On Again-Off Again

Veteran Comedy Director Eddie Cline leads Wheeler and Woolsey in one of their best vehicles. They pair off as partners in a pill manufacturing company who can't stand each other and wrestle each other for the company, with the loser to be the other one's manservant for a year. The duo's timing and delivery is far better suited to the Marx-Brothers-like exchange of insults liberally admixed with physical abuse than the odd sort of friendship they demonstrated in some of their other vehicles.

Cline starts the show out with a wonderful long sequence in which the two do a dance and abuse each other. Cline, whose career included Keaton's first solo shorts and the best W.C. Fields comedies would watch his career slowly begin to topple about now. If you get a chance to see this one, made while he was still at his peak, do so.