Sons of the Desert - 1933

Sons of the Desert (1933) brings Laurel and Hardy into the fold of a fraternal organization that, with manly promises of fidelity to the club, gives them courage to deceive their wives and escape for a holiday at the annual convention without them.

This is my entry in the “Make ‘Em Laugh” blogathon hosted by the Classic Movie Blog Association.  Have a look here for more great bloggers.

The hijinks are, of course, frequently hysterical, and it comes as a surprise that comedies such as theirs that, based on simple human foibles and predictable reactions, must launch from an ironic sophistication.  Though their characters have childlike mentality, their creators are masters of the human condition.

Their first entrance, arriving late at the lodge meeting and picking their way through the audience to find a couple of empty chairs together down front is a great example of how even a simple situation becomes increasingly complicated and funny.

The human reactions may be predictable; the action is anything but.  Gags roll on one after another with often surprising outcomes.  Just the opening routine with them finally settling down to their seats ends with the loud and unexpected slap of their wooden chairs together when Stan pushes his chair up against Oliver’s, painfully trapping Ollie’s hand.  Their timing, as always, is something amazing.

 

The elaborate gags are the point of the movie, of course; the plot is just a mere skeleton on which to hang the next gag.

 

The boys want to go with their lodge brothers to the national convention in Chicago, but their wives won’t let them.  They live side by side in a duplex.  Hardy’s wife is played by Mae Busch, who appeared in more than a dozen Laurel and Hardy films, often as Hardy’s wife.  Here she is at her tip-top shrewish best, frequently pelting the squirming Hardy with every pot and pan in the house.

Stan is married to Dorothy Christy.  Ollie tells Stanley he must be a man and not ask his wife’s permission to go to the convention, but to firmly tell her so.  We find when they arrive home, Stan’s wife is out duck hunting and won’t be back until late.  As funny as this is, it’s made better still by the nonchalant announcement from Mae Busch that she won’t be back until late because she is duck hunting, and the boys take it as a matter of course.

Of course, his wife is out duck hunting.  Stan sits with Mae and Ollie until his wife comes home because he is locked out, and he contents himself by eating their wax fruit.  Later, when Mae is frustrated with Stan, she yells, “You wax eater!”

When Dorothy returns with a brace of ducks and her shotgun over her shoulder, we may feel worried for Stan, yet it turns out she has easily given her consent to Stan going to his lodge convention. Weaponry or no, she has a soft heart.  It is Ollie who has the problem getting out of the house.  Mae wants him to take her to the mountains for a vacation.

Made in the depths of the Great Depression, it’s interesting to note that there is no reflection of hard times in this adventure.  Their duplex apartments are modest, but they seem to have all the up-to-date furnishings and household equipment.  We don’t know what occupations Stan and Ollie have, but they are apparently well off enough to take vacations.  Especially when Ollie fakes an illness which requires him, he says, to go to Hawaii for a rest cure.  Hawaii?

About the only hint of the Great Depression is the NRA “blue eagle” at the beginning and end of the movie.

 

He moans and groans, his feet planted in a tin tub of hot water, while Mae worriedly fusses over him.  The doctor who comes, played by Lucien Littlefield, is actually a veterinarian Stan engaged for the ploy.  Ollie asks Stan why he got a veterinarian?  Stan replies with noble egalitarian tones, “I didn’t think his religion would make any difference.”

Mae is fooled, and allows Ollie to go on a cruise to Honolulu for his health.  She doesn’t go because she gets seasick, but is okay with Stan going along to take care of Ollie.  

Of course, they don’t go to Honolulu, they go to Chicago for their convention, take part in a rousing parade, and enjoy the convention carousing with overbearing party animal Charley Chase, from the Texas contingent.  He is a practical joker who slaps rear-ends with a paddle and shouts approvingly, “That’s a darb!” when someone cracks a funny remark.  He is also Ollie’s brother-in-law, but doesn’t know it because he’s never met him.  Charley calls his sister as a prank, and puts Ollie on the phone, who is surprised to hear his wife’s voice, and nervously says, “Goodbye, Sugar,” as a matter of habit.

Ty Parvis sings “Honolulu Baby,” as part of the floor show (which Stan and Ollie pick up on and you will never get out of your head for the next day or two), and Charita Alden is a principal dancer showing off the alure of a grass skirt.  They may not have made it to Honolulu on the ship, but Honolulu came to them.

