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.