THE LAUREL AND HARDY SOUND SHORTS:Ranking 5-1

5.THEM THAR HILLS (1934)

The attempts to create mass street battles of reciprocal destruction from their silent to sound shorts never really came off in their early talkies, and no further hybrids were tried from late 1929 onwards. So how could such sequences be successfully executed in the sound era? There were a few half-hearted efforts until Laurel and Hardy finally found the right formula, never adapted better than in Them Thar Hills, on a smaller scale.

The preliminaries are fairly straightforward; Ollie ordered by Dr.Billy Gilbert to have a rest in the country and drink plenty of mountain water to relieve his painful gout after too much "high living" (Stan suggesting they should move down to the basement). For a short while, this appears it will be a rehash of the gouty foot jokes involving Edgar Kennedy in Perfect Day, but aside from merely two (very funny) throwaway gags of this nature, the film constructs and builds immaculately after scores of great verbal and visual gags to a relentless and explosive confrontation with a particularly malevolent Charlie Hall, furious at the boys getting themselves and his wife Mae Busch (accidentally) drunk on water drawn from a well that had been contaminated by moonshiners trying to dispose their illegally brewed liquor. The ultimate in personal battles with Jimmy Finlayson in Big Business was chaotic and near apocalyptic from their latter silent days; it could not be reproduced in the more slower and realistic medium of sound, and the more methodical tit-for-tat struggle with Hall is every bit as ferocious, very well directed by Charles Rogers (who like Charlie Hall was a native of Birmingham), with every indignity becoming more humiliating than the next, with Ollie not helping his and Stan's cause by drunkenly guffawing at Charlie's misfortunes, though the latter gets the most savage coup de grace at the end.

Them Thar Hills was so well received that it inspired the only sequel in the Laurel and Hardy canon, thankfully not called Them Thar Hills II but Tit For Tat which was nearly but not quite as good as its predecessor, but continued the contretemps between the three protagonists after this most bitter of initial conflicts.

4.HOG WILD (1930)

Simon Louvish described Hog Wild as "...an excellent example of the maturity reached by Stan and Ollie's comedy with just one year of their initiation into the talkie world...", and he was right. Their earliest sound shorts showed problems with pacing and dialogue, but the team learned how to adapt to sound remarkably quickly, and Hog Wild marked a major turning point in their film careers, this being their best sound film to date at the time and proving that they only needed a single situation, in this case fitting a radio aerial on a roof, and to extract and milk as many gags as possible within 20-30 minutes footage. The variations of Ollie (then Stan) falling off the roof into a pond are brilliantly done, from a technical and laughter point of view but thankfully not over-milked, the boys failing time after time but always managing to climb up the ladder to try again, with the final straw being a lively chase through the streets with the ladder attached to Stan's Model T Ford, all the better with no back projection employed (as was so poorly with County Hospital), with an extraordinary mangled demise for said vehicle for the film's climax.

There is perhaps a slightly prolonged opening scene with Ollie complaining to his wife (Fay Holderness) about being unable to find his hat (it is of course on his head, a head suffering from amnesia as the opening subtitle explains), but dialogue after is kept to a minimum replaced with outstandingly well-executed, but never crude slapstick, the best it had been in their sound films up to that point, and one of the very best examples in the L & H canon.

3.HELPMATES (1932)

"Helpmates..."  states Randy Skretvedt, "...is in my humble opinion the finest short film Laurel and Hardy ever made...", and he could just be right. From my point of view, I don't think it is quite the very best, but it is extremely close to being so. The comic art of Laurel and Hardy was always displayed at its best in the short film format, as befits Stan Laurel's early days performing sketches in British Music Hall and American Vaudeville before he turned to film, struggling to find a distinctive comic niche as a solo comedian before he teamed with Oliver Hardy at the Hal Roach studios where it soon gloriously unravelled.

