Review for Laurel and Hardy: The Silent Years (1927)

Introduction

A release like this puts me in mind of this life of collecting movies and TV. I’ve somehow managed to ride this journey of technical progress. Admittedly, by the time I was born the UK had switched to PAL 625, but as a kid, our first TV was a black and white wooden box in the corner of the room. My dad had his priorities right, quickly buying a colour TV for the Argentina World Cup, but we were at the mercy of the broadcast schedules of just three channels for quite a few years. But half past five every weekday, just before the news, it was BBC2 for the classic comedy short. We’re talking Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and of course Laurel and Hardy. I think that might have been my first experience of being a fan of anything.


Of course everything changed with the advent of VHS, and so began the journey of collecting, patiently taping broadcasts, buying pre-recorded tapes, my first widescreen TV, DVD players, Blu-rays, flat panel TVs. 40 years ago, it was a 19” black and white set, now we’re watching OLED panels, maybe 100 inches in size, with theatrical quality audio, and in 4k resolution. At age 4, I was enraptured by these silent comedy shorts, 4:3 ratio in black and white, with non-standard frame rates on that tiny TV, and now, I want to watch those same films in as good as quality as possible. They are still the same films, but they do look better in high definition. And I never thought that this would be a destination on this journey that I’ve been on.


Speaking of DVDs, I’ve been enjoying the Laurel and Hardy boxset for many years now, 21 discs of Hal Roach magnificence. That boxset has plenty of silent shorts as well, but they are more of a bonus; with the effort put into the talkies. It’s only since I got an HD TV that I’ve been feeling that those transfers don’t stand up they way other DVDs do, with more than a few artefacts. Just as with any film media, the ultimate resolution you can present that material at is determined by the properties of the film medium, original negative or nth generation film print. And so it is that a 100 year old movie on Blu-ray will drastically improve on the same film on DVD. It will look better still in 4k.


But here’s the real selling point. In the years between the release of that DVD behemoth, and this new Silent Years Collection, film restoration experts have been sleuthing and scouring film collections and catalogues, and some of those shorts that were missing footage 20 years ago, have been completed in the interim. Mass audiences can now see some of these films again for the first time in almost a hundred years. As mentioned, Laurel and Hardy are better known for their talkies, some of the few comedians of that era that made the transition from silent movies. But in 1927, they made several silent movies, which are presented in this collection in production order, along with a couple of earlier films where they appeared together prior to their iconic partnership; all with new restorations.


There are separate extras on each disc, listed in the extras section. Each film has a sub-menu where you’ll see the associated extras.

Disc 1
1. The Lucky Dog [1921] (23:24)
Stan is a brash young man facing adversity, especially when his landlady throws him out. But his life starts to change when he encounters a lucky dog. It’s in the air whether it’s good luck (meeting an attractive young poodle owner), or bad (encountering an armed crook who misplaces his ill-gotten gains in Stan’s pocket) but mayhem ensues.

* Audio Commentary with David Kalat
* Stills Gallery

2. 45 Minutes From Hollywood [1926] (22:27)
The bank’s about to foreclose, and the idea is for grandpa to head to Hollywood and pay off the debt, but grandson Orville has always wanted to see Hollywood. He wanders into a bank robbery, thinking it’s a film set, and winds up being pursued as one of the gang.

* Audio Commentary with David Kalat
* Stills Gallery


3. Duck Soup (21:54)
Two discerning tramps hiding from conscription find a vacant mansion. The owner is leaving on safari, his unscrupulous servants are renting out the building in his absence, and they can sneak in, masquerading as Colonel Buckshot and his maid Agnes... and then prospective tenants show up looking to rent the place. Remade as Another Fine Mess in 1930.

* Audio Commentary with David Kalat
* Stills Gallery

4. Slipping Wives (22:12)
A wife feels neglected by her artist husband, so their friend advises her to make him jealous by faking an affair. Enter paint deliveryman Ferdinand Flamingo, an unlikely lothario she disguises as a famous writer. Forget the danger of a jealous husband, Ferdinand starts a vendetta with the family butler, Jarvis.

* Audio Commentary with David Kalat
* Stills Gallery


5. Love ‘Em and Weep (21:57)
Titus Tillbury is a happily married businessman, until his past catches up with him, and youthful fling Peaches knocks on his door looking to cash in. So Titus asks his right hand man Romaine Ricketts to keep her occupied while he and his wife entertain Judge Chigger. Remade as Chickens Come Home

* Audio Commentary with David Kalat
* Stills Gallery

6. Why Girls Love Sailors (20:07)
Willie Brisling and fiancé Nellie are happily smitten, but the treacherous and adulterous Captain of the Merry Maiden shows up and kidnaps her for himself. It’s up to Willie to sneak aboard ship and rescue his true love, but the obnoxious first mate stands in his way.

