Laurel & Hardy: The Essential Collection.On Location with the Boys: tour of set locations and interactive map.
A Chump at Oxford (Feature, 63 min.) 1940.Pardon Us (Feature, extended version) 1931.Los Calaveras (Feature: Be Big! & Laughing Gravy, Spanish) 1931.Les Carottiers (Feature: Be Big! & Laughing Gravy, French) 1931.Politiquerias (Chickens Come Home, Spanish) 1931.Noche De Duendes (The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case & Berth Marks, Spanish) 1930.Tiemblay Titubea (Below Zero, Spanish) 1930.La Vida Nocturna (Blotto, Spanish) 1930.Poor Oliver fallen into the pond in Hog Wild Laurel and Hardy: The Essential Collection includes: Disc 1: Bann Sons of the Desert has a track with Tim Conway and Chuck McCann, who don’t seem to know how a commentary track works but have a nice time watching the movie. A few (not many) films have commentaries that include the informed Laurel and Hardy buff Richard W.
Special features include a ho-hum 40-minute tribute with testimonials from fellow comedians (especially talkative are Dick Van Dyke and Jerry Lewis) an “”Interactive Map”” with Los Angeles location sites from their movies three Roach shorts in which L&H pop up in cameos and a 1942 short produced for the Department of Agriculture (another L&H cameo). Included in the boxed set are seven foreign-language films (six in Spanish, one in French), shot in order to keep the duo popular in overseas markets, before dubbing made that goal easier.įascinatingly, these films often extend the English-language films they are ostensibly adapted from, with different gags and plot turns–and it’s fun to hear Stan and Ollie speaking in another language. The films look as good as movies from 1929 to 1940 can reasonably be expected to look. This is on glorious display through these Roach pictures, whether it’s the boys sharing one small train berth in Berth Marks, executing their famous synchronized dance in Way Out West, or laboring to get that piano up a very steep flight of stairs in the Oscar-winning The Music Box. Some films are great, some merely passable, but all stick blissfully to character.
Thus, Stan’s dimwitted innocence and Ollie’s perpetually exasperated reactions (raised to an exquisite art by Hardy’s comprehensive glances at the camera, assuring the audience’s complicity in his misery) are the essence of their success. Their track record is proof that it isn’t merely the jokes that make for comic success it’s the personalities of the comedians. The collection contains the sound films that Laurel and Hardy made for producer Hal Roach, the man who teamed the simpering English vaudeville player and the rotund American actor in the first place (although their laughs are evenly divided, Laurel was the creative force and chief gag-inventor of the duo).