The boys return home, but there’s trouble.  The boat on which they were to return from Honolulu flounders at sea, is sinking and passengers must be rescued.  The wives are frantic with worry, horror-stricken down at the steamship office to await word of survivors.  

The boys discover the news when they see the dramatic headlines in the newspaper, and they know they’re in for it.

The girls actually discover the truth when they see a newsreel that shows Stan and Ollie mugging in the convention parade in Chicago.

When the girls come home, the boys’ first instinct is to hide, so they head for the attic.  When they bed down up there, another gag is introduced that plays out over and over, when Stan says they will be like “two peas in a pot.”  Ollie corrects him, “Two peas in a pod…Po-DUH.”  Later on, when Mae Busch says the word “pot,” Stan will properly correct her, “Po-DUH.”

They boys will eventually end up on the roof in the pouring rain, fearful of Stan’s duck-hunting wife with the shotgun.  When they are caught and must explain themselves, Ollie’s coy marching his fingers up the doorframe, a trademark move with Oliver Hardy to finger fiddle, and even his use of the theatrical chestnut, “That’s all there is, there isn’t anymore,” (see this previous post on Ethel Barrymore for the explanation to that one), does nothing to save his hide.  Mae is furious and bent on killing him via chucking all the pots (or po-DUHS) at him. 

Stan, unable to bear the strain, breaks down as only he can, and whimpers a squeaky-voiced confession.  His wife marches him home, but there is no pot-throwing or shotgun firing; she forgives Stan and we see him all cozy with a box of chocolates because he has confessed like a good boy.

There’s a lot of action for a film that’s only just over one hour long.  Sons of the Desert, the name of their lodge, became the name of the international Laurel and Hardy fan club, with “tents” all over the world bearing names reflective of their films.  The Night Owls was a branch of this brotherhood in western Massachusetts, where a gentleman named Hal Stanton presided and also hosted a local television show programming Laurel and Hardy shorts.  This is where I became a fan as a small child.  Have a look at this post and its comments for more on the Sons of the Desert lodges.

And stop by the CMBA site for more blogs in the “Make ‘Em Laugh” blogathon!

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism and Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

My new non-fiction book, CHILDREN'S WARTIME ADVENTURE NOVELS - The Silent Generation's Vicarious Experience of World War II -- is now available in eBook here at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and a wide variety of other online shops.

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From Cherry Ames, to Meet the Malones, from Dave Dawson to Kitty Carter - Canteen Girl, the Silent Generation spent their childhood immersed in geopolitical events through the prism of their middle grade and young adult books.  From the home front to the battlefield, these books are a window on their world, and influenced their hard-working, conformity-loving generation. 

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Nancy Drew - Detective (1938)

Bonita Granville made four Nancy Drew B-movies based on the famous character in the series of novels for girls. This first entry gives us beginning and end titles with the silhouette of Nancy drawn as a shadow in the dark, carrying a flashlight and with the wind blowing her hair, her scarf, and her skirt before her. It is a typical image found in the illustrations for the books by Carolyn Keene (actually a pseudonym for a team of writers), and is wonderfully evocative of that girls’ mystery genre.

Warner Bros. specialized in hard boiled crime films of detectives and gangsters, but there is nothing hard boiled about the Nancy Drew series, which does not even follow the novels that closely. We do have Nancy, plucky, clever teen who sticks her nose in other people’s business, but Bonita Granville plays her with more cheerfulness and humor than her literary counterpart. Carson Drew, her lawyer dad played by John Litel, an intelligent kindly authority figure and seems to defend only innocent people, and spends a lot of time warning Nancy to stay out of trouble.

Ned Nickerson becomes Ted in this series. Played by Frankie Thomas, Ted is a bit more bumbling but a lot more funny than his counterpart in the books as well. Ted’s and Nancy’s relationship is more teasing than amorous, but the chemistry between the two young actors brings a lot to the films. Nancy’s other chums, “boyish George” and “plump Bess” are nowhere to be seen. Just as well, there’d be nothing for them to do.

In this first outing, the plot is fast paced, almost as fast as Nancy’s speech. A rich elderly woman is kidnapped, and Nancy drags poor Ted along on a spree of clues, thugs, and ineffectual police represented by Captain Tweedy to save the day. Ted is useful because he can tackle people and knows a lot about carrier pigeons.

Nancy’s famous roadster (for those of you who grew up on the original stories, you will recall she never drove a car; she drove a roadster. She never wore a dress; she wore a frock), is about the size of the Queen Mary. We can tell by the rear-screen projection whizzing by us just how maniacally fast Nancy drives. Nancy leaves the comfort of her palatial suburban house with its enormous curved staircase and goofy maid Effie, to scour River Heights for clues. (Or clews, depending on which editions you read.)

