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Laurel and Hardy's FOX films

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Offline falsealarms

I've seen most of their Roach stuff, but none of the FOX-era stuff. It seems like most people would say that's a good thing. Are those FOX films even worth one viewing?


Offline metaldams

Are those FOX films even worth one viewing?

One word answer...yes.

They're not as good as the Roach films, but they all have their fun moments.  I've seen JITTERBUGS twice and the other films once and I was entertained.  I was expecting much worse, as the two MGM films, especially NOTHING BUT TROUBLE, are pretty bad.  You'll never forget the horrors of the "boy king" if you see that one.
- Doug Sarnecky


Offline Mark The Shark

1940s L&H are like 1950s Stooges. As long as one doesn't sit down to watch The Big Noise expecting Way Out West, you'll be okay.

The later films all have their moments. One thing which seems very telling is that a lot of fans will say overall they're pretty lousy, but the "only good one" is (insert name of film) -- and it's always a different one.

Mine is The Bullfighters. But they all have their moments. Next in line for me are Jitterbugs and The Big Noise.

And I'm glad all these later-period L&H films are easily available for those who want them. Now let's work on their 1930s stuff, which is mostly unavailable in their home country!


Offline metaldams

Now let's work on their 1930s stuff, which is mostly unavailable in their home country!

Don't get me started!  The Laurel and Hardy DVD situation in the U.S. is an absolute disgrace. 

Imagine if there was limited availability of the Columbia shorts and what was out there was for the most part not the best prints. In this same world, one can easily obtain the Derita features and a lot of Shemp Vitaphones.  This is what the Laurel and Hardy situation is like in the U.S.
- Doug Sarnecky


Offline Mark The Shark

Don't get me started!  The Laurel and Hardy DVD situation in the U.S. is an absolute disgrace. 

Imagine if there was limited availability of the Columbia shorts and what was out there was for the most part not the best prints. In this same world, one can easily obtain the Derita features and a lot of Shemp Vitaphones.  This is what the Laurel and Hardy situation is like in the U.S.

That actually WAS the case not too long ago! (Well, maybe slightly exaggerated...) I never thought I'd see the day when one could walk into a store (or at least go on line) and buy a complete set of the Columbia Stooge shorts. At one time in the not-so-distant past, there were two ways to get them all -- (1) 16mm film or (2) record them one at a time yourself from TV, and maybe you'd eventually get them all (maybe). I'm not real happy about cropping the 1950s shorts for widescreen, but that's a whole other subject altogether. Glad to have them!


Offline Mark The Shark

I have (maybe you have too) heard some rumblings about the sound Roach-era L&H films coming out in a collection in the US. Hope it's true -- it probably will happen eventually, now that all the Little Rascals talkies have been released. But let's hope it gets done right -- i.e. since someone paid for a really nice restoration of Way Out West, for instance, I hope they use THAT version, etc. Hopefully someone learned something from the Little Rascals collection -- nice set, nice extras, clearly someone was TRYING to put together a decent package, but they dropped the ball on making sure they had the best source material on the shorts themselves. Hopefully L&H will be done better.


Offline BeAStooge

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I've seen most of their Roach stuff, but none of the FOX-era stuff. It seems like most people would say that's a good thing. Are those FOX films even worth one viewing?

They're not as good as the Roach films, but they all have their fun moments. I've seen JITTERBUGS twice and the other films once and I was entertained. 


Over the years, all the Fox films have been screened at our Sons of the Desert events in Philadelphia, and they all have some something in common... they generate solid laughs. Even the least of the Fox efforts, A-HAUNTING WE WILL GO which we just screened at our April banquet, went over well.

The Fox features improved as they went along. The earlier releases GREAT GUNS and HAUNTING reflect the boys trapped in a studio production system they couldn't control. DANCING MASTERS, THE BIG NOISE and BULLFIGHTERS show increasing glimpses of the Roach-era style, with Stan having some influence over the films' comedy bits and direction. JITTERBUGS very enjoyable with them having an opportunity to take on character roles during the storyline, particularly Babe as southern gentleman.

Some fine character actors the boys hadn't worked with in the past participate, like Anthony Caruso, Elisha Cook Jr., Mantan Moreland, Richard Lane, Margaret Dumont, Frank Faylen, etc. Robert Mitchum in one of his first roles (MASTERS), and Alan Ladd in his first (GUNS).

Recommended.


Offline Liz

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At our most recent Sons of the Desert meeting here in San Diego, they showed DANCING MASTERS.  While it generated quite a bit of laughter from me, it didn't generate as much laughter as the Roach shorts (we had just seen WE FAW DOWN a few hours earlier). 