Like their very best work, Helpmates was just set around a simple situation of Stan helping to clear up Ollie's house after a wild party until his wife returns, in the frightening form of Blanche Payson. It all starts so well, but goes badly soon after thanks to their naive ineptitude, particularly in the scene illustrated above: Ollie is nattily dressed, all ready to meet his wife at the train station, topped atypically with a straw boater instead of the familiar bowler, but then gag after gag follows in rapid succession, each becoming funnier than the next: Ollie tripping on a carpet cleaner and smashing all the crockery in the kitchen; a small flue collapses and covers Ollie in soot; Stan attempts to clean the soot from Ollie's boater but only succeeds to blowing it into Ollie's face; Ollie tries to wash his hands but instead of picking up a bar of soap picks up a block of butter Stan had left on the sink; Ollie asks for a towel and asks Stan to look in the cupboard, but a large tin of flour falls onto Ollie, climaxing in the tin crashing onto Ollie's head.

It was worthwhile describing this particular scene in detail as it may well be the most brilliantly sustained gag sequence in the team's film career, one after another but with enough perfectly judged pauses in between, mainly Ollie's camera looks and Stan's sheepish expressions of sorrow and ignorance before the next pay off.

What happens before and after is virtually as good, and the inevitable finale, which I will not give away, leaves them with virtually nothing, accept their friendship and little else, and is indeed rather poignant and touching, the most as such in any of their short films.

2.BUSY BODIES (1933)

Busy Bodies holds a special place in my heart as being the first Laurel and Hardy film I could remember watching in early childhood, or certainly one scene at least, when Ollie is propelled through a Sawdust flue. This may come across as either over-indulgent or over-nostalgic, but my own belief that this is their greatest sound two-reeler and in the top five films they did overall is gradually building momentum and credence with L & H buffs, cineastes and all film fans as such generally, as it is their second highest rated sound short on IMDB.

It may contain the least dialogue in any of their sound shorts and sound films full stop, and it also perhaps has the least plot and story in any L & H film. It merely has the boys going to work at a sawmill and extracting as many gags as possible from such props as wooden door frames, band and hand saws, wood planes, glue pots, hammers, planks, cars and whatever else is available. The results on screen regarding the slapstick and visual gags that emerge are perhaps the best-timed, best executed and most violent (in a positive sense) ever witnessed in any of their films, so outstandingly well done as to raise gasps of delight and astonishment at such audacity. There would be so many to describe, but perhaps the most extraordinary out of so many is when Ollie rather foolishly knocks a nail into a wall to hang up his jacket after Stan had tried previously (only bursting a water pipe when he did it), only for a large circular saw to fall from above and crash on his head. Many gags and moments such as this are virtual surrealism, not just ingenious from a comic point of view but a visual point of view as well, showing how Laurel and Hardy could produce imagery as memorable as a Hitchcock or Welles product, such as when Ollie travelled through said sawdust flue, my very first memory of a L & H film. The ultimate in surrealistic imagery is left for its final gag, but the last word should be left to Randy Skretvedt, to which I fully concur:

 "Busy Bodies has virtually no story' it's basically Laurel and Hardy playing with props and devising some inspired gags out of them for 20 minutes. This is the team at their best-unhurried,unencumbered by too much plot or too many supporting characters, milking all the laughs they can out of a simple situation...Twenty minutes was just the right length for a L&H film; stretch it to much more than an hour, and the extra time would usually be filled with songs and subplots"

And oh yes, Charlie Hall and Tiny Sandford are pretty good in this too, merely adding to the icing on a very nice cake.

1.THE MUSIC BOX (1932)

A predictable choice perhaps, but surely the most apt as their greatest overall sound short, and perhaps the best known and most famous film they ever did, and their highest rated film per se on IMDB. The Music Box deservedly won the Academy Award as the best live-action short of 1931-32, the first time it had ever been given in this particular category, and after nearly nine decades, still perhaps the most celebrated and remembered short film as honoured by the Academy, although at the time, a mere certificate was given to them for their pains, not a statuette, or 'Oscar' as is more commonly known.

If there is a film that would perfectly serve as an introduction to those who have never seen a Laurel and Hardy film, than this would be the one, showing all the aspects of their unique comic partnership; beautifully paced and edited, immaculately constructed, with inventive and hilarious variations on one basic gag that never overstays their welcome.

