Slipping Wives

Priscilla (Priscilla Dean) is married to an artist named Leon (Herbert Rawlinson), who doesn't show much interest in her or anything romantic, ignoring her requests, no matter how intimate or personal, at the dinner table while he reads the morning paper. Priscilla decides that the only way to try and win his affection is to make him jealous. Things take an unexpected turn when a paint salesman (Stan Laurel) shows up at the door to solicit his products to Leon, to which Priscilla intercepts his request by trying to coerce Stan into making Leon jealous, all the while the couple's butler Ollie (Oliver Hardy) finds himself in on the whole thing.

Such is the premise for the Laurel and Hardy gem Slipping Wives, which features enough substantial physical comedy and ribald situational humor to make the twenty-three minute short film fun and memorable. Laurel and Hardy team up before they were billed as a regular duo to deliver the same kind of comedy that made them and their feature films famous. Consider the scene where Stan and Ollie get in a fight, with Ollie ending up in the bathtub, in classic, silent comedy fun. Scenes like this provide an ostensibly-stunted premise with more life and gusto than one would initially expect.

Laurel and Hardy, regardless of how physical they can get with each other, still make for one of the most fun silent duos in history, effortlessly carrying out solid situational pranks and giddy scenarios that find new ways to be joyfully silly but touching and memorable. Slipping Wives is simply no exception.

Starring: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Priscilla Dean, Herbert Rawlinson, and Albert Conti. Directed by: Fred L. Guiol.

I wonder whether this was the film that convinced Hal Roach he had the makings of a comedy partnership in Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. They share a lot of screen time here, even though this isn't a Laurel & Hardy comedy as such. The boys play second fiddle to Priscilla Dean and a forgettable leading man, and they take an immediate and intense dislike to one another from the moment Stan appears on Dean's doorstep to deliver paint. Dean is feeling neglected by her artist husband and solicits the aid of Stan to cosy up to her in her husband's presence in the hope of making him jealous.

I don't think I would make Priscilla Dean feel neglected – she's something of a looker, and makes a good attempt at keeping up with the boys. Even though their third and fourth on the cast list, Laurel and Hardy supply all the memorable moments – apart from the guy who keeps departing with odd things attached to the top of his hat. Stan retells the story of Samson and Delilah at one point and, this being a silent film he has to tell it in exaggerated mime which he does very funnily. Another reviewer has observed that Laurel was a funnier comic than Hardy, and I think he's right. Having said that I think neither would have lasted long without the other once sound movies were established.

This isn't a classic by any means, but it possesses that frantic energy common to so many silent comedies and has quite a few funny moments. The chase finale is particularly good. The intertitles have a coy knowingness about them at times. 'He only kisses me on Sundays and holidays,' bemoans the neglected wife, and you know it isn't kisses that she's missing. And watch closely as Dean talks Laurel into being her accomplice. Read her lips. It looks to me like it's not 'do you want to make love to me,' that she's saying to him but something much more earthy.

With most Laurel & Hardy movies it is more that I admire them than that I really laugh. With this one there were some very good laughs, especially in the part where Stan Laurel makes his own version of Samson and Delilah.

Oliver Hardy has probably the smallest part in this short which is about a woman who wants to make her husband jealous. She tries to do this with Laurel, who is a handyman. Hardy is the butler. Pretty funny Laurel & Hardy short.

Viewed the above titled movie recently. This was one of the films Stan & Ollie made before they were teamed officially. It shows some bits of "business", that would become trademarks of theirs in later films. ie: Oliver being the know-all who constantly corrects and intimidates Stan. Also, the plot of their being used to make a husband jealous was used some years later in another film where they were greeting card salesman, and no less than Charles Middleton was the supposedly neglectful husband. This shows the early development of a pair of classic comedians. That is why I gladly give it a 7.

I don't really regarded this movie as a Laurel & Hardy comedy short. After all the first billed star of the movie is Priscilla Dean. Stan Laurel does have a big role in the movie as well but Oliver Hardy on the other hand plays a disappointingly small and not significant enough role in the movie.

Fred Guiol never really has been the best or most original director of silent comedy shorts. This movie is typical for his style, its formulaic, simple but it serves its purpose. Thye movie does nowhere reaches the level of comedy excellence but there are some sequences and moments in the movie that still make this movie an above average one to watch. The movie nowhere surprises but it does entertain, so why complain about it?

I always found Stan Laurel to be the better comedy actor, than his counterpart Oliver Hardy and he does indeed once more proofs this by his role in this movie. He times well and his mimic is wonderful. This really is more of a Laurel movie than it is a Laurel & Hardy movie.

Nothing too impressive but a well made and entertaining movie to watch nevertheless.

7/10

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