Not So Fine Messes: The 1940s Films of Laurel and Hardy (Part 3)

Note: Part 1 of this series can be viewed here, and Part 2 can be viewed here.

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1943 would be a banner year for Laurel and Hardy. They released two films from 20^th Century Fox (Jitterbugs; Dancing Masters), and the first of two from MGM (Air Raid Wardens), and also toured on stage. RKO re-released their 1939 one-off film Flying Deuces, and Hal Roach also re-released work from the vault: all presumably to capitalize on their fame. 

Air Raid Wardens, another wartime comedy, opens with a narrator describing the typically all-American small town of Huxton, “where not much happens”. There is a Preston Sturges-like feel to the proceedings as we are introduced to some of the key players in the upcoming scenario, and to Laurel and Hardy, who represent the typical Sturges everyman trying to make good in a hostile environment. Typically, they unwittingly cause havoc in the life of the flustered banker, Mr. Norton (played by Howard Freeman). They are seen once again back from a failed attempt at enlisting, and once again failing at entrepreneurship. 

Their bicycle shop has been foreclosed, and the contents are being removed in place of goods for the radio shop soon to be opened by Eustace Middling (played by Donald Meek). During one phone call, the audience senses that Middling (interesting name choice!) is up to something shady. 

Still, the boys want to do their part for the war effort in the home front. First, they start pasting billboards, which results in getting glue all over each other, and Norton’s wife (Nella Walker). Then, they become air raid wardens, who go door-to-door at night to inform people to turn their lights off during a drill. They couldn’t screw that up, could they? During an air raid drill, they are offered an easy assignment to go and bandage someone’s finger, but the cards get mixed up, and they have to tend to, you guessed it, Mr. Norton. This scene involves some pretty good slapstick, as Norton gets bandaged head to tow, rolls away on a cart and hits a car fender head first!

This film employs some comedy veterans to work alongside this historic comedy team. Charley Rogers (who wrote for many of their 1930s features, including Blockheads and Our Relations) is among the contributors of the screenplay; the director is Edward Sedgwick, who had made many sound comedy vehicles for Buster Keaton and Joe E. Brown. For a change, the comedy duo has a good veteran comic foil to work with onscreen, as opposed to someone on the studio’s stock company payroll. The egg-headed Edgar Kennedy (perhaps best remembered today as the ill-fated lemonade stand owner who is terrorized by Harpo Marx in Duck Soup) provides some of the best slapstick moments. His first scene finds him at odds with Stan and Ollie when he is helping to move Middling’s equipment into the store. He re-appears as one of the homeowners, when the duo is door-knocking. Kennedy refuses to turn his lights off because he’s finishing a jigsaw puzzle. Still, the boys insist, and a duel begins over flicking a switch on and off. The constant lights-on lights-off emanating from Kennedy’s house causes a neighbour to think that he’s signalling the enemy for an invasion!

Stan and Ollie’s MGM films have a luxurious, expensive look that sets them apart from their Fox pictures: not even a “small” movie at MGM can look impoverished. Despite the slicker production values, MGM’s films however stoop lower than the insensitive scribes at Fox ever dared. In both movies, there is a midsection where their characters are stripped of their last shred of dignity. The result can be cringing, because they appear more tragic than comic. The comedies of errors instead become pathetic. On the other hand, this twist also makes the comedians appear more like human beings, instead of merely being amusing clowns. It is in these curiously melodramatic moments where the beloved caricatures of Stan and Ollie represent more than the everyman trying to get by: they are seen as nakedly human, with flaws and pain as real as any experienced by viewers out of the movie house.

That moment is perhaps put to better use in their next MGM feature, Nothing But Trouble. In Air Raid Wardens, this denouement occurs after the comic highlight at Kennedy’s house. That skirmish results in a mistaken accusation of the boys’ being drunk on duty. What little credibility they previously had has completely evaporated. Not even the film’s romantic couple, Dan Madison (Horace, later Stephen, McNally) and Peggy Parker (Jacqueline White) can do anything to help them now.

Then, the boys notice that Middling is up to some spy activity, and decide to investigate the matter themselves, as no one would now believe them. They follow Middling to his hideout, and learn that when Major Scanlon has his surprise drill at 5 PM, Middling and cohorts plan to blow up the magnesium plant, while the rest of the townsfolk are diverted. In an amusing bit, they send a carrier pigeon off to warn Dan, but the bird instead flies downstairs to the spies, who get wise that the boys are eavesdropping on them, and hold them captive. The film climaxes with the boys escaping and racing to warn the authorities in time.

