Big Business

Big Business (1924)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Another decent Our Gang short from Hal Roach has the boys opening up a barber shop where they try to make some extra business but the only thing they get done is making people bald. The "plot" of the second portion deals with a rich kid (played by Mickey Daniels) whose mother treats him like a girl and makes him go around with a very bad hair cut. He eventually walks into the barber shop where the kids try to teach him how to be a real kid. If there's such a thing as beating a dead horse over and over and over again then this is the film because the same gags keeps getting repeated. The barber scenes basically has Joe cutting the hair off all the kids and of course the other kids get into the typical type of trouble that you'd expect. This includes Farina who has a pretty funny bit where he paints strips on a boy's legs to make it look like an outfit. Another funny gag has Mickey getting picked on due to his strange hair. What the gardener tells him is very simple but so funny. I think the film would have worked a lot better had it featured more of an imagination because it really gets held back by the same joke being done over and over. What's even stranger is that this short runs a few minutes longer than most in the series so a lot of editing would have done this one some good.

Not to be confused with the Laurel & Hardy classic of the same name, this Big Business is an Our Gang comedy which features the first generation of Hal Roach's silent era Rascals. The early entries from this long-running series tend to be quite enjoyable, and this one is no exception. Silent film technique allows for more spontaneous performances from the kids, and just about everything is being tried out for the first time. I believe the earliest Our Gang comedies compare favorably with the more polished -- but also more formulaic -- shorts of the '30s, the ones with Spanky, Darla, and Alfalfa singing off-key (again and again and again). The silent comedies have a fresher feel, and the kids of the early '20s gang are scruffier, tougher, and sassier than their successors.

In this short the kids manage their own barber shop, with harrowing results. No one gets hurt, but most of the customers wind up bald or close to it: one kid even gets a prematurely fashionable Mohawk! Scenes involving close calls with sharp scissors might make some viewers wince, while the manicurist uses a device that looks like a wire-cutter. Ouch! My favorite gag features a simple bit of trick photography, when barber Joe Cobb appears to use the bald head of one of his customers (one of his "victims" is more like it) as a mirror. It's less amusing when a baby in a highchair is given a fearsome-looking straight razor to play with. We know it isn't real, but the gag is in questionable taste. Still, the tone is generally good-natured even when the gags are on the rough side.

The rudimentary plot involves a sissified rich kid in a Little Lord Fauntleroy outfit who breaks away from his repressive mother, gets his hated ringlets lopped off in the kids' barber shop, and proves he's a regular guy by triumphing in a fistfight. Freckle-faced Mickey Daniels is a strange choice to play the rich kid, as he just doesn't look the part -- his "sissy" outfit looks like a Halloween costume, not his normal apparel -- but it hardly matters, as the story is secondary to the procession of gags in the barber shop.

Aside from the fact that they're both Hal Roach productions, there's no direct connection between this Big Business and the L&H comedy of 1929, but, as Leonard Maltin points out in his book on Our Gang, there are a couple of coincidental links. First, actress Lyle Tayo (also known as Lyle Barton) appears in both films, as Mickey's mom here, and as the woman who slams the door in Stan & Ollie's faces in "their" Big Business. Furthermore, the original idea for this Our Gang comedy was concocted by none other than Stan Laurel, then working solo for producer Hal Roach, who, according to the book, was paid a grand total of $10 for his contribution!

It's interesting that the Hal Roach Studio would make two shorts by the same name--first the Our Gang short "Big Business" in 1924 and then the Laurel & Hardy classic in 1929.

This installment of the series finds the kids operating a barber shop--complete with shaves, haircuts and manicures. Of course the kids end up butchering the other kids' hair! Into this strange business wanders young master Michael (Mickey Daniels)--a pampered mama's boy with long Buster Brown curls. He hates them and is thrilled to get them cut off. He's also thrilled to demonstrate to everyone he isn't a sissy and takes on an older boy and gives him a good beating. Michael's dad sees this and is thrilled, as he's been worried about his son--but obviously not enough to tell his wife what to do with the curls!. Overall, it's a clever little short which periodically shows a baby chewing on a straight razor! My how times have changed!