writes a great newspaper headline, just read your way down this one…

 

Cook plays the brains of the outfit but that’s not saying much and, as they break in to Prof. Sniff’s house, he agrees to let them off on the condition that they steal the body of Hemmingway Toots from the graveyard so he can prove his medical point (no wonder some have had enough of experts…) Needless to say, things don’t go to plan but you can sense Stan’s cheek and professionalism behind it all. Also, that Fay Wray, what a cracker, she’ll go onto to bigger things, mark my words!

Fay Wray, James Finlayson and Tyler Brooke 

Only half of When Knights Were Cold (1922) survives but it ain’t half funny, especially Stan’s “horse” which is basically just a stuffed head on a stick, with two fake legs over an equine girdle. This, along with such fancies as taking a watering can to trees, and then to a fast-growing vine in this film, shows, to me at least, Laurel’s very Lancastrian humour, revelling in the surreal and the plain daft. That said Frank Fouce, who wrote and directed was born in Hawaii so what do I know? Stan is Lord Helpus who is out to rescue Princess Elizabeth New Jersey (Catherine Bennett) form the evil clutches of the Prince of Pluto (Stanhope Wheatcroft) and his numerous guards.

There’s one moment when Lord Helpus and a guard are so bored with their swordplay, they both lean against the wall tapping swords in a perfunctory way before Helpus kicks his adversary out of the window. Throughout Stan looks direct to camera, Mabel Normand style, but with his own particular twinkle; so much comedy to give. People may look for the Laurel persona in these films but he was clearly a flexible performer who if he was looking for his own defined style like Chaplin or Keaton, hadn’t yet found it. It’s chicken and egg or, perhaps, man and papier-mâché horse.

Which is where I came in. See you next year Giornate Family!

you can lead a fake horse to water...