While Air Raid Wardens has an equal amount of comedy set pieces in its scenario, Great Guns is the superior wartime service comedy. Despite the presence of comedy veterans before and behind the camera, this film however feels rushed or forced. In many of the Hal Roach movies, one recalls a longer-than-usual pause after a gag, as the filmmakers cannily waited for the audience to stop laughing before the movie continued. In this picture, one of those pregnant pauses also occurs- only this time no laughter fills the gap. Some of the slapstick is poor- especially in early moments with Norton. The climax is also curiously low on suspense, even when the boys use a broken-down jalopy to thwart the spies in time, and the film ends with a ham-fisted tacked-on resolution. 

Not surprisingly, it works best in sequences where things are allowed to build properly- moments where it appears that they weren’t as concerned about getting the film down to a certain length. The scenes with Kennedy are obvious highlights, as is the elaborate scene where the boys attend a town hall meeting, and unwittingly sabotage Mrs. Norton’s speech with squeaky shoes and a barking dog.

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In between assignments for MGM, Laurel and Hardy would return to Fox for what is arguably their strongest work at that studio. Their next picture, Jitterbugs, began their association with veteran director, Malcolm St. Clair, who would helm all of their remaining comedies at Fox. Director St. Clair’s pedigree dates back to the silent era, especially in co-directing with Buster Keaton some of his classic comedy shorts (The Goat, The Blacksmith). This film is a delight to watch for fans, because Scott Darling’s screenplay for once portrays the classic Laurel and Hardy characters as something more than bumbling simpletons. 

In many of their previous efforts, Stan and Ollie have been taken advantage of by con men (see A-Haunting We Will Go, above). With Jitterbugs, they do their own version of The Sting, as they help to outsmart a swindler. The film opens with Stan and Ollie as carnival musicians (who play the best of Glenn Miller, Harry James and Spike Jones) stranded in the country, as their car is out of gas. Along comes con man Chester Wright (played by Bob Bailey) who introduces them to a miraculous invention that will revolutionize wartime gas rationing. He has a pill which allegedly turns water into gasoline. Of course it’s all sleight of hand, as he gives a free demonstration and fill-up to the boys with the real gas that he had in the can all the time. The men decide to join forces in show business.

The following scene is a delightful sequence where we see our comic duo performing a catchy number, each doubling on multi-instruments. (Ollie’s trumpet solo sounds a lot like Harry James!) After engaging the public with their musical act, they captivate their imaginations further with these magical gasoline pills. One unlucky patron buys them, fills his car with water, and the automobile explodes. This moment is all part of the act, as is the “detective” in the crowd (Chester), who “arrests” the boys, and they all hightail it out of town.

Meanwhile, Chester had been dancing in the crowd with a girl named Susan (Vivian Blaine), who reveals that her mother was fleeced out of ten thousand dollars in a real estate deal by two guys named Bennett and Corcoran. Recognizing the two as swindlers, he plots with the boys to get her money back. But is Chester’s motivation out of sympathy towards Susan, or is this simply a ploy to get some good cash?

The appeal of Jitterbugs is less in the details than the execution. It is simply entertaining to see Laurel and Hardy for once playing characters that are smart. The duo, with Chester and Susan, journeys to a New Orleans hotel where Corcoran (Robert Emmett Keane) is staying. Ollie poses as a womanizing colonel from Texas (the native Georgian gets to use a southern accent for a change) who sets to woo Corcoran’s girlfriend, Dorcas (played by Lee Patrick). This film (and Dancing Masters) is special for featuring Oliver Hardy in a delightful dance number: despite his girth, he is surprisingly light on his feet, as he romances Dorcas. Corcoran had secretly intended Dorcas to seduce “the colonel”, so that he could walk in at a certain moment and blackmail him. However, “the colonel” instead says that he is a sheriff with a warrant for Corcoran’s arrest, and Ollie succeeds in getting the man’s share of the ten grand to let him go.

Next, Susan goes to the riverboat owned by Bennett (Douglas Fowley), and auditions as a singer. Bennett is impressed by her genuine talent, and yearns to put a big show on for her, but needs some capital to do it. Enter Stan, in drag, pretending to be Susan’s rich aunt, who agrees to finance her “niece’s” show if Bennett matches the investment. He in turn borrows some money from the mob, and once Chester receives the cash, they take off. Bennett realizes he’s been swindled- he and the mob are in pursuit to get their money back.

