The year 1927 was a pivotal time for Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Both were seasoned comedy veterans, each with more than a decade’s experience in films and (in Laurel’s case) the vaudeville stage. Both were now ensconced at the celebrated Hal Roach studio. But 1927 was the year they were first costarred as a duo and almost immediately crystallized as one of the great comedy teams of all time. By year’s end they were turning out classic gems of comedy, and 1928 saw a rich outpouring of Laurel and Hardy artistry.
The Roach studio was (and is) regarded as a premier film comedy studio, for good reason. From the beginning, and especially during the 1920s, the studio was home to a staff of directors, writers, and performers who meticulously refined and polished the craft of comedy filmmaking. Slapstick comedy had long since become a staple of silent films, but the Roach team brought a new level of technique to their slapstick, introducing nuances of timing and psychology. Roach films were not simply nonstop marathons of knockabout humor; the gags were carefully structured for effect and, often, rooted in character. The artists responsible for this aesthetic included the great Leo McCarey, who supervised the early Laurel and Hardy shorts, and Stan Laurel himself, who was recognized as much for his writing and directing skills as for his performing talent. During the 1920s he had vacillated between these roles, working alternately before and behind the camera—sometimes in the same film.
Among latter-day viewers, the complaint most often heard about the films of Laurel and Hardy is that they seem excruciatingly slow. This is the complaint of a viewer who has watched the films alone, or on television, a circumstance that the films’ creators never imagined or intended. Thankfully, we will see these films today as they were meant to be seen: on a theater screen, to the laughter of a large audience. This was the setting for which the Roach team planned their films, and the pace of the comedy was painstakingly timed to accommodate the audience’s laughs. After completing a rough cut, the filmmakers routinely previewed the film in a theater and actually timed the laughs with a stopwatch. The film was then taken back to the cutting room and, not infrequently, reedited to the reactions of the preview audience. Nearly a century later, this timing still works its uncanny magic in theatrical showings.
THE FINISHING TOUCH
Directed by Clyde Bruckman, USA, 1928
With Edgar Kennedy, Dorothy Coburn, and Sam Lufkin
After a tentative beginning in the team’s first films, the characters of “Stan” and “Ollie” had fallen into place very quickly, and by the time The Finishing Touch was filmed in November–December 1927, the two were inhabiting their familiar roles as if they’d been doing it all their lives. Like other great comedians, from Chaplin to W.C. Fields, Laurel and Hardy starred in both silent and sound films; unlike the other great comedians, their reputation rests equally on both their silents and their talkies. The Finishing Touch is not an apprentice work, but a full-fledged entry in the Laurel and Hardy canon.
Their basic situation here, building a house, was a favorite setting for physical comedy, offering opportunities for falls and collisions as well as a wealth of slapstick props like ladders, hand tools, and buckets of paint. Here, of course, Laurel and Hardy put their own stamp on this tradition by overlaying it with their unique comic personae. From the opening scene, we know we’re in the company of our familiar friends: vacuous, guileless Stan, innocent perpetrator of disasters; and Ollie, constantly exasperated at his friend’s stupidity and forever bearing the brunt of Stan’s unintentional mayhem. Both are already displaying, in late 1927, what will be their signature mannerisms in later films: Stan’s “cry” when his feelings are hurt; Ollie’s direct-to-camera looks, reacting to the latest disaster with a mute appeal for audience sympathy.
Perhaps more important, they and their production team have already adopted the deliberate pacing that will distinguish the best of their films. In what Walter Kerr later described as “the saving turnaround,” Laurel and Hardy’s films had reversed the established pattern of many slapstick comedies. Instead of rushing at breakneck speed from one gag to the next, their films telegraphed the gag to the audience in advance, then allowed us to enjoy the methodically crafted route by which they arrived at that inevitable outcome. This practice is fully in effect in The Finishing Touch. When Ollie prepares to work on the house’s exterior by loading up a large mouthful of nails, we know what’s going to happen, and we also know that Stan will be utterly oblivious to the injury he has inflicted on his friend. The gag’s payoff doesn’t take us by surprise; rather, the pleasure is in watching how our heroes arrive at their foregone conclusion.
YOU’RE DARN TOOTIN’
Directed by Edgar Kennedy, USA, 1928
With Otto Lederer, Agnes Steele, Christian Frank, and Chet Brandenburg
Filmed just over a month later, You’re Darn Tootin’ builds on these ideas. Here the boys try their hands as musicians. (Fortunately for us, we can enjoy the live musical accompaniment, and simply imagine the sounds being produced by Stan and Ollie.) As members of an orchestra, they soon drive their conductor to distraction—not intentionally, but through their earnestly well-meaning efforts—and find themselves on the street. Their joint musical career continues downhill from there, and their instruments are quickly demolished. (As any viewer of The Music Box can testify, musical instruments tend not to fare well in Laurel and Hardy’s world.)
Two of the team’s 1927 films, Hats Off and The Battle of the Century, had explored a distinctive comic device: a petty tit-for-tat altercation between Stan and Ollie spreads to other passersby on the street, then gradually engulfs more and more bystanders until an entire city block becomes a maelstrom of raging, pointless fury. In You’re Darn Tootin’ the filmmakers return to this device. We’ll avoid spoilers here; suffice it to say that Laurel and Hardy and their team once again prove themselves masters of comedy construction. What could be merely an unpleasant orgy of violence becomes instead an exercise in establishing, building, timing, and topping a gag.
TWO TARS
Directed by James Parrott, USA, 1928
With Edgar Kennedy, Thelma Hill, Ruby Blaine, and Charlie Hall
Stan and Ollie are sailors on shore leave, spending an afternoon of innocent fun with two young ladies. Their misadventures with a gumball machine are enjoyable enough, but are merely an appetizer for what follows.
What follows is a return to that escalating-crowd-violence device, this time involving a long line of cars on a country road—but with a difference. Here the filmmakers refine the formula still further, slowing down the pace so that individual skirmishes build carefully and deliberately toward the climactic free-for-all. In a case of what Laurel and Hardy scholar John McCabe would call “reciprocal destruction,” Stan and Ollie inflict some awful damage on their adversary’s person or property while he patiently endures it—then stoically wait their turn while he retaliates. This would become a delightful recurring motif in their films, often with a single opponent. Here it serves as a nuanced buildup to a scene of mass chaos. “Just as Laurel and Hardy had slowed down all the standard old comedy routines,” historian Randy Skretvedt has written, “they now slowed down their own invention. In The Battle of the Century and You’re Darn Tootin’, events come quickly to a boil. In Two Tars, they simmer.”
All three of these films have been beloved for generations by devoted comedy fans but have rarely been seen in a form that does them justice. Today we have the privilege of seeing them in beautiful new editions by our friends at FPA Classics, restoring them to the pristine image quality that audiences first enjoyed in 1928.
Presented at SFSFF 2024 with live musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin and Frank Bockius