Not So Fine Messes: The 1940s Films of Laurel and Hardy (Part 2)

This is a continuation of an article, which begins here. 

After their tenure with Hal Roach, Laurel and Hardy began at Fox in 1941 with Great Guns. This was a service comedy made in light of Buck Privates, the monster hit comedy from rival studio Universal, featuring their new property, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. In Great Guns, Stan and Ollie are wards of Dan Forrester (Dick Nelson), a young man who has everything wrong with him… or so he’s told. Every aspect of his life in this luxurious mansion is controlled by his overprotective aunts (one of them played by veteran actress Mae Marsh, formerly of D.W. Griffith’s company, now a Fox contract player). Dan is delighted when he receives a draft notice, so that he can get away from this cocoon and experience life for a change. However, to keep an eye on him, Stan and Ollie also join the army. 

At the army camp, Dan begins a romance with Ginger (played by the stunning Sheila Ryan), who works at the base photography shop. Vying for Ginger’s affection is Dan’s sergeant Hippo (Edmund MacDonald). (There is even some sexual innuendo in this innocent farce, when Hippo overhears and misunderstands their conversation in the darkroom.) The sergeant’s attempts to either show off or show up Dan always backfire. Once Stan and Ollie hear that Dan is in love, they fear that his heart couldn’t take the strain. In their concern for Dan’s health, the boys try to end his romance by appearing as tycoons (which Stan pronounces as “typhoons”) to inform Ginger that Dan is broke and has no means of supporting her. She, however, recognizes the two men from their photos with Dan, and plays along with the gag- once the “typhoons” offer her a dowry not to marry him, she acts insulted and throws them out.

There is plenty of visual humour in this comedy: the boys’ attempt at getting food in the mess hall line; Hippo lighting a pipe with tobacco from a tin where Stan just put some gunpowder; a running gag where Ollie always spills liquid on himself while looking at his watch; and a great bit where they mistakenly think that a dog has just told them what room number belongs to Ginger. Remember Stan’s pipe smoking routine from the Roach films? In Great Guns, a lightbulb remains illuminated in his hand, after he removes it from its socket- it’s not a bad substitute, I guess.

In this film, Stan and Ollie have an unofficial third member of their team: Stan’s pet bird Penelope, who follows him everywhere. Further laughs ensue when they attempt to hide the bird during inspection. Penelope even figures into the climax, when the boys blunder their way through maneuvers in a mock battle: held captive by the rival army, they are put to work on a bridge that they eventually destroy, and become heroes.

While Great Guns is not knee-slapping, it is solid entertainment. The movie works because the gags properly advance the plot (in later films, much of the humour seems extraneous), and because the comedy team also figures into the romantic subplot. The heart of the movie rests upon the key role of Dan, who is unflappable.  Every challenge becomes an exciting experience for him; he is as childishly naïve as Stan or Ollie. 

This comedy, directed by Monty Banks, was a huge box office hit, which ensured a return engagement for Laurel and Hardy at 20^th Century Fox. Its screenwriter, Lou Breslow would also do their next film- surprisingly, the mixture of comedy and plot wouldn’t be so consistent.

In A-Haunting We Will Go (1942), Stan and Ollie are ordered out of town for vagrancy, and to stay out of jail, they accept a job to deliver a coffin via train to Dayton, Ohio. These knuckleheads think that they’re delivering the body of a poor old lady’s departed son, but in truth, the cargo is a living, breathing mobster who is being spirited away by his cohorts under the nose of the law, so he can appear in Dayton as the supposed heir to a fortune of a recently departed rich miser. (Where else will you see perennial movie tough guy Elisha Cook Jr. in drag?) While boarding the train, their casket gets mixed up with the cargo of Dante the Magician. This plot device re-appears about a half-hour later, after a generous helping of comedy routines.

Right away, the boys lose all of their money on the purchase of an “Inflato” device, sold to them by a couple of con artists on the train, who allege that this contraption magically turns a one dollar bill into something of a larger denomination. Only after their expensive meal in the dining car (Mantan Moreland is the waiter!), replete with cigars, in their attempt to use Inflato to pay for dinner, do they realize they’ve been fleeced. In this sequence, Stan Laurel was given the chance to improvise a routine with Willie Best (who plays a porter), but this visual add-on was nearly missed by the unprepared cameraman, as evidenced by the sloppy framing of the slapstick that concludes this scene.

The men are about to be thrown off the train, when they meet Dante the Magician. (In a “meanwhile” moment, we had witnessed him doing a slight of hand routine in the dining car while young wide-eyed children look on: among them, pre-Howard Hughes starlet Terry Moore). He tells them that the so-called Inflato is just some cheap novelty store prop, and out of sympathy for their misfortune, he pays their dinner bill, and also hires them as stagehands for his act in Dayton. Meanwhile, the coffin that the boys have dropped off is opened to reveal nothing but Dante promotional material inside, and the gangsters chase Laurel and Hardy around backstage of Dante’s act trying to locate the “real” coffin. 

Up until this point, A-Haunting We Will Go (a misleading title suggesting a ghost comedy instead of the mystery that ensues) is a fluid, very entertaining comedy. There are some memorable moments with Laurel and Hardy in swami costumes playing with Dante’s props, including a very clever sight gag where Stan and Ollie chase each other in and out of phone booths that they keep disappearing into. Another fun set piece occurs where they become part of the “magic rope” act, where Ollie must keep playing his horn, or the rope holding Stan will collapse.

But suddenly, Lou Breslow’s script becomes a complicated hall of mirrors, when the plot shifts to something that would befit one of Fox’s mystery series. The last half of this film becomes really complex, with double-crosses, mistaken identities and murder. There is even a tacked on romantic subplot, once again featuring Sheila Ryan (also showcased in an add-on scene performing with Dante) and John Shelton, as stagehands. It appears he has a shady past with the gangsters, although he is reformed. 

All of this makes sense at the end, but it appears that viewers get two movies for the price of one. It becomes apparent that director Alfred Werker becomes more interested in the suspense half (he would also show his flair in such thrillers as Shock and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes), with moody lighting and serious tones. He also commits the sin of filming Stan Laurel in close-up, which gives one a sad reminder that these seemingly ageless clowns are much older in body than in spirit. At this juncture, Laurel and Hardy become secondary to the plot: everything resolves without their involvement, although the film ends with a bizarre sight gag where Stan disappears from a sarcophagus and is found (miniature-sized) inside an egg!

While Laurel and Hardy would do better films in this decade, A-Haunting We Will Go is probably the one of the Fox films I’d watch most. Perhaps because this was the first of that period that I’ve ever seen, and thus have some nostalgia towards it, but also, despite the shifts in tone throughout the last half of the movie, it is the most complex of these pictures. Too often their 1940s films are disjointed or very simply plotted; this one is fascinating to watch for the intricate story, and despite, the inconsistencies, the comedy duo is in fine form.

Part three of this article begins here.