THE LAUREL AND HARDY SOUND SHORTS:Ranking 29-25

29.THE HOOSE-GOW (1929)

From my own personal choice from 29 to at least the top 10, it is arguable that from this point on, virtually every short film could be interchangeable in any given position in this list. The Hoose-Gow could quite easily be ranked higher as it is certainly a very adroit comedy even by the standards of their often awkward early talkies,packed as it is with their most familiar comic foils such as James Finlayson, Charlie Hall and Tiny Sandford, and with less prolific but welcome faces such as Leo Willis,Eddie Dunn and Ellinor Vanderveer, and effective outdoor camerawork.

Everson stated that he thought "...the editing is clumsy, and the use of sound uninspired", which is possibly true as issues with sound editing and continuity were still problematical in these early days of talking pictures, but pacing throughout is better than previous efforts such as Berth Marks, the gags are plentiful and better timed, though again an attempt to rework the street battle-type scenes from their silent days does not work very well as happened with Men O'War, with the rice-throwing battle coming across as rather crude and forced, nowhere near the quality of The Battle of the Century and even inferior to the mud-throwing finale to Should Married Men Go Home?  From this point on, the boys would never attempt such scenes on this scale in their sound films again, as the more deliberately paced, smaller scale tit for tat battles in Them Thar Hills were better suited to the sound medium.

28.THICKER THAN WATER (1935)

This was the final short film in which Laurel and Hardy starred at Roach and indeed made at all, aside from a cameo appearance in a Charley Chase short the following year and a colour one-reeler they made for the war effort in the 1940's. It was genuinely sad for cinematic and comedic history that the team stopped making short films at far too early a time, as they surely could have continued for many years more if particular conditions had not been against them. Contemporaries such as Edgar Kennedy, Leon Errol, The Three Stooges and others made short films well into the 1940's and 1950's,but without the kind of care, attention and consistency that Laurel and Hardy gave towards their series.

The team became victims of their own success and popularity; Kennedy, Errol, the Stooges et al made their series of comedies at major Hollywood studios like Columbia and RKO, whereas L & H produced their series at an independent comedy studio like Hal Roach, who relied on distribution deals with majors like M-G-M to keep the studio afloat. Roach was forced to move the team into a features only deal, where more money had to be spent and forced the studio boss to exert more control over them, giving Stan Laurel less artistic control than he had over the shorts. This led to more disagreements between the two men, as Babe Hardy was more neutral in such matters as he rarely if at all took interest in the directing, writing or editing process, leaving this to his partner. 

Laurel was unhappy in moving to features on a permanent level, as the team were entirely in their element in the short film format. The aforementioned comedians above were without exception supporting players in feature films (although Errol was something of a comedic lead in the lowbrow Mexican Spitfire comedies with Lupe Velez); Laurel and Hardy were so successful in short films that they progressed into features, though mostly around the one hour mark, though difficulties arose in writing stories and narratives that would suit their characters for longer films, which will be discussed at a later date.

Thicker Than Water is a somewhat disappointing way to end arguably the most celebrated series of short films in movie history, but as was the case with their penultimate short film The Fixer Uppers, it has good production values, a cleverly done series of optical wipes from one scene to the next (by having Stan or Ollie drag them physically across the screen), a tiny but very combative Mrs Hardy in the shape of Daphne Pollard, a garrulous James Finlayson, and an affable Charlie Hall. The film finishes with a rather obvious but amusing gag of Stan and Ollie getting mixed up via blood transfusions and impersonating each other for the only time in their cinematic careers, though with an apt if not rather touching farewell to the short film medium they so graced for under a decade when they deserved to have done for many years longer, but we can be grateful that it was long enough to make an impact which is still felt to the present day.

27.BLOTTO (1930)

Blotto was their first excursion with the "laughing jag" in the sound era, as it was first tried in their silent Leave 'Em Laughing. The main situation of  a henpecked Stan sneaking out of his house to have a wild night out at a nightclub with Ollie has similarities with Their Purple Moment, but it probably would have worked rather better the other way round if Stan had been the bachelor rather than Ollie.

This was still the era of prohibition in the US, and the boys don't end up pulling the wool over Mrs Laurel's (Anita Garvin) eyes as they thought as she knew about all their scheme all along, substituting hard liquor for 'cold tea' (although judging by the ingredients she adds far more in this brew). Anita Garvin is suitably menacing and calculated in the preliminaries, which rather bizarrely features Stan reading a newspaper in Yiddish at one point. 

The nightclub set is very elaborate and lavish, but the comic material surrounding it is a bit strained as it is rather thinly spread for a three-reeler (four reels in foreign versions), but seeing the boys get 'drunk' on Mrs Laurel's concoction provides a great deal of merriment, not just the boys but a watching audience, with Ollie's extraordinary reaction to his first sip (described as "acting of the highest order" by John McCabe) and Stan's ear wiggle the best moments therein.

26.ME AND MY PAL (1933)

One of the most unheralded and least known L & H sound shorts, this has a clever premise of Ollie being delayed in getting married by Stan's wedding present (a jigsaw puzzle), but is let down by rather half-hearted execution, as the number of characters that are brought in to help with the jigsaw (a taxi driver, telegram messenger,cop) are given little to do at too slow a pace. Some of the verbal gags don't work either (Stan thinks a magnate is "a thing that eats cheese, which I have never got), and the climax rather fizzles out, yet there are still great moments such as Stan telling Ollie's frustrated future Father-in-Law James Finlayson over the phone that Ollie is "...right here, and he told me to tell you he'd just left, 10 minutes ago." (Doh!), and best of all perhaps, a gag that doesn't involve L & H but their most celebrated foils, Charlie Hall and Fin, as the former brings a wreath to the wedding on Stan's orders, a very funny little scene that should be cherished, a rare instance of Charlie and Fin sharing a scene (and gag) together.

25.ANY OLD PORT (1932)

Originally a three-reeler, Any Old Port was reduced to two after some apparently unfavourable previews, with material that featured James Finlayson and Tiny Sandford deleted with the boys as sailors arriving home from a long voyage. The released film sees them on terra firma looking for a place to stay, and seems both rushed and pointless as the first reel should have remained (it is now lost footage).

Any Old Port hasn't always had the best of reputations with some L & H writers, with Randy Skretvedt calling it "moderately amusing at best", and William Everson describing it as "a singularly disappointing effort". I don't think it's flawless myself, but it is a better film than others suggest; Walter Long is the archetypal L & H villain without a doubt and he is both menacing and amusing here, in settings that are the grubbiest, seediest if not sleaziest ever seen in a L & H film., with some brutish slapstick added for good measure. The reworking of the hotel signing sequence from Double Whoopee works better here than it did in the original, as the contrast between Mugsie Long's fleabag of a place and the swanky Broadway equivalent could scarcely be any greater. Everson was critical of the final boxing sequence, which is admittedly not as good as that of Chaplin's in City Lights the previous year that he referred to in comparison, yet still provides plenty of laughs and has an amusing pay-off that features actor Eddie Baker as the victim, as he also featured more prominently as a boxing referee in the said sequence from Chaplin's classic.