Tag: 1930

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A Laurel and Hardy Party #11: HOG WILD

(1930; director: James Parrott)

Looking back, I’ve spent my whole life stumbling and fumbling. I’m still alive and have all of my limbs so I guess that I haven’t done too badly, but my sharpest memories of the past are of the mistakes. The pratfalls. The goof-ups. Slipping on a banana peel and crashing into the fine china (in the figurative sense).

I’m not complaining though, because I think most of us are like that. As I write this, we just went through November elections in the USA and we’ve been watching some of the most powerful people on Earth stumble and fumble for months. No one is above it.

Stumbling and fumbling is life. Just be careful and don’t kill anyone or yourself. Don’t screw around near open flames. Say no to addictive drugs. Don’t run with scissors. Practice safe stumbling and fumbling.

Make peace with your capacity to stumble and fumble and watch your sense of humor about yourself emerge. Watch your ability to roll with life’s many punches emerge.

You might also acquire an appreciation for the genius of Laurel and Hardy, cinema’s greatest stumblers and fumblers.

We’re coming up on a hundred years since these early shorts had Depression-era audiences rolling in the aisles, but as I sit in my living room in my underwear here in the 21st century going through the 10-disc Essential Collection DVD set, I find myself relating fiercely to this madness.

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A Laurel and Hardy Party #10: BELOW ZERO and TIEMBLA Y TITUBEA

(1930; director: James Parrott)

Depression-era comedies such as this one feel freshly relevant in today’s Age of the Pandemic, when many of us are teetering on the edge of ruin. Who knows? Maybe this winter, I’ll be on the street with an instrument that I have no idea how to play, busking for pennies, and having snowballs thrown at me.

The opening title card explicitly sets this mean and funny little short in the winter of 1929. Money is scarce, but snow is plenty. It falls in harsh blankets on the city where Laurel and Hardy have set up shop as street musicians. They play one song over and over again (“In the Good Old Summertime”, hilariously). One suspects that it’s the only song that they know. Or at least Stan Laurel knows it, sorta kinda. He plays a hint of the main melody repeatedly on a portable organ while Oliver Hardy plucks random strings on a stand-up bass like it’s the first time he’s ever touched one, or any other musical instrument, in his life.

Everyone hates them, of course–and those instruments don’t have long to live.

That’s the first half.

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A Laurel and Hardy Party #9: BRATS

(1930; director: James Parrott)

Laurel and Hardy are the bumbling babysitters of two annoying toddlers and this is a great short because it doesn’t make the mistake that a lot of lesser comedies would make.

They didn’t hire cute kids to play the troublemakers. Cute kids don’t exist in Laurel & Hardy’s world of idiots and jerks.

They also didn’t hire kids who sorta look like jerks.

Nope, the Hal Roach crew did the right thing and had Stan and Ollie also play the toddlers, via gloriously primitive 1930 camera tricks. Roach and stalwart director James Parrott went to the trouble to make some oversized furniture for them, but they didn’t even try to make the boys look proportionate as 3-year-olds. They look like they got hit with the shrinking ray from Dr. Cyclops.

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A Laurel and Hardy Party #8: BLOTTO and LA VIDA NOCTURNA

(1930; director: James Parrott)

My favorite Laurel & Hardy situation is when they’re henpecked husbands. He’s a klutz. She’s an unpleasant harpy. Together they have a perfect marriage straight out of a nightmare. His idea of fun is going out with his buddy. Her idea of fun is squashing his fun.

Call it misogyny, I call it comedy. There are no good jokes to make about a happy marriage. Comedy is a crop that grows best in cold climates and these films are short enough that they end before it gets depressing.

Also, let’s just say that for some of us out here, this shit is highly relatable.

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A Laurel and Hardy Party #7: NIGHT OWLS and LADRONES

(1930; director: James Parrott)

I’m not a laugher. Never been a laugher. Even when I was a kid. I remember watching old Looney Tunes cartoons with my younger cousins while they were LAUGHING HYSTERICALLY. They were falling to pieces. Every time that Bugs got the upper hand on Elmer Fudd or The Coyote got flattened by another anvil, these kids lost their shit.

Meanwhile, I, age 9 or 10, just sat there quietly. I liked the cartoon, too. I was enjoying it. I was entertained. It was good. I was happy. I probably had a smile on my face.

But I didn’t have the physical reaction that my cousins did. And to this day I still find myself in the same situation all of the time and I don’t know why. I have a sense of humor. I like to laugh, but I’m very stingy about it for some reason. I mostly laugh at real-life mishaps and accidents rather than jokes or movie gags. For that stuff, I tend to smirk and think “yeah, that was good.” I rarely cut loose and explode.

I guess I’m just a creep.

And I mention this because Night Owls made me laugh my face off. It bored a hole through the stone wall. This is my favorite short so far on my Laurel and Hardy journey.

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