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"

The Music Box Year: 1932 Directed by: James Parrott Awards: Academy Award, 'Best Short Subject (Comedy) 1931-1932' Duration: 30m DVD Availability: Try amazon (region 1)/sendit.com (region 2) Viewpoint: "Of all the dumb things!" It’s almost impossible to imagine this Laurel and Hardy film being commissioned nowadays. Quite apart from the fact it’s a short, The Music Box contains many elements that mean such a picture could never be commissioned in a shallower, demographics-led age. A film about two middle-aged, not exactly attractive men? No love interest, just a woman to order the piano, and a mother to be kicked up the backside by Stan? And the whole film’s about them moving a piano? Yet this was 1932 and for that we must be grateful. While The Music Box may seem a little singular in its intent, it should be noted that the piano reaches the top of the stairs by the half-way point, and only gets to fall down them three times. (They take it back down for a fourth). On the downside, despite being their sole Oscar-winner, the humour does seem a little more forced than usual, and the cuts more notable. While the thought of Stan and Ollie taking a piano up some stairs, getting it to the top, then taking it back down again when told there was an easier way to do it is funny, you have to ask yourself are even Laurel and Hardy that dumb? The second half is the better, if less remembered segment. Here the duo demolish a house while trying to install the piano, with a highlight being the pair’s Dixieland tap dance. While arguably the best remembered of all Laurel and Hardy’s films, certainly of their shorts, The Music Box isn’t them at their finest. However, even below standard L & H is well above everybody else’s average, and we must be grateful for a time, long ago, when such a project would get a producer’s green light.