Laurel & Hardy: The Silent Years (1928), Eureka Masters of Cinema Blu-ray

“We never tried to get very far from what was real… (the Derby hats) … gave what we felt these characters’ needed: phoney dignity! There’s nothing funnier than a guy being dignified and dumb!”

 

Eureka’s first Stan and Ollie set showed how in 1927 they emerged as a double act with appearances in films gradually evolving their interplay and characterisation as the iconic duo who has made the world split its sides for very nearly a century. Now with this second set we get a chance to see their first golden year as a duo in ten short films available in restored transfers on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK. What more do you need to know, the link to order is at the bottom and as we’re alone can I ask you just why you haven’t already got your copy?

There’s a fascinating video essay among the fulsome extras from David Cairns and Fiona Wilson which really gets to the heart of the enduring hilarity created by Laurel and Hardy and from which I drew the above quote from Stan in one of his rare expressions on their style and purpose. Cairns and Wilson act as our companions to these timeless lords of comedy and the instinctive love and laughter becomes clearer as it is shared and explained in personal ways that are shared by so many. We are all Sons and Daughters of the Desert, we all stand on our dignity, pick ourselves up and keep on trying against the odds, constructing our own folly in real time up until the moment when things are so broken, it’s the end of the film.

It's a Video Essay of the Year award contender and it’s only Spring. The quote from Spike Milligan they include sums up so much: “The first time I saw them on screen, I knew they were my friends…” and this has been passed down from the moment my grandad James told me how good they were; any friends of Jim’s were going to be mine as well.

This collection brings together the silent Laurel & Hardy shorts produced during 1928, as their partnership began to gather steam and, as with 1927, it’s so instructive and hilarious to watch them develop and consolidate the greatest comedy duo in cinematic history.

 

February 1928

 

The Finishing Touch, with Neil Brand score

 

Filmed in December 1927 in a relatively long shoot of just over two weeks, possibly related to the extensive mechanical gags as Patrick Vasey of the L&H Podcast suggests, this film is one of my personal favourites. The lads play two construction labourers who are employed to finish off a wooden house build by noon, next Monday for $500… Their confidence to complete the task is, of course in sharp contrast to their ability and over the two reels there are so many classic moments of painful slapstick as their inability is demonstrated time and again.

 

Edgar Kennedy is on hand as an exasperated cop whilst Dorothy Coburn is the nurse who tells them to keep the noise down for her patients… Now fighting both the forces of law as well as physics their failure is magnificently funny!

January 1928

 

Leave ’em Laughing, organ accompaniment Andreas Benz

Be careful, you might make him nervous!

 

Famously, in our family, my Grandad Jim, a joiner and part-time boxer, used to remove his own rotten teeth sitting by the fire in Wavertree Liverpool. As Jim first exposed me to Laurel and Hardy it’s a joy to see an episode involving tooth ache and the Boys’ attempts at home-made treatment for Stan’s toothache … this is the World just passed (we hope). David Kalat in his commentary askes just how is it that these films stay fresh? For me it’s that childhood fascination with Grandad’s extraordinary dental handy work… especially given mine and Stan’s fear of the dentist’s office.

This we see as the Boys unable to do what Our Jim did, head to the dentists and before you know it laughing gas filled the place and our stoned heroes are off to try and drive whilst laughing their heads off. Cars crash and – of course – Edgar Kennedy’s traffic cop gets to boil over and steam!

 

Anita Garvin and the frustrating fruit

March 1928

From Soup to Nuts, with Neil Brand score

 

One thing about Stan—with apologies to a lot of directors—they thought they were directing him. And they thought they were directing the picture. But Stan was the one...He was very clever about it.

Anita Garvin interview, "She Took Her Lumps and Liked Them", Los Angeles Times, September 24, 1978

 

Here we start with the newly enriched Culpeppers played by Tiny Sandford and Anita Garvin who made over 350 films and who worked on eleven Laurel and Hardy films. The couple are hosting a party to impress their new peers and end up hiring itinerant hospitality workers, Stan and Ollie as waiters – the best available on short notice. We know things are not going to work out and they don’t work out splendidly aided by Garvin’s classic battle with a cherry as she tries to work out the polite way to eat a fruit salad, echoing Stan’s previous routine in The Second Hundred Years. As David Kalat says in his commentary, Stan trusted Anita with his material and she makes a meal out of it!

