(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.