And that one basic gag? Merely delivering a piano and nothing else, but here is the catch: up what seems an unending flight of stairs, the first memorable sight of which is illustrated here, observed with a resigned sense of dread when initially observed by our heroes, but who get on with their job with barely a word of complaint. As is inevitable, they are frustrated by circumstance; a nurse with a pram, a cop, a florid, top-hatted Billy Gilbert, stating his name as Professor Theodore von Schwarzenhoffen (or hoffer, maybe?) M.D., A.D., D,D,S., F.L.D., F.F.F. and F and indeed by the 'Music Box' itself, who appears to have some mind and feelings of its own, its jangly sounds emanating from its person a cry of pain and frustration at Stan and Ollie's innumerable failed attempts to reach the top of those fabled stairs and deliver to 1127 Walnut Avenue, to put itself and the boys out of their exhausted misery.

It may be miserable for both the boys and the piano, but audiences over the decades have delighted in such labours that are still cherished to the present day. The film has often compared to the Greek Mythological story of Sisyphus, that of the King of Ephyra having to roll a massive boulder up a hill only for it to roll down when it nears the top, repeating such an action for eternity, though it is doubtful Stan Laurel or anyone else at the Roach Studios thought about such a myth when making the film; they most certainly referred instead to their silent Hats Off (1927), an early effort in their emerging comic partnership, which utilised the same flight of stairs, delivering a washing machine instead of a piano, but very sadly has been a lost film for decades, and in fact the only one of their films where no footage at all is known to exist. Interestingly, the director of Hats Off, Hal Yates, later reworked this sequence with the washing machine into one of the many Edgar Kennedy shorts he directed in the 1940's, It's Your Move (1945), which along with other RKO Kennedy and Leon Errol shorts was shown very early in the morning on BBC1 in the late 1980's, and which I watched with wide and astonished eyes as I realised the importance of this reworked scene, unnoticed for decades until it was picked up by other L & H buffs at the time. Did Hal Yates actually have a personal print of the film and watch it to rework into this comedy in the 1940s? Let's hope he may have done and that personal print may still exist somewhere.

Whether or not The Music Box was derived from the story of Sisyphus or not, the film in any case has almost become one of mythological proportions itself, with so many memorable and unforgettable moments: Stan telling Ollie a cop doesn't want him but the other monkey (Ollie of course); the piano travelling over Ollie after he stumbles while it more or less chases him down the steps; a long distance shot of the boys turning around with the piano on the steps; Gilbert's hat being knocked off and fly down the steps to be run over by a truck what it lands on the road; Ollie dragged down by the piano as it trundles down the steps yet again, the best ever variations on their hat mix-ups, but best of all, taking the piano down the stairs after postman Charlie Hall shows them a road they should have travelled up in the first place with their horse-drawn cart, and a brief but magnificent (and probably improvised) dance routine at 1127 Walnut Avenue which happens to belong to the mercurial and explosive Professor Gilbert, half-ruined as it was by their attempts to place it in the living room, who happens to hate and detest pianos.

Such great moments and more in a film of only 30 minutes in length are remarkable when many comedies of then and today struggle to achieve just one in running times of two or three times longer and more, "...quintessential Laurel and Hardy..." as Leslie Halliwell described it, the team at their very best and most accomplished, as The Music Box is not just genuinely great comedy, but in fact genuinely great cinema as well.

THE LAUREL AND HARDY SOUND SHORTS:Ranking 10-6

10.LAUGHING GRAVY (1931)

An almost but not quite scene for scene remake of their last silent comedy Angora Love (1929), and reworked into the last few minutes of The Chimp a year later, this two-reeler is one of the few occasions where the team were upstaged by another scene-stealing member of the cast, namely the cute and endearing little dog of which the film takes its title. It contains many quintessential elements of any Laurel and Hardy comedy; the boys on their uppers in a seedy boarding house, menaced by the most familiar of mean landlords in the shape of Charlie Hall, all set during a particularly bleak and snowy Winter's night. The original provided plenty of laughs on a slightly improbable premise; the remake has the more credible story of a pet dog and is therefore rather better, with Laughing Gravy himself as much a star as the boys himself and doing a pretty good job of it, with Hall at his most sneering, cruel and cynical who refuses to allow any pets in his rooms and evict his tenants on the slightest infraction.