I think Doug's quote sums up the Fox films.  They have their fun moments, but the Roach shorts were much, much better.
IT'S ALIVE!!!!


Offline falsealarms

Speak of the devil, the two collections of their FOX films dropped in price at Amazon today to $16.49 each. The insights here make them seem worthwhile, especially at about $5 and change a movie.

Volume 1

Volume 2



Offline Mark The Shark

Speak of the devil, the two collections of their FOX films dropped in price at Amazon today to $16.49 each. The insights here make them seem worthwhile, especially at about $5 and change a movie.

Volume 1

Volume 2



Get them, you won't be sorry! Especially Volume 2, which has some nice extras too -- including the first ever video release of the complete Tree In A Test Tube, and a really nice documentary on L&H's later years. The remembrances of Rich Correll of going to visit Stan Laurel are worth the price of admission by themselves. Also, you get home movies of their 1932 UK tour, and trailers for all six Fox features -- however, be forewarned that the trailers will get redundant, as most of them are repeated on different DVDs. For some reason, the trailer for A Haunting We Will Go only appears on that film's DVD, but the others repeat all over the place. A few of them were included on the Passport Laurel & Hardy Collection a few years back, and in some cases, the Passport version has superimposed text and the Fox version doesn't.


Offline Dunrobin

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Speak of the devil, the two collections of their FOX films dropped in price at Amazon today to $16.49 each. The insights here make them seem worthwhile, especially at about $5 and change a movie.

Thanks for the heads up!  I had been toying with the idea of getting these Fox films, since I don't believe I've ever seen any of them and the comments from Doug, Brent and Mark sparked my curiosity.  With the price drop I just couldn't resist.   ;)


Offline falsealarms

I watched GREAT GUNS today... for me, it was better than BUCK PRIVATES, the film some say it's a ripoff of. Laurel & Hardy, even at this stage, > Abbott & Costello. The romantic subplot was done better in GREAT GUNS than in BUCK PRIVATES. Instead of a distraction, it fit in well. Shelia Ryan gave an especially strong performance. The acting was generally better in GREAT GUNS and it was paced better as well... maybe because The Andrews Sisters weren't around to drag things down in GREAT GUNS, as they were in BUCK PRIVATES.


Offline Rich Finegan

I watched GREAT GUNS today....
Coincidentally, so did I. I just returned from my local Sons of the Desert meeting where (among other films) we saw GREAT GUNS (nice print in 16mm on the "big screen").
Unfortunately it's one of my lesser favorites of the Fox features.
Roughly, here are my opinions of them:
Least favorites:
GREAT GUNS
A HAUNTING WE WILL GO
A little better:
THE DANCING MASTERS
THE BULLFIGHTERS
Best:
THE BIG NOISE
JITTERBUGS


Offline falsealarms

I haven't seen the other 5 (yet) but hopefully I'll get to them soon enough. As far as GREAT GUNS, some memorable moments included Stan stealing food in the cafeteria, the bird in Ollie pants scene, Stan shaving, Stan and Ollie accidentally hitching a ride in the moving target, etc. The photo shop scenes with Dan and Ginger were cute too.


Offline Mark The Shark

I watched GREAT GUNS today... for me, it was better than BUCK PRIVATES, the film some say it's a ripoff of. Laurel & Hardy, even at this stage, > Abbott & Costello. The romantic subplot was done better in GREAT GUNS than in BUCK PRIVATES. Instead of a distraction, it fit in well. Shelia Ryan gave an especially strong performance. The acting was generally better in GREAT GUNS and it was paced better as well... maybe because The Andrews Sisters weren't around to drag things down in GREAT GUNS, as they were in BUCK PRIVATES.

If I recall correctly (I believe I read this in Scott MacGillivray's book) when Abbott & Costello were going to make Buck Privates, they visited Stan Laurel, who suggested a scene for them which ended up in the movie (which routine it was escapes me at the moment). Then later when Laurel & Hardy made Great Guns, Laurel remembered the scene and they did a version or variation on the same bit. Stan Laurel is said to have rarely gone to the movies so most likely he never even saw Abbott & Costello's version of the routine and may not have even known they ended up using it.

