Flicker Alley has followed up last year’s Laurel & Hardy: Year One – The Newly Restored 1927 Silents with Year Two – The Newly Restored 1928 Silents, which presents 10 restored short films by what is arguably the funniest comedy duo of all time.
Buy Laurel & Hardy: Year Two Blu-rayStan has a toothache in Leave ‘Em Laughing. Since the fellas share a bed, they are both up all night dealing with it, as is the landlord due to the ruckus they make doing things like stepping on tacks and a water bottle emptying into the bed. At the dentist office, they both receive nitrous gas. They laugh all the way home as they cause a major traffic jam, which the street cop (frequent nemesis Edgar Kennedy) doesn’t find funny. The short has a lot of good gags, but the traffic jam sequence drags as the bit repeats itself. This is available with music by Andreas Benz on organ or Jean-Francois Zygel on piano.
The Finishing Touch sees the boys working as professional finishers set to complete a house. Unfortunately for the home owner, but lucky for the audience, this is one of their films where they slowly exert chaos and destruction. They have to deal with the nurse (Dorothy Coburn) across the street who expects them to be quiet and the cop (Kennedy) she enlists to her cause. A very funny conclusion as a rock-throwing fight breaks out when the home owner realizes he didn’t get what he paid for and the boys won’t give his money back.
Remade as the first 20 minutes of Laurel & Hardy’s A Chump at Oxford (1940), From Soup to Nuts finds the boys working as waiters for a high-society dinner party but they’ve only worked railroad eating houses, so Stan is a bit confused when he is asked to serve the salad undressed. However, most of the food is spilled or fallen into so there’s not much eating by the guests. There’s an extended gag where hostess Mrs. Culpepper (Anita Garvin) tries to pick up a grape from her fruit cocktail with a spoon.
You’re Darn Tootin’ finds the boys working in an orchestra but they clash with the conductor. They try to make money playing on the street, which leads to a different battle of the century as shin-kicking, clothes-ripping mayhem occurs in the streets. This is available with music by Neil Brand, who sounds like he is playing in front of a live audience once the film gets to the boarding house; music by Robert Israel, and a vintage Blackhawk Films music track.
In Their Purple Moment, Stan hides money from his wife, but she finds his wallet and replaces the cash with cigar coupons. Thinking Stan has a stash, the boys head out. They meet two girls at a club whose dates ran out on the check and decide to treat them. The local gossip tells the boys’ wives where they are at, and the women are madder than the maître d’, who is waiting for the bill to be paid. The night devolves into a food fight.
Disc 2 opens with Should Married Men Go Home?, the first Hal Roach film to bill Laurel & Hardy as a team. Stan shows up on a Sunday morning to take married Ollie golfing. They get paired up with two gals to make a foursome. The course is full of terrible golfers, which leads to tempers flaring and mud flinging with hysterical results. A gag where Stan slips a note under the door and sees it pulled inside was used in Come Clean. The soda fountain routine, in which they don’t have enough money for the foursome to get drinks, was used in Men O’ War.
Ollie inherits a fortune from his late uncle in Early to Bed. After buying a manor, he hires Stan as his butler. After a night out drinking champagne, Ollie pesters Stan repeatedly. Naturally, the house and its contents get trashed. Stan gets all the sympathy as Ollie is really obnoxious.
Two Tars might be the funniest in the set. On shore leave, the fellas rent a car and pick up a couple girls. After getting into with a store owner (Charlie Hall), they cause a commotion during a traffic jam. A man (Kennedy) drives into their car, but it’s a minor incident. At least, it would have been if Ollie hadn’t been goaded into backing into the man’s car. Like a spark leads to forest fire, utter mayhem ensues as different people get pulled into the maelstrom of destruction. Available with music by Andreas Benz, music by Robert Israel, or a vintage Blackhawk Films music track.