Also featured is another semi-regular, Edna Marion as Agnes the Maid although she would not enjoy the same career as Garvin who, as Kalat says, was offered opportunities to form a female comedy team – find out more by buying this set!

And if the band you're in sgtarts playing different tunes...

 

April 1928

You’re Darn Tootin’ with score from Neil Brand

 

Edgar Kennedy gets to stand in the safety behind the camera directing this one which features Stan and Ollie as a dysfunctional paid of musicians with the former’s clarinet and the latter’s French horn simply not following the instructions from conductor (Otto Lederer). Neil Brand provides expert accompaniment and commentary and, obviously, this is very much the film for him especially this opening silent orchestral slapstick. There is so much comedy content this is so re-watchable which, also of course, was not the way they were originally intended: Stan and Ollie expected their work to be experienced in the moment and not repeated and at the viewers’ leisure… we are lucky.

After being sacked for uselessness the two players end up on the streets and busking… what could possibly go wrong… on the streets… all those workers and pedestrians to connect with, all those shins to kick and stomachs to thump! Comedy chaos and more of that mutually assured de-bagging!

 

May, 1928

 

Their Purple Moment, organ accompaniment Andreas Benz

A fine day for mischief!!

 

Was the first Hal Roach film to officially bill Laurel & Hardy as a duo and foreshadowing their later films, has them married and desperate to find time together and away. Here Stan’s wife, as played by Fay Holderness, already looks like trouble as she keeps a tight rein on his paycheque even as he tries to smuggle away enough money for “hobbies”. Ollie is similarly micro-managed in similar style by Lyle Tayo “I’ll teach you to hold out two dollars on me!” – these are marriages based on antagonism as Neil Brans says in his commentary.

The boys make good their escape and offer to help two young women, Slapstick Kay Deslys and the Glamourous Anita Garvin who have been abandoned by two suitors unwilling to pay their tab at a restaurant. Stan and Ollie believe they are flush but Stan’s wife has found and taken his hidden stash meaning that they too have no way to pay the bill… As Kay slips over going back into the restaurant, the local gossip Patsy O'Byrne spies them and reports back. We know exactly what is going to happen but what a joy when it does!

As Neil Brand observes, by this stage director Leo McCarey – and the duo – had worked out that they were so reliable as comedy foils for each other, that the narrative could be slowed down and allowed to play out with their expressiveness and intimate silent discourse guaranteed to reach the boiling point of hilarity.

 

Collateral... Dorothy Coburn 

September 1928

 

Should Married Men Go Home? piano accompaniment Neil Brand

You’re going in, you started it!

 

Spotting Stanley on his way with his golf club, Mr and Mrs Hardy (the excellent Kay Deslys) pretending to be out all to no avail as the check jacketed and four-plus wearing bore finds them out. After breaking a chair and generally behaving like a misbehaving child in front of his exasperated parents – as Glenn Mitchell observes in his well-informed commentary (well, he did write the Laurel & Hardy Encyclopaedia!) Ollie is allowed out to play, conveniently wearing his golfing outfit underneath his dressing gown.

Here their escape leads to them making up a four on the golf course with two very pretty young women – a blonde (Edna Marion) and a brunette (the vivacious Viola Richard – who had also featured with the Boys in a number of their 1927 films as well as Charly Chase’s brilliant Limousine Love (1928)). There’s some business involving a drug store and a too expensive round of soda followed by some golfing antics with Edgar Kennedy and his hairpiece! Events are topped off by a mass mud-fight as an exasperated Edgar splashes Dorothy Coburn who retaliates, misses and the rest is an enormous dry-cleaning bill.

The Fountianhead

October 1928

 

Early to Bed, piano accompaniment by Neil Brand

Whilst this was the year in which the boys consolidated their personas but there are still examples of them playing variations on the themes we mostly know. Here Ollie inherits a fortune and employs Stan as his butler but soon gets bored and starts to disrupt his own party. This is an interesting watch given the times and the unusual set up and the two do not disappoint when it comes to delivering the keys to life and happiness: clue, it’s not money, money can’t buy you laughter.