There is a lot of racing about in Nancy’s roadster in this film. We have a wonderful, essentially trouble-free world of two all-American kids who change their own flat tires, fly in biplanes with helmets and goggles, shooting aerial pictures with a Brownie camera and develop their own black and white prints, send Western Union telegrams, and also distress signals through the radio. They use Ham radios and know that bluebells are also called larkspurs. They face surly gunmen and Ted, good guy that he is, even consents to dressing in disguise as a female nurse of that era to help free the old lady held hostage in a sinister rest home. Resplendent in a dress white nurse’s uniform, white stockings and cap, and cape, he looks like Cherry Ames on steroids. (Unlike Nancy Drew, Cherry Ames never got her own B-movie serial. Must not have had a good agent.)

The real nurse (played by Mae Busch, who we last saw as the battleaxe Mrs. Hardy in “Unaccustomed As We Are”) inside the spooky house is being very mean to the old lady, who has a lot of money, which is why everybody is bothering about her. Ted is a much nicer nurse. When one of the bad guys flirtatiously hits on Ted, our hero bravely pulls out his compact and begins to reapply his makeup, virtuously giving the ne’er do well the brush-off.

Add a rumble seat and a roadster with a broken starter than needs to be cranked in order for the engine to turn over, and you have one swell adventure, at least one for the time capsule.

That’s all for this week. See you Monday. Have a good weekend.

Two of a Kind Movies

Laurel and Hardy’s “Block-Heads” (1938) was a remake of their earlier “Unaccustomed As We Are” (1929). It was a common feature in the silent days when a plot was just a series of gags for a gag to be re-worked and re-used until it reached some kind of climax, achieved some point of perfection. Then use it again, because it worked.

“Unaccustomed As We Are” was the duo’s first talking picture. A simple plot, Hardy invites Laurel home to dinner. Mrs. Hardy, played by Mae Busch, is a battleaxe whose aggressive complaining embarrasses Hardy. Meanwhile, Mr. Hardy’s innocent friendship with the neighbor lady, Mrs. Kennedy, gets complicated when, because Laurel has caused a gas explosion in Hardy’s kitchen, twice, she runs over to help and Mr. Hardy rips her dress off. Because she has caught fire. He gallantly covers her with a tablecloth. His wife returns. Much angst.

More angst when we see that Mr. Kennedy is a tough cop.

A funny scenario, but they expand it with “Block-heads” nine years later. Here they create a back story for Laurel. The pair had been in the Army in World War I, and years later, Stan is still patrolling the trench because he does not know the war is over. When found and brought to a VA Hospital near Hardy’s home, Hardy goes to visit his old friend.

There is some funny stuff when Hardy mistakenly believes Laurel to be an amputee, and heroically carries Laurel around as tenderly as if he were a child, invites him home to dinner, and tries to bundle him into a car. His impressive girth aside, Oliver Hardy must have had the strength and endurance of an Olympic decathlon champ to manage this scene.

In this film, Hardy and his battleaxe wife, played by Minna Gombell this time, live in an apartment building. We have a multi-level set which makes things interesting. One of the best gags is when a kid from another apartment, played by Tommy Bond, more familiar as the bully “Butch” in the “Our Gang” series, plays with a football in the hall. Oliver kicks this pest’s football down the stairs, a couple of times, where each time it smacks the front desk clerk in the face. It’s a beautiful gag.

One cute bit is when Stan, rather like a Looney Tunes cartoon, takes a full glass of water from his pocket, and then takes ice cubes from the other pocket. He also fills his bare fist with tobacco and smokes his thumb like a pipe.

In this remake, the nice neighbor lady is Mrs. Gilbert, played by Patricia Ellis. Her husband is a bombastic big game hunter, even more volatile than a tough cop, and played to the hilt by Billy Gilbert.

In this film we also have a kitchen gas explosion, and Oliver without pants, and Mrs. Gilbert who comes to help. Unfortunately, she is locked out of her apartment, and then soaked by a punchbowl, and he gives her his pajamas to wear. His wife returns. Much angst. The hot-tempered Mr. Gilbert arrives. More angst.

When his shotgun goes off, men all over the neighborhood are seen leaping out of windows in their underwear.

These films illustrate Hollywood’s favorite belief that if something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing again and again.