* Audio Commentary with Patrick Vasey
* Stills Gallery


7. With Love and Hisses (22:33)
Cuthbert Hope couldn’t be less suited to the army, but he’s enlisted anyway, which brings no little grief to Top Sergeant Banner, whose job it is to take the men in hand. And that grief just flows up the chain of command all the way to Captain Bustle, whose quest for an easy life keeps being thwarted.

* Audio Commentary with Patrick Vasey
* Stills Gallery

Disc 2
8. Sailors Beware! (21:32)
The SS Miramar is the ship of choice for millionaires heading for Monte Carlo, which makes it the ship of choice for husband and wife thieves Madame Ritz and Robert, the latter a little person disguised as a baby. The only problem is that they stiffed Chester Chaste on the fare, the cabbie who took them there. He got accidentally shanghaied, and rubbed ship’s Purser Cryder the wrong way.

* Audio Commentary with Patrick Vasey
* Stills Gallery


9. Do Detectives Think? (20:55)
Judge Foozle does his civic duty, and sentences The Tipton Slasher to death. He doesn’t think much of it, when the killer swears revenge, but his tune changes when the Slasher promptly escapes. So the judge calls a detective agency for help. They send two of their finest, Ferdinand Finkleberg and Sherlock Pinkham.

* Audio Commentary with Chris Seguin and Kyp Harness
* Stills Gallery

10. Flying Elephants (19:00)
6000 years ago, the king declares that all men must marry within 24 hours. Success in courtship is decided by the weight of a club, so that leaves Mighty Giant and Little Twinkle Star competing for the hand of Blushing Rose, daughter of the wizard Saxophonus.

* Audio Commentary with Glenn Mitchell
* Stills Gallery


11. Sugar Daddies (16:24)
Cyrus Brittle wakes up with a hangover, and a new wife, although meeting the new Mrs Brittle gets him on the phone to his lawyer, looking for a way out. That’s doubly imperative, given his new brother-in-law is a criminal looking for a quick payday. And Brittle’s lawyer and his butler don’t see eye-to-eye. Remake of Love ‘Em and Weep.

* Audio Commentary with Glenn Mitchell
* Stills Gallery

12. The Second 100 Years (22:26)
Little Goofy and Big Goofy are doing hard time, and having to share one cigarette is just cruel. But they have a plan to tunnel their way out of prison. They have the worst timing though, as the prison is due to host a contingent of French police chiefs investigating alternative penal policies.

* Audio Commentary with Neil Brand
* Stills Gallery

13. Call of the Cuckoo (19:16)
Papa Gimblewart and his family would have a decent life, were it not for the oddballs next door, up to all manner of bohemian hijinks at all hours. They’re desperate enough to move, but no-one is desperate enough to move in given the lunatics next door, until one day they do get someone willing to house-swap. There’s a reason for that.

* Audio Commentary with Glenn Mitchell
* Stills Gallery


14. Putting Pants on Philip (20:40)
Uncle Piedmont is expecting his nephew Philip from Scotland, and while he’s been warned that Philip is something of a womaniser, he isn’t ready for the trouble that comes with the kilt wearing immigrant. He’s constantly chasing after everything in a dress, and after one scandal too many, Piedmont decides that the kilt has to go.

* Audio Commentary with Patrick Vasey
* Stills Gallery
* Alternate Robert Youngson Score

15. The Battle of the Century (17:43)
It’s a perfect plan, getting prize fighter Stanley to win $100 by winning a fight, but when he gets the second prize of five dollars, his manager comes up with another plan... insurance fraud. Can Stanley take a fall outside of the ring?

* Audio Commentary with Chris Seguin and Kyp Harness
* Audio Commentary with Neil Brand
* Stills Gallery

The Discs

The films are presented at 1.33:1 pillarboxed 1080p resolution, in differing shades of monochrome depending on the filter used for a particular film or scene, although black and white is the most common here. The audio is presented as PCM 2.0 Mono. You only get shutter noise with the 8mm shorts in the extras, but most of the music with the main features has actually been newly recorded for the restored films. Of course some of them have classic soundtracks instead, but if you recall how silent films were originally accompanied by live music in the theatres, it’s not such a big deal to get new audio with each new release. The image quality is dependent on the source material, which here is variable at best. These films are so old at this point, that they have to be patched together from what material can be found, sourcing the best quality prints and Frankensteining the best versions together from multiple sources. At best, there are still 35mm negatives which can be restored to almost pristine quality, at worst, there are 16mm prints that have been through a projector once too often for comfort, and there are a fair few 35mm prints that have been tinted for effect, which offer an unexpected bit of colour instead of the usual black and white. But all of it has been restored to as good as quality as possible, and the films offer so much more detail and clarity compared to how you have may have seen them before, that it’s like watching them for the first time. It’s worth comparing them to the 8mm shorts in the extras to realise how degraded the experience could have been.

