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"

Night Owls Year: 1930 Directed by: James Parrott Duration: 20m DVD Availability: Try sendit.com (region 2 only) Viewpoint: "Kennedy'll fix it." A very funny short involving Stan and Ollie as the world’s most inept burglars, Night Owls was the first Laurel and Hardy film to be made into a foreign language. This process – which is also touched upon in the reviews for Blotto, Below Zero, The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case, Be Big! and Laughing Gravy - involved both stars (and, in this case, James Finlayson and Edgar Kennedy) speaking phonetic European languages in order to appeal to the foreign market. All this in the days before subtitling and dubbing were really possible, and audience demand meant that ticket-buyers appreciated hearing Stan and Ollie’s real voices anyway, flawed pronunciation or not. While it’s possible that records are missing entries (The 1927 silent Now I’ll Tell One was only recently revealed to feature both Stan and Ollie) what’s currently known is that there were eight Spanish films, six French ones, three German and two Italian. Of them, only ten (plus clips from the German version of Pardon Us, Hinter Schloss Und Riegel) are currently known to exist. Neither of the Italian ones – Muraglie (Pardon Us) or Ladroni (Night Owls) are believed to be in existence. For some reason the Spanish takes have been better preserved. Only Radiomania (Hog Wild) is still missing, with La Vida Nocturna (Blotto, 37m), Tiembla Y Titubea (Below Zero, 27m), Noche De Duendes (The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case/Berth Marks, 47m), De Bote En Bote (aka Los Presidiarios, Pardon Us), Los Calaveras (Be Big!/Laughing Gravy, 60m), Politiquerías (Chickens Come Home-, 53m) all in the archives. I’ve been lucky enough to get to see all of them, (save for De Bote En Bote), along with the Spanish take on Night Owls, Ladrones (34m). It’s notable that in this first attempt at such a daring format, the dialogue is cut down and the violence upped. There’s more hat-bashing from Stan, though there’s no attempt at a Spanish translation of “Don’t shush me!” My favourite moment from this version has to be a charming moment where they both almost drop out of character. Just over thirteen minutes in, Ollie’s doing his best “my jaw aches after being hit by a brick” acting and Stan momentarily appears to be about to genuinely laugh at his comic performance. He covers it by going into character and pointing dopily at Hardy, who in turn tries to cover it by giving him a characteristic hand-swipe. The scene then cuts quickly as a smile plays over Ollie’s face, almost as if the ludicrousness of the situation – two grown men pretending to be cats, and in Spanish – has hit them. Running nearly fifteen minutes longer than the American version (disregard the durations given in this respect – they’re rounded up to the nearest whole number for brevity – purists might like to know it runs to 34’24m) it features an alternate ending where the boys don’t get away, and return to the “car in a puddle” climax so beloved of their silents. This ending was also shot for the English language version but scrapped for the alternate ending, and now only exists in stills. For such an innocuous, albeit delightful, short, it’s amazing how much of their history stretches through it, Stan’s particularly. Not only did he and Hardy take a 1953 tour with a sketch based upon it, but it in turn was based upon an earlier sketch of Stan’s, The Nutty Burglar, from 1912. Not only that, but Stan’s – and Chaplin’s – mentor, Fred Karno, was around at this time, having been employed by Hal Roach in October 1929. Unfortunately, Roach discovered that Karno was more of a manager and not the gag man he had presumed, and so let Karno go in February 1930. Finally, for an unusually fact-based review, this was, of course, the first Laurel and Hardy movie to feature the “Ku Ku” song by T. Marvin Hatley, a theme that was made the norm two films later in Brats, and often overdubbed over rereleases of earlier shorts. Most of the stock themes that run throughout Laurel and Hardy’s works were placed there for rereleases… you can easily compare how much better Night Owls works without music by watching the colorised version, which has incongruous themes played all the way through it. One touching element of Night Owls is that Stan and Ollie are once again victims of circumstance, placed in the role of burglars by a policeman under duress. Their roles as tramps are not there as society counterpoints, like Chaplin’s, but rather they are society, the victims of depression (see also Below Zero, One Good Turn, Scram! and more) What “Kennedy will fix it” really entailed is a saddening notion, and they remain trapped through circumstance.