Chris Seguin and Kyp Harness provide commentary and both are quite concerned about the amount of bullying in this class tale – money has not treated Oliver well – and whilst we know there will be a come-uppance it’s perhaps not as even-handed as their usually balanced universe. I like the fountain gag which Leo McCarey had used to greater effect in the Mabel Normand and Creighton Hale film, Should Men Walk Home? which also featured Hardy as a waiter! Here Ollie doesn’t quite his just deserts and we can make of that what we will…

 

 

November 1928

Two Tars

As Glenn Mitchell explains in his commentary, this is one of the duo’s greatest films as well as, not uncoincidentally, one of their most anarchic and destructive with motor vehicular abuse that wouldn’t be out of place in Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend which also features an endless traffic jam and society pushed to the limits of civilised behaviours. That might be a bit rich but why not?

Our heroes play two “dreadnaughts” from the USS Oregon a late-Victorian era battleship by now a decommissioned relic, who driving a rickety Ford model-t, come across two young women, a blonde (Ruby Blaine) and a brunette (Thelma Hill) who are struggling to extract their purchase from a bubble gum machine. Cue an outbreak of tie-twiddling and winsome shyness from the boys before they step out to save the day. Things do not go to plan and, after a short battle with shopkeeper (Brummie Charlie Hall who Mitchell explains was the most frequent guest in the Boys’ films), they make good their escape.

A pleasant afternoon’s drive with the girls is spoiled by a traffic jam and “reciprocal destruction” on a scale rarely seen – a Kwik Fix version of Battle of the Century with more and more drivers and their cars caught up in a mad whirl of push and shove with the players and cars described in detail by Glenn Mitchell in sixth gear! Excellent work all round!

 

December 1928

 

Habeas Corpus with original synchronised score

 

This is all together a more sedate affair which doesn’t reach the intensity of Tars but which features one of Stan’s more outlandish scenarios in which he and Ollie are engaged by a mad Professor (Richard Carle) to exhume a dead body for his experiments. This is the first film they made with a synchronised sound score combining music and sound effects which here is featured in restored form. There are some interesting choices of music – Danse Macabre - to modern ears it is occasionally too on the nose but you do have to imagine the audience hearing this for the first time.

The Prof’s butler, Ledoux – our Charlie Hall again - is also an undercover cop and follows the lads as they make their way to do the deed in the local cemetery, in the dead of night… There follows much self-scaring as confusion and the pursuing Ledoux, covered in a sheet (of course…) unsettle the big pay night.

 

December 1928

 

We Faw Down with original synchronised score

 

This film as David Kalat and Patrick Vasey discuss in their commentary, is an attempt by director Leo McCarey to focus more on the personalities and the character of not just Stan and Ollie but also their better halves as played by Bess Flowers (Mrs Laurel) and Vivien Oakland (Mrs. Hardy). The two men want to go to a poker game and make up a story about going to the Orpheum Theatre only to end up “making whoopee” with two women they meet on the street - Kay Deslys and Vera White. There’s some very bad table manners with various face pokes and slapstick accompanied by woman’s laughter and the synchronised score before Kay’s man returns – boxer "First Round" Kelly (the fearsome George Kotsonaros) but this is as nothing to the reckoning that awaits back home…

 

This film has polarised opinion a bit but both Kalat and Vasey point out the importance of watching it with an audience with the former explaining how well one screening went. So please, watch these discs with your family, your friends, your pets or anyone you can grab passing by. The more, the merrier! Live Cinema laughs harder!

 

There is a limited edition of just 2000 copies which comes with a slipcase and a collector’s booklet featuring newly written notes on each film by writer and comedian Paul Merton and new essays by silent cinema expert Imogen Sara Smith and film historian Sheldon Hall.

 

There are a welter of special features:

• 1080p HD presentations on Blu-ray from 2K restoration
• Brand new video essay by David Cairns and Fiona Wilson
• Brand new interview with Neil Brand - essential analysis of 1928!
• Scores by a variety of silent film composers - see above! A sonic feast!
• Brand new audio commentaries by film historian and writer David Kalat, Patrick Vasey, (editor of The Laurel & Hardy Magazine and host of The Laurel & Hardy Podcast), film writer Chris Seguin, Kyp Harness (The Art of Laurel & Hardy: Graceful Calamity in the Films), Glenn Mitchell (The Laurel & Hardy Encyclopaedia) and silent film accompanist Neil Brand
• Alternate Robert Youngson score on The Finishing Touch, newly restored by Stephen C. Horne
• Super 8 presentations of Dizzy Heights, Let ’em Rip, Out of Step and The Car Wreckers
• On Location with Laurel and Hardy – 1928 home movie footage of Laurel and Hardy
• Stills Galleries for each short