The first Hal Roach / Laurel & Hardy film to be released with recorded sound, a synchronized musical score and sound effects, is Habeas Corpus, which can be heard on the accompanying original 1928 Vitaphone track. Music is also available by Robert Israel. In this short, the boys take a job to bring a dead body from the cemetery to Professor Padilla. Not being able to see much at night, they get scared multiple times by different things that spook them. The cemetery segment has some good laughs but goes on too long.
The boys sneak away from their wives in We Faw Down, claiming they have to meet their boss at the Orpheum Theater, but their story goes up in smoke when it’s reported the theater burned down. When the wives run to the theater out of concern, they see the fellas jumping out of a window not fully dressed, although they had a good reason. We Faw Down was remade as the sound short Be Big! and the feature-length film, Sons of the Desert. It can be viewed with the original 1928 Vitaphone track with music and laughter effects that don’t match the actors or music by Jean-Francois Zygel.
The video is presented in an 1080p/MPEG-4 AVC encoded transfer in different aspect ratios. Before each film, a title card details the elements used and the restoration process taken. Sources are a variety of 35mm and 16mm prints in various conditions. The inkiness of blacks, the level of grain, the blooming of whites, and the sharpness of focus vary throughout. White scratches also appear in many shorts, but Leave ‘Em Laughing, The Finishing Touch, and Their Purple Moment have so much, it gives the appearance if falling rain. Should Married Men has one very dark cloudy smudge when a woman falls in the mud. In Early to Bed, the scene where before Stan goes to bed has major emulsion damage that looks like alien blob effects from ’60s. Scratches and frame sprockets can be also seen.
The audio is available in DTS-HD MA 2.0. The new music scores offer great clarity and the tracks sound clean. The vintage music tracks sound flatter in comparison and have a slight hiss.
Bonus Features:
Each film has an audio commentary, six by Randy Skretvedt and four by Richard W. Bann. There is an image gallery slideshow “containing original publicity materials, press reviews and rare production stills” for each film.
On Disc 1:
- Rare Audio Interviews: Skretvedt recorded interviews with actress Anita Garvin Stanley (27 min) on 1/28/81, prop and construction crew member Thomas Benton Roberts (12 min) on recorded 6/14/80, and Hal Roach (22 min) on recorded 1/21/81.
- Now I’ll Tell No One (10 min): A fragment from the second reel of a 1927 Charley Chase two-reeler featuring Laurel and Hardy appearing separately. Available with music by Serge Bromberg or commentary by Skretvedt.
- Eve’s Love Letters (22 min): From 1927, this Agnes Ayres short is one of Laurel’s final solo films, and he also wrote it. He plays a butler trying to protect his employer who is being blackmailed over love letters she wrote years ago to a former flame. It is available with music from the 1930s French re-release or commentary by Skretvedt.
- Galloping Ghosts (5 min): Two fragments of a 1928 solo Hardy film. The first features French title cards. It is available with music by Neil Brand or commentary by Skretvedt.
On Disc 2:
- Laurel & Hardy: On Location in Year Two (15 min): Historian John Bengston presents photos that show where exterior locations were shot.
- A Pair of Tights (20 min): This 1929 short paired Anita Garvin and Marion Byron as a comedy team, but Edgar Kennedy and the other men take over in the end. A double date doesn’t go well. The pair just meeting don’t care for each other and the other gal as difficulties obtaining ice cream cones. It is available with music by Neil Brand or commentary by Skretvedt.
- George Mann’s Home Movies (6 min): Filmed behind the scenes at Hal Roach Studios during production of Should Married Men Go Home? It is available with music by Neil Brand or commentary by Skretvedt.
- Stan Laurel Interview (audio, 23 min): Conducted January 1959, a year after Hardy had died, by Tony Thomas.
The folks at Blackhawk Films deserve high praise because they are doing important work preserving and restoring the films of Laurel & Hardy, which are not only historically significant but offer a lot of laughs in these 10 films. The folks at Flicker Alley also deserve kudos for the quality of the high-definition presentation of the films on this Blu-ray. Laurel & Hardy: Year Two – The Newly Restored 1928 Silents are a must have for comedy fans and will be on my “Best Blu-ray of 2024” list.