The final half of this caper is highlighted by Stan’s delightful performance as “the aunt”, whose salty humour and vivacity bemuses even the hoods. Although the movie becomes a little muddled in its final moments, Jitterbugs is otherwise a delightful surprise. Laurel and Hardy are marvellous in roles that give them more character than their usual archetypes. This is also perhaps the best-written of all the Fox titles: no matter how entertaining the others are, most suffer from patchy story continuity. This flaw is especially apparent in their next feature.

All analysis aside, a comedian’s main occupation is to make people laugh. If their worth is decided on this factor alone, then Laurel and Hardy succeeded in spades with The Dancing Masters, by far the funniest vehicle they made in the 1940s. As the film opens, we see Stan and Ollie as owners of a dance studio. We witness the unlikely sight of Stan doing ballet, and also Oliver teaching dance. Like the previous movie, Jitterbugs, we see Oliver Hardy with an agility that belies his size: his buoyant moves are terrific. Initially, we might fear that The Dancing Masters is going to be a musical comedy- a formula that hadn’t served them well in a couple of Roach features. However, in the best tradition of W.C. Fields, the setting is just an excuse to put this madcap picture into motion.

Once again, the boys are featured as easily swindled dolts, as they are fleeced by gangsters who hit them up to buy some “protection insurance” (look fast for a young Robert Mitchum), and once again there is a romantic subplot. Their assistant Trudy (played by Trudy Marshall) is in love with an ambitious young inventor named Grant (Bob Bailey again). Her father, Wentworth Harlan (Matt Briggs) is grooming George Worthing (future cowboy star Allan “Rocky” Lane) to be his future son-in-law, so much so that poor Grant has to sneak over to her house when Trudy’s parents are away!

Laurel and Hardy use their tried and true handshake and hand-switching gags generously in this film. It would be unfair to accuse their later films of recycling their old routines, because even in their features for Roach, they were reworking old gags from their shorts! This picture succeeds on its own merits, as Stan and Ollie blur from one funny sequence to the next. 

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In the elaborate sequence when the boys accompany Grant to Trudy’s house for dinner, Oliver plays with what he believes is a radio switch, which operates a revolving door turning a living room wall into a bar. (Her dad comes off as a teetotaler!) The parents have to return home from their trip suddenly because they had to give up their airplane seats to some GIs. Wentworth throws Grant out; meanwhile the boys hide in the house and try to sneak out when the Harlans are asleep. Like most other set pieces in this film, this situation turns into disaster when they sneak out the bedroom window, taking the rug, the bed and its two occupants into the pool below! These scenes also benefit from the appearance of Margaret Dumont, who was often cast as the high society dame befuddled by the anarchy of the Marx Brothers. She adds some class as Harlan’s uptight wife (love her reactions to her husband’s secret bar).

As always, Stan and Ollie are cast as failed entrepreneurs, and are also delinquent on their bills (Stan attempts to demonstrate Grant’s vacuum cleaner to Ollie, forgetting that the power has been cut off.) The landlord gives them until noon to come up with some rent money. Their pursuit for cash somehow lands them in an auction, where they help a lady bid on a clock while she runs out. They spend the rest of the money on the clock, which gets run over by a truck in the next scene. 

There is a story gap, as the rest of this funny scene was cut out of the film to save some running time, so the fault isn’t that of screenwriter Scott Darling (who would work on the remaining Fox pictures). We jump cut along to Grant’s laser gun demonstration, which he hopes will attract some investors. Stan is disguised as a professor who doesn’t speak a word of English (his and Ollie’s dialogue of Pig Latin, befuddling the money men, is another highlight). The laser gun ends up zapping Harlan’s house, setting it on fire. 

Ollie hears of a guy who collected big on a roller coaster accident, and remembers the “insurance policy” they signed, so he decides to take Stan to the beach and stage an accident so that they can get some money to allow Grant to repair his laser gun. Meanwhile, Wentwoth has sent George packing, and decides to finance Grant himself. The comic suspense is on high during the madcap climax set on a runaway bus (which reaches the insanity of the final chase in W.C. Fields’ Never Give a Sucker an Even Break). 

A dog with cake icing on its mouth is mistaken for being rabid (don’t analyze this scene too hard, any more than one should ponder why Stan has a big pail of glue in the dance studio), which causes everyone to bail out of the bus, driver included, except for Stan and Ollie, who must somehow steer the vehicle to safety. Although to our modern eyes, many shots in this sequence are obviously rear-screen projection (particularly when the bus gets on a rollercoaster track), it is very entertaining all the same, recalling the good old days of thrills and laughter.

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Part 4 of this article continues here.