Extras

The discs boot to static menus, and each film will display a page of text provenance before playing.

Disc 1
Laurel and Hardy in the UK (8:24)
Stan Laurel 1957 Interview (70:15)
Stan Laurel 1959 Interview (8:41)


Disc 2
Neil Brand Interview (7:43)
8mm Shorts (20:38)
- Sailors Beware!
- The Bulldog Breed
- The Mad Butler
- The Battle of the Century

The first three of the shorts come with optional audio commentaries from Chris Seguin and Glenn Mitchell, while The Battle of the Century excerpt has a commentary from Chris Seguin alone.

The first run release of this title will also come with a booklet, with writing on each of the films from Paul Merton, and an essay from Imogen Sara Smith.

Conclusion

If you are a fan of Laurel and Hardy, no doubt you’ll have seen many of these films before, not least in that behemoth DVD boxset I mentioned at the start of this review. Of course you won’t have seen them looking this good; the 2k restorations that these films have received is apparent in every frame, and in some cases, such as The Battle of the Century, you won’t have seen them in as complete a form. In the intervening years, collections have been scoured, footage located, and missing scenes discovered. There’s still a few minutes missing from The Battle of the Century, but it’s still a revelation compared to that truncated version on the DVD. But the most important thing is that you’ll most likely never have seen these films in this particular context, and once you listen to the commentaries, watch the extras, you’ll realise just how important that is.


For 1927 is the year that Hal Roach put Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy together as a team for the first time. Prior to that, if they had appeared together on screen, it was purely by chance, and as in The Lucky Dog or 45 Minutes to Hollywood they weren’t Laurel and Hardy yet. Babe Hardy had a bit role in a Stan Laurel movie in The Lucky Dog, and they were both supporting actors in 45 Minutes to Hollywood, a Glenn Tryon movie. Also, in the films made in 1927, 13 of which are presented here, and with Hats Off still missing in action, they didn’t find their mojo straight away. It was a gradual process of character discovery, working on that screen chemistry, that took much of the year. With the films presented here in chronological order, you can follow along with that process, and it’s a fascinating ride, a transformation from two actors to perhaps the finest comedy team cinema has ever seen.


1927 was also the last year of the Hal Roach silents; the talkies were coming, the Laurel and Hardy team would be fully formed once they arrived the following year. It was a stop start, hit and miss process, and if you took their first 1927 movie in this collection at face value, you’d be forgiven for thinking that they hit the bullseye with their first dart, given that Duck Soup was pretty much re-made, scene for scene as Another Fine Mess a few years later. The nuances of the character dynamics were yet to be worked out, and Stan was still to move from the brash chancer of his solo movies, to the dopey character that we’re so familiar with, but this initial film had them as roughly social equals, a pair of tramps looking to avoid being conscripted into public service by finding a mansion to squat in while the owner was away.


Then the next film tries something completely different, shifting back to a Stan Laurel movie with guest stars template, as he plays an unlikely gigolo trying to make the husband of a neglected wife feel jealous, and having the odd disagreement over etiquette with the family butler played by Oliver Hardy. This sort of trial and error keeps happening in the films, with some having them as characters that barely interact, others like Why Girls Love Sailors pitting them against each other as protagonist and antagonist, or superior and underling. But each film had them edging closer to the familiar character dynamic of the talkies, finding more of their signature sense of humour. With Love and Hisses is the first film after Duck Soup that feels like a Laurel and Hardy film, and that becomes more and more evident in the films on Disc 2 of this collection, even if there are oddities like the prehistoric themed Flying Elephants, and the Max Davidson short Call of the Cuckoo, where they are very much cameoing as Laurel and Hardy.


Of course comedy is subjective, and there are a couple of films here that barely raised a smirk, while there are a fair few films, those closest to the Laurel and Hardy that we’re familiar with such as Duck Soup, With Love and Hisses, Do Detectives Think?, The Second Hundred Years, and The Battle of the Century that have me guffawing. But in the end, this is one of those rare releases where there is almost as much value in it as a historical document, as there is entertainment value. An excellent release.

Laurel and Hardy: The Silent Years is available direct from Eureka Entertainment and mainstream retailers.