Tag Archives: Laurel & Hardy

Cleaning Out the DVR Pt. 23: Spring Cleaning Edition

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Continuing my quest to watch all these movies sitting in my DVR (so I can record more movies!), here are six more capsule reviews for you Dear Readers:

FIFTH AVENUE GIRL (RKO 1939; D: Gregory LaCava) – A minor but entertaining bit of screwball froth revolving around rich old Walter Connolly , who’s got  problems galore: his wife (the criminally underrated Veree Teasdale) is cheating on him, his son (Tim Holt in a rare comedy role) is a polo-playing twit, his daughter (Kathryn Adams) in love with the socialism-spouting chauffer (James Ellison ), and his business is facing bankruptcy because of labor union troubles. On top of all that, no one remembers his birthday! The downcast Connolly wanders around Central Park, where he meets jobless, penniless, and practically homeless Ginger Rogers, and soon life on 5th Avenue gets turned upside-down! Ellison’s in rare form as the proletariat Marxist driver, 

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Double Your Fun: Laurel & Hardy in BLOCKHEADS (MGM 1938) and SAPS AT SEA (United Artists 1940)

Posted on by gary loggins

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Hal Roach first teamed Stan Laurel with Oliver Hardy in 1927, beginning a long and prosperous screen comedy collaboration. The pair became the movie’s most beloved, and funniest, screen team, a point  that’s hard to argue against after a recent rewatching of BLOCKHEADS and SAPS AT SEA, two films that each clock in at less than an hour, but pack more laughs than many longer, larger budgeted films of the era – or any era, for that matter!

In BLOCKHEADS, L&H are soldiers during WWI, and Stan is ordered to stand guard in the trench until the troop returns from battle. Twenty years later, he’s still there! Found by a pilot he shoots down, Stan is taken to an Old Soldiers’ Home, when Ollie (once again a henpecked husband) spots his picture in the newspaper. Ollie rushes to see his old pal, and finds him sitting in a wheelchair with…

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Another Fine Mess: Laurel & Hardy in JITTERBUGS (20th Century Fox 1943)

Posted on by gary loggins

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Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were two of the screen’s most beloved comics. Their Hal Roach comedy shorts contain some of the screen’s funniest moments, capitalizing on their unique comic personas. But by the 1940’s, Stan and Ollie had separated from Roach, and were plying their trade in features at 20th Century Fox. No longer in control of their material, the roles they played could’ve been filled by any pair of comic actors. That’s what makes later L&H efforts like JITTERBUGS so depressing.

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Stan and Ollie are two itinerant musicians (“The Original Zoot Suit Band”) conned into aiding con artist Chester Wright into hawking “instant gas pills”. The scam gets uncovered in the small town of Midville, where Chester accidentally steals pretty young Susan’s purse. Since he’s smitten with her, he returns it, and discovers Susan is being swindled by some gangland goons. The con plays a con on these cons, aided by Stan…

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