Just a couple of other random things about the L&H Fox films: One other thing which separates them from the Hal Roach films was they no longer had their regular cast of Roach character actors including James Finlayson, Charlie Hall, Mae Busch, et al. This was more or less inevitable once they changed studios (although they did get, for instance, Edgar Kennedy to appear in Air Raid Wardens at M-G-M), but this was obviously going to affect their films in a BIG way, since these regulars were a major part of the L&H "universe." And the characters they usually played were as crazy or crazier than L&H's characters. So I think it was a factor which pretty much forced the filmmakers to approach the L&H characters differently, and it was never really the same. Another thing was the various subplots which started diluting L&H's comedy in their later feature films, but this actually had started while they were still working with Hal Roach -- again, in Scott MacGillivray's book, he quotes some remarks from Oliver Hardy which I found very interesting, to the effect that L&H had been wanting writers to give their films stories, and they were pleased that the Fox writers came through on this. Of course, looking back from a historical perspective 60 or 70 years later, many people have said L&H never needed stories or plotlines in their films, and a classic short like Busy Bodies has no storyline at all, and yet it is considered one of their best talkie shorts.

Because L&H continued making movies into the 1940s at Fox and M-G-M, that means we now have more Laurel & Hardy films than we would if they had stopped in 1940, even if every one isn't a classic. What I don't get, and never understood, was the condemnation all the films of this era seemed to receive. It was almost as if the Sons Of The Desert was a religion, John McCabe was The Pope, and the 1940s films were beyond apochrypha, they were considered blasphemous. I remember 10 or 15 years ago someone contacting me asking what L&H I had on video, and I mentioned I had some of the Fox films if he needed them. The response was "Nooooo.....we're not supposed to watch those!" Crazy.


Offline falsealarms

I've now seen all 6 FOX films. These FOX films are nowhere near as bad as commonly believed. In his highly recommended book, Laurel and Hardy: The Magic Behind the Movies, Randy Skretvedt wrote that comparing the FOX films to one another is like comparing diarrhea to leprosy... one may be preferable to the other, but neither are any fun. While nobody would argue the FOX-era stuff was as good as the Roach shorts, they are ALL quality films. For comparison sake, I'd take the L&H FOX films over just about all the stuff A&C were doing in the same period. The lone exception would be IT AIN'T HAY.

The supporting cast in the FOX films were usually pretty good. Robert Bailey was good in the couple he appeared in. Shelia Ryan (GREAT GUNS especially) and Trudy "One Take" Marshall (THE DANCING MASTERS) were standouts on the female side. Marshall had an especially good scene where she was exchanging dinner plates with Laurel & Hardy. Richard Lane was good in THE BULLFIGHTERS. Margaret Dumont was good in her few scenes in THE DANCING MASTERS. The romantic subplots in these FOX films weren't distracting as they usually are but rather they were worked in well.

Unlike A&C films from the same period, these L&H efforts at FOX were never weighed down by disruptive musical numbers. The films are far better for it. While I enjoyed all 6 pretty equally, THE DANCING MASTERS was a little better than the other five. Now the question is... are their two MGM films as bad as most say?



Offline metaldams

Randy Skretvedt wrote that comparing the FOX films to one another is like comparing diarrhea to leprosy... one may be preferable to the other, but neither are any fun.

Dude, seriously?


As for the MGM films, the are bad.  The scenes with Edgar Kennedy in AIR RAID WARDENS are good, but other than that, be prepared to see the boys needlessly feeling sorry for themselves and the boy king, or whatever the heck he's called.
- Doug Sarnecky


Offline falsealarms

Seriously. Page 400 in my edition.

Completely undeserved criticism. I probably would have checked these films out a few years ago if not for the common perception that the FOX stuff was garbage. Supposedly, those films weren't always nearly as easy to see. Maybe that had something to do it.


Offline falsealarms

I had low expectations, but was surprised by AIR RAID WARDENS. There wasn't much I didn't like about it. The scenes with Edgar Kennedy were good, as were the scenes with the dog at the town meeting, and the poster hanging scene. Also memorable was the bit where they get their assignments mixed up and end up putting the banker through hell in the garage. The last third or so of the film had a good deal of suspense as L&H were getting mixed up the spies... the film never lost its momentum. Probably my second favorite of their 1940's FOX/MGM work, trailing only THE DANCING MASTERS. Phil Van Zandt was in a few scenes.

NOTHING BUT TROUBLE was definitely the weaker of their two MGM entries, but even that was decent. The football field scene was fun, as was the scene with the lion, the dinner table scene with the steak, and the end where they are standing on the edge of the building. A Lloyd-esque scene, but then again, Sam Taylor (the director here) was a Lloyd veteran, including a writing credit on SAFETY LAST. The kid who played The Boy King supposedly died just four years after this film, though what he died of remains unclear. He was only 16 when he died. Gino Corrado briefly appears in a scene.

Shockingly, after seeing their 40's FOX/MGM stuff, there wasn't a dud in the bunch. At least not in my eyes. I enjoyed all 8 of them, some more others, but I'd watch any of them again.