This provides plenty of opportunities for humour, and Laughing Gravy does not disappoint, with ample slapstick and charm laid on thick, with the title music accompanying the "Ku-Ku" song ("Candy,Candy"), and an apparently specially composed piece in the background music called "Dog Song" punctuating the action perfectly. Laughing Gravy was originally intended as a three-reeler, and the concluding final scene was removed and thought lost until it was rediscovered in the mid 1980's.The extra added footage became widely available on VHS then DVD alongside the two-reel version; the latter is still much superior, with a infamously dark-humoured finale, which is eschewed in the longer version, in a rather overly contrived sub-plot of Stan inheriting a fortune and refusing to share it with Ollie. Despite being of considerable historical interest, the scene is far too static, talkative and atypical of what went in the two reels before, and indeed is rather alien to what would be expected in a L & H short comedy, only interesting as a further examination of their unique relationship, with deeper and more serious characterisation. So this additional reel isn't actually that bad, but provides little in the way of laughs, unlike the two reel version which is better and provides far more merriment.

9.GOING BYE-BYE! (1934)

An updating of the early silent Do Detectives Think? (1927), this is a well-plotted and constructed effort with some absolutely priceless moments, notably when Stan accidentally hands Ollie a can of milk instead of a phone (this has to be seen to be believed, along with Ollie's explanation to caller Mae Busch, which has to heard to be believed), alongside perhaps the best of their freak endings.But what happens in between also provides much merriment if not occasional suspense, with hardened criminal Walter 'Butch' Long vowing vengeance on the boys after they gave evidence against him which doomed him to prison for life.After various complications, it is actually Stan and Ollie who do most harm and damage to Butch in some pretty savage slapstick, all well-meaning of course, but Butch gets his revenge in the most bizarre, and funny,way imaginable.

8.TOWED IN A HOLE (1932)

Reckoned by many to be one of their very best films, I personally think Towed In a Hole is very good but a trifle overrated; the scene where they throw water over each other for example, is over-extended and uninventive and is only redeemed by the dialogue exchange and pay-off at its coda. But barring these minor complaints, this shows the team at their best for the most part, using a simple situation of restoring a boat to cut out the middle man regarding their fish peddling business. On odd occasions, Ollie could be a bit of a bully, and this film shows him at his most excessive by giving Stan not one but two black eyes in the midst of continuing frustrations and setbacks, milking plenty of funny visual and verbal gags along the way.

7.TIT FOR TAT (1935)

A sequel to the previous year's Them Thar Hills, Tit For Tat had a few problems regarding its original script according to esteemed L & H author Randy Skretvedt, as he indicated this was almost totally thrown away with the team working virtually off-the-cuff and improvising the story as they went along. The premise of the boys' newly opened electrical store being next to that of their arch enemy from the previous film Charlie Hall's grocery store is rather obviously contrived, but this is almost as funny as the previous all-out battle between the three, extracting plenty of gags from the products available in both stores. Hall was only slightly behind James Finlayson as their most notable and valuable comic foil; it is often inexplicable that he could be so prominent in shorts like this, Laughing Gravy, et al, then often appearing in roles where he could be barely glimpsed as a wordless extra, and he never really had a major supporting role in any of their features at the Roach studios, where too often the parts went to unfamiliar and often boring straight actors reciting dull, humourless dialogue. But when Charlie was given a chance to shine, he showed what a talented comic performer he was, as is the case in Tit For Tat.

6.DIRTY WORK (1933)

The initial premise for Dirty Work didn't sound that promising; it has two parallel situations of Stan and Ollie sweeping a chimney, at the house of the eccentric Professor Noodle (Lucien Littlefield) on the verge of discovering the "greatest scientific discovery of the age...rejuvenation".Fortunately, both story lines blend perfectly in what turns out to be one of Laurel and Hardy's funniest efforts, slightly reminiscent of Hog Wild three years earlier, with the boys showing themselves as hopelessly inept chimney sweeps, bring down what seems tons of soot with Ollie getting hit on the same tender spot on his head by falling bricks in a particularly well-timed and uproarious scene. In between some memorably quotable dialogue from Ollie ("I have nothing to say") and a somewhat cheesed-off butler (Sam Adams, a rather obscure actor whose best moments on film are captured here), Noodle achieves his goal and taking no notice of the unintended damage the boys have afflicted on his house, shows them the results of his endeavours. The last few minutes are taken up by these sci-fi highjinks and end with Ollie, in rather over-rejuvenated form, muttering "I have nothing to say" to Stan at the film's outrageously funny coda.