Silent Films: pre-team 1921-1927 Laurel and Hardy Silents 1927 Laurel and Hardy Silents 1928 Laurel and Hardy Silents 1929 Laurel and Hardy sound films (alphabetical order): A-Haunting We Will Go Air Raid Wardens Another Fine Mess Any Old Port! Atoll K (aka Utopia) Babes In Toyland Beau Hunks Be Big! Below Zero Berth Marks The Big Noise Block-Heads Blotto The Bohemian Girl Bonnie Scotland Brats The Bullfighters Busy Bodies Chickens Come Home - The Chimp A Chump At Oxford Come Clean County Hospital The Dancing Masters The Devil's Brother aka Fra Diavolo Dirty Work The Fixer Uppers The Flying Deuces Fra Diavolo aka The Devil's Brother Going Bye-Bye! Great Guns Helpmates Hog Wild The Hoose-Gow Jitterbugs Laughing Gravy The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case The Live Ghost Me And My Pal Men O'War The Midnight Patrol The Music Box Night Owls Nothing But Trouble Oliver The Eighth One Good Turn Our Relations Our Wife Pack Up Your Troubles Pardon Us Perfect Day Saps At Sea Scram! Sons of the Desert Swiss Miss Their First Mistake Them Thar Hills They Go Boom! Thicker Than Water Tit For Tat Towed In A Hole Twice Two Unaccustomed As We Are Utopia (aka Atoll K) Way Out West Specials: Cameos Cartoons For Love Or Mummy Laurel and Hardy Memories "Stan"

Laughing Gravy Year: 1931 Directed by: James W. Horne Duration: 20m (Two reels)/29m (three reels) DVD Availability: Try sendit.com (region 2 only) Viewpoint: "Isn't it funny... we never see ourselves as others see us." Laughing Gravy, a revisit of Laurel and Hardy’s last silent film, is my sister’s favourite of their movies. Oddly enough, I’ve never really much cared for it. I suspect that this is because it’s a film free of edge, and earnestly sentimental. In fact, the attempts at pathos are often so over laboured you half expect Charlie Chaplin to walk into shot giving out various flowers to blind girls. Yet it still manages to be a good, standard short, even if I could go pretty much the whole length of it without cracking my face. Just personal preference, I guess. In particular, the overbearing incidental music jars for me, and the editing in this one seems a lot looser than other shorts of the period. (look out for the rooftop scenes where a Laughing Gravy who wants to walk off set magically teleports back into position not once, but twice). What actually makes the film is the junked third reel – did they throw away the wrong bit? A decision was made to strip it down to two reels, and so an abrupt ending where the landlord (a virtually unrecognisable Charlie Hall) shoots himself off-screen was substituted. The discarded material was refound in the 1980s and used for entry into the home video market. With the benefit of DVD, many years later, not only can we have both, but colorised alternates, foreign language alternates… While I like the perversity of the replacement ending, the original stuff for the final act is both the funniest and the most genuinely touching. Stan and Ollie’s friendship is examined in detail perhaps never attempted before or since, while Ollie’s pretence at not wanting to read Stan’s letter (“Don’t coax me!”) is hilarious. It touches deeper than most shorts allow, and, even though the backdrop of poverty does make this one bittersweet, this segment places the three-reeler above its theatrical successor. Two-Reel Version: Three-Reel Version: As referenced in the review of Below Zero, Laurel and Hardy performed many of their shorts, as well as one feature (Pardon Us) speaking phonetic French, Spanish, German and Italian in order to cross over to the foreign market. While not all of these films can be traced or even exist, what is currently known is that there were - putting aside the German and Italian works for the time being - at least eight Spanish versions and six French ones. Many of the Spanish ones are in the public domain, though all that is generally available of the French material is Les Carottiers (1931), a hybrid of Be Big! and Laughing Gravy. While this placing of two separate narratives together (a title card explains that Stan and Ollie have entered into poverty halfway through) it's particularly worthwhile to see Ollie singing his emotional blackmail song to Stan in phonetic French. (For the record, the other films presently known to have been remade in the French language are Une Nuit Extravagante (Blotto); Feu Mon Oncle (The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case and Berth Marks combined); Sous Les Verrous (Pardon Us); Pêle-Mêle (Hog Wild) and Les Bons Petit Diables (Brats). The other take on this blend of two shorts was the Spanish Los Calaveras.