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"

Pre-"Laurel and Hardy" Silents 1921-1927 The Lucky Dog (1921, 17m) 45 Minutes From Hollywood (1926, 17m) Duck Soup (1927, 17m) Slipping Wives (1927, 21m) Love 'Em And Weep (1927, 21m) Why Girls Love Sailors (1927, 18m) With Love and Hisses (1927, 21m) Sailors, Beware! (1927, 20m) Now I’ll Tell One (1927, missing film, full length unknown) Do Detectives Think? (1927, 19m) Flying Elephants (1927, 17m) Sugar Daddies (1927, 16m) Directors: Jess Robbins (1); Fred Guiol (2-7,9,11); Hal Yates (8) and Frank Butler (10) DVD Availability: Try sendit.com/amazon Viewpoint: "Put 'em both up, insect, before I comb your hair with lead." Laurel and Hardy acted in a dozen shorts together before any real “official” pairing, or what one would call a “Stan and Ollie” movie. Largely generic pictures with Stan as archetypal protagonist and Ollie as “heavy” were the order of the day; and many of them can only be viewed today as historical curios. One of the best from this selection was actually their first together, The Lucky Dog. Like the majority of these selections, there’s a creaky, worlds-away style that owes more to What The Butler Saw or staged farce than any contemporary recreation of the period. In fact, it’s not until the credit “Directed by Fred Guiol” is replaced by “Clyde Bruckman, Supervised by Leo McCarey” that we really start getting somewhere. But the light (reputedly unscripted) first meeting between the two does have its moments. It’s easy with hindsight to point to the chemistry and easy interaction between the two of them, but it wasn’t until five years later they would appear together again, although Stan would direct Ollie in further pictures. Another notable point is the gulf in acting experience between them – before The Lucky Dog Stan had been appearing in movies for four years, notching up thirteen roles. Ollie, in contrast, had been doing it for seven and had already performed in 210 shorts. With this in mind, to Hardy The Lucky Dog must have seemed just another on the treadmill with his tenth company, and indeed what followed didn’t cry out as anything special either. 45 Minutes From Hollywood had Ollie, in a presaging of Brats, being perplexed by a cartoon mouse, as well as a cartoon cat in his underwear. For Stan it was a brief cameo in a false moustache, and wasn’t really a high point for either of them. Far more notable were their next three shorts, all of which were virtually remade as “talkies” - Duck Soup as Another Fine Mess, Slipping Wives as The Fixer-Uppers and Love ’Em And Weep as Chickens Come Home -. Much has been made of Duck Soup, featuring, as it does, Laurel and Hardy as the stars, and very much a double act. While Hardy’s pompous character doesn’t quite come off (he plays a down-on-his-luck rich man with Stan as his servant Hives, instead of the usual loser with delusions of grandeur, papering over the cracks of evaporating dignity with ever more desperate zeal) it nearly is Laurel and Hardy fully formed. Yet it wasn’t to be, and the following half-dozen two-reelers were, generally, an undemanding assortment that would fail to attract too much attention in isolation. However, as they’re the formative works of arguably the finest comedy act in motion picture history then they’re thrust into far more critical attention than they would otherwise warrant. A particular obscurity is Now I’ll Tell One (1927, full length unknown), a short missing from most printed Laurel and Hardy filmographies, if not the Internet. In fact, it’s not until I read about this recently-rediscovered title on the superb Laurel and Hardy Central that I was aware of it. (I should point out that the Central guys didn't discover the film or were the first to present the information - it's just that's where I read about it, that's all). A Charley Chase two-reeler, the first reel still missing, little is known about the plot and details of this short, other than both Stan and Ollie do, contrary to previous belief, appear within it. This was followed by Do Detectives Think?, and, in Ollie’s later words, “Now we’re getting someplace!” While I later argue as to whether the first “official” Laurel and Hardy shorts are in fact that, this could easily qualify, even more so than Duck Soup. For the first time both are in costume simultaneously, and in character as two inept dicks. Watching these early silents in succession can be a gruelling process, as the original music has long been replaced with repetitive and abrasive – almost obnoxious – incidentals that do more to set your teeth on edge rather than highlight any inherent humour. Despite this – and Do Detectives Think? has worse music than most – it’s still a standout from the selection here, Laurel and Hardy perfectly formed, yet discarded once again thereafter for a quirky prehistoric piece. That prehistoric venture features the pair of them dressed up as cavemen for Flying Elephants, a short that has them apart for most of the duration. Like a lot of the twelve, its comic currency is in short supply to modern audiences, with perhaps only a fur skin-bedecked James Finlayson hurling over a cliff producing laughs. Guessing how old these films are would be a good game without a filmography to hand, as the quality of the prints rises and falls dramatically. Why Girls Love Sailors - a lost film until the 80s – and Flying Elephants are both notably poor, and arguably look older than The Lucky Dog. This adds to the feel of them coming from the dawn of the cinema, just tentative steps along from George Méliès. The fascination with animation adds to this feeling, from dubbed-on KOs (Sailors Beware!) to odious food (With Love And Hisses) and flying elephants (which one was that again?). Their final pre-team escapade was the problematical Sugar Daddies. Not only did it feature nearly forty glib title cards to distract the viewer, it also carries over plot elements from Love 'Em And Weep, as well as using Pike Amusement Park to get its laughs for it in the final third. But most importantly, Laurel and Hardy again aren’t Laurel and Hardy… at least, not at first. Throughout the run highlighted here, they’ve largely spent the time working apart or against each other. Yet in Sugar Daddies - one of the better shorts from the period, despite my detractions – they emerge side-by-side, forced together by surrounding chaos, a mutual need for (literal) survival overriding the fact that Stan is the high-minded lawyer who gets to accuse Ollie’s butler of putting him in a “fine mess”. With Sugar Daddies, it was now finally time to move forward…