 

It is absolutely essential and you can order direct from the Eureka Store right here…

  

 

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

Smile… Kennington Bioscope Silent Laughter Weekend 2022, Day One, Cinema Museum

 

Sitting in the Cinema Museum, it’s like we’ve never been away and yet… those communal laughs feel fresher, the films more visceral and the accompaniment, richer and more poignant than ever. There were tears as well as laughter and a fulsome amount of surprises… reputations restored to living memory as well as reanimated shadows on screen. A reminder also that even films you are familiar with carry additional weight when viewed on the big screen with an audience and with live accompaniment.

 

Buddy and Mary

My Best Girl (1927) with Costas Fotopoulos

Mary Pickford’s last silent film, My Best Girl, is also one of her best and, famously, features her romancing future husband Charles “Buddy” Rogers. It’s romantic comedy of the highest order, pulling at the heartstrings as one of the masters of cinema runs through her gears form slapstick to the most intensely dramatic closing sequence that, as I fully expected, brought a tear to my eye. Can you see Mary falling in love with Buddy during this film? Maybe… but it was also her day job and to see her in her mid-thirties, playing her age, is a delight.

My Best Girl’s cinematographer was Charles Rosher who deservedly received an Academy Award nomination for his cinematography, he lost it for this but won it for Sunrise and, there were moments such as the opening montage and the emotional scenes amongst the traffic when you were reminded of the earlier film.

Costas Fotopoulos provided spirited accompaniment of his own tapping into rich romantic and dramatic themes as well as tripping the comedy lightly and fantastically through the pots and pans, family rows and cultural clashes as the poor little shop girl wins the heart of the poor big rich boy. Peak Bioscope!!

Walter and the runaway tank... plus two pigs.

 

Would You Believe it? (1929) with Lillian Henley

Walter Forde’s last silent film is packed with inventive routines: a baby and a doll mix up in the toy store, serving up toy soldiers just like chips on newspaper with oil for gravy and trying to wrap balloons in brown paper for a bespectacled Rees-Mogg-esque junior toff. Forde’s an inventor, he’s not sure what of, but it seems to work until it blows his landlord’s house up. He gets a job in a toy shop and meets a rather attractive young woman Pauline (Pauline Johnson) who just happens to work for the War Office, he invites her for dinner cooked by his uppity roommate, Cuthbert (Arthur Stratton) who, in a constant battle of wills, refuses to act the role of his butler.

Walter’s invention of a remote-control tank could be a game-changer but a group of spies finds out and set’s off to stop him demonstrating the kit to the Minister for War. Their leader is modelled on a similar mastermind in Fritz Land’s Spies and sits at a huge desk, pushing buttons for everything he needs, drinks, photographs, cigarette and lighters… the first but not last time, I was reminded of Wallace and Gromit on the day’s programme.

A super spy and his target

There’s a very funny bit of business on the Underground as the baddies chase Walter up lifts and down emergency spiral staircases in scenes reminiscent of Keaton in The Cameraman and elsewhere. The gags are mostly good and Forde controls events enough to not interrupt the broader narrative.

He gets his chance to demo for the Minister but the enemy agents kidnap him and Pauline, and, as Walter pushes his pal Cuthbert too far, the real-life tank runs amok to comic effect. The filmmakers were clearly delighted to get the loan of kit and crew and it shows with crushed cars, walls and buildings to show for it.

Forde later went on to direct the legendary Arthur Askey in The Ghost Train, his sense of comic timing and seamless story advancement was to stand him in good stead in his long career behind the camera.

 

Rediscovering Roscoe with Steve Massa and Lillian Henley

The second programme was a video essay from film historian Steve Massa who gave an overview of the unfairly maligned Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle based on his recent book. Roscoe was an exceptional talent who understood cinematic comedy better than most using his expressive wit, supernatural timing and extraordinary athleticism to become one of the leading players in the 1910s. Steve discussed numerous examples of Roscoe’s comic invention, quick fire physical comedy which exhibited his grace and timing and his ability to fall headfirst and backwards in a 180-degree flop.

