Yesterday I posted ‘Putting Pants On Phillip’ (1927),, the first film in which Laurel and Hardy are paired as a team even though they play characters unassociated with each other prior to their on-screen meeting. Today’s silent L&H, ‘Do Detectives Think?’ (also 1927) is their following film and the first
‘Putting Pants On Phillip’ (1927) is the first official teaming of Laurel and Hardy, though they had appeared in a handful of films together prior to this (but not as a team). They’re not really a team here either which makes this silent comedy a real curiosity. Laurel plays a
‘Double Whoopee’ (1929) is, for my money, the best of the L&H silent shorts. Though not as iconic as ‘Liberty’, ‘Two Tars’ or ‘Big Business’, the film has a motor that never quits–a very jazz-age, syncopated almost out-of-control rhythmic thrust that I find irresistible. The art deco hotel lobby setting
Sorry to have skipped a day, but not doing stuff is what Boxing Day is all about, right? Anyway, here’s a 1928 Laurel & Hardy silent called ‘The Finishing Touch’. The plot is beyond simple. L&H have inexplicably been hired to build a house. A cop and a woman who
‘That’s My Wife’ (1929), a late silent L&H short, traffics not only in cross-dressing but also in simulated male on she-male sex and some hard-core early punk dance grooves. I can’t explain it any further. Watch and enjoy an immaculately restored print of this wildly inappropriate outing as we continue
To see us through the holidays and to celebrate the joyous occasion of saying goodbye to this bizarre year, I will be posting a silent Laurel and Hardy comedy every day through January 1. I’ve loved L&H since I was a child but never took much interest in the silents
Given that TCM is showing all the ‘That’s Entertainment’ movies today, I thought I’d post the L&H magician sequence from MGM’s all-star ‘Hollywood Revue of 1929’. The movie is as creaky and wonderful as its title and while this particular L&H routine isn’t one of their high points, it was
I was surprised to read in Randy Skervedt’s excellent book ‘Laurel & Hardy–The Magic Behind The Movies’ that ‘The Finishing Touch’ (1928) was considered something of a disappointment in its day–Stan Laurel, a notoriously discerning craftsman, apparently felt that it could have been much better. Five years later some of
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDZAzkUL5B0https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DunNsrvr51A&t=278s Probably the most famous of L&H’s silent films, ‘Liberty’ is an entry into the ‘thrill comedy’ genre as exemplified by the stuntwork of Harold Lloyd’s famous comedy ‘The Freshman’ as well as any number of death-defying stunts performed by Buster Keaton. Part of the machismo of the knockabout comedian
Today’s tour of Culver City in the 1920s also includes the silent L&H classic ‘Big Business’. Shot in 1929, the classic short gives us charming views of the slow-to-be-built Cheviot Hills/Culver City adjacent area, with many empty lots and a few houses under construction that can be seen in the