Roscoe enjoyed a successful run of seventeen films with Mabel Normand at Keystone and worked with Chaplin, Lloyd and his nephew, Al St John before setting up his own production company, Comique Film Corporation, with Joseph Shenk (Mr Norma Talmadge) in 1917. Steve showed a clip from the company’s first film, The Butcher Boy (1917) which also introduced a young vaudeville performer by the name of Keaton.

Of course, Roscoe’s life was turned upside down by his unjust prosecution for the death of Virginia Rappe, but even before he was completely exonerated, he carried on working with Buster in Sherlock Jr and other films. He stayed active and made a successful series of shorts in the early thirties that as Steve said, left his life on the up…

There was a full screening for His Wife’s Mistake (1916), one of Arbuckle’s best starring shorts, with Al St John. There was swinging piano accompaniment from Lillian Henley who caught the mood as always and syncopated perfectly with the pandemonium on screen.

 

Almost Lost Laughs… Charley’s Bowers and Chase plus EE Horton, Meg Morley

 

Charlie Bowers' house...

Many a Slip (1927) The Non-slip Banana

This was the inventive Charley Bowers at his most surreal, struggling to invent a non–slip banana peel at the behest of a potential rich benefactor. As with Walter Forde, Bowers is an inventor in search of a cause and he finds it when offered the seemingly impossible task of removing that staple slippiness from Slapstick’s most valuable fruit.

This being Bowers, the cause of the slippiness was not the texture of the skin but tiny bugs only viewable through one of his “Pat Pending” tele-microscopes. Cue a series of Bower’s amazing stop-motion animations along with repeated efforts to go the long way round in order to test the solution. As Matthew Rose, who runs The Lost Laugh digital magazine and website, pointed out Bowers may not have been the best comedic performer but he was an extraordinary animator and film director. Many a Slip is great fun and it’s good news that more of Bowers’ work is being found and released on home media by Lobster Films.

There’s an article on Charley from Matthew on his site here.

 

Stan is the best lawyer Charley can afford...

Now I’ll Tell One (1927) when Ollie met Stan and Charley

Before they were officially a team, Laurel and Hardy feature in a few films together including this one, which features more of the former as Charley Chase’s lawyer in an outlandish divorce case. Charley’s wife is played by Edna Marion who accuses him of all kinds of outrageous crimes against her, including having shot her dead. Quick as a flash Stan the Lawyer asks how this could be given that she is still alive, only to provide her with an unlikely explanation; “perhaps the bullet hit a bible you kept over your heart. It’s typical Chase, fast paced, comedically vindictive and stylishly silly. In addition to being a legal loose cannon, Stan also dismantles clocks and watches… and I still don’t know why. Every lawyer needs a hobby.

Horton hopes for a honeymoon?

 

Dad’s Choice (1928)

Edward Everett Horton (forgotten until recently as a silent star) made a series of highly polished two reelers at the end of the silent period before establishing himself in talkies for the next two decades. He’s another class act and plays it earnestly deadpan through this comedy of manners, as he tries to elope with his sweetheart (Sharon Lynn) whose father (Otis Harlan) certainly does not approve of the match. There’s a lovely confusion between Charlie and his girl’s mother (Josephine Crowell) who keeps on been presented with accidental winks and other signals that she’s the one he’s after.

It's very polished and Horton shows all the comic calm that made him a staple of such later classics as Top Hat, Arsenic and Old Lace and The Ghost Goes Wild. Again, there’s a set of his comedies out on Blu-ray this time from Ben Model’s Undercrank Productions - link here!

 

Meg Morley accompanied all three films in slightly different styles, responding with an effortless range of themes and tempos to suit the rhythms of the comedy on screen. A jazz player perfectly suited to the jazzed action on screen.

 

Unfortunately, I was then called away by a prior appointment at the Royal Albert Hall and so I missed the Harry Langdon in Frank Capra’s The Strong Man (1926) – his first film as director - with more Meg and then the headlining Harold Lloyd in Safety Last! (1923) accompanied by John Sweeney.  One of the all-time classics of silent comedy and the Fourth Musketeer of twenties male comedians. I’ve seen the Lloyd film and will catch up with the other Harry later on… he made some great films with Capra writing including Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1926) with Joan Crawford, and was on a roll to rival even the Big Three… the more the merrier.

 

Good to have the laughter days back at the Bioscope and, as the Cinema Museum’s future now looks assured in Kennington, here’s to many more!

 

AND, this is why bananas are so slippy...

And why mice truly are the smartest species on Earth... Charley Bowers was there first!