La flotte est dans le lac

A LAUREL & HARDY Comedy Short.

Sailors Stan & Ollie, two MEN O'WAR, are on shore leave. While strolling through the park, they meet & escort two silly young women. After a financial contretemps at the soda fountain, the Boys initiate a rowdy donnybrook on the boat pond.

A hilarious little film, with a delightful sense of spontaneity, as if the performers were extemporizing much of their dialogue. This short is also refreshing in that the plot takes place entirely out of doors. Highlight: bedlam in the boat. The knickers sequence shows that this film was produced pre-Production Code. That's James Finlayson as the soda fountain/boat rental manager; Anne Cornwall & Gloria Greer as the young women; and Charlie Hall as the man in the canoe.

"Men 'O War" was a short where Laurel and Hardy were still adapting to the new medium of sound. The dialogue is good enough but the pace is a bit leaden. Stan and Ollie are two sailors who befriend two young ladies in a park. They go to buy some drinks but Stan and Ollie only have 15 cents on them. There follows a marvellous scene where the boys agree to share a drink but Stan keeps forgetting this as he keeps ordering a drink he can't afford! The climax finishes with a full scale water fight after Stan and Ollie and their dates rent a boat for a pleasurable jaunt.

Laurel & Hardy are in their sailor outfits again, although there's really no need for them to be other than to emphasise their ineptitude in the second part of the film, which takes place on a boating lake. They come across a pair of bloomers and mistakenly believe they belong to one of a pair of young ladies they meet in the park. Of course, they don't belong to the ladies, but the boys realise this before they can embarrass themselves. That fact alone is an indicator of the high quality of the writing here; a lesser writer would have had the boys making asses of themselves, but the more satisfying pay-off is gained from the audience's sense of relief combined with the idea of what could have happened.

The boys take the girls for a soda. The clerk here is their old nemesis James Finlayson, but he doesn't really have a lot to do here other than squint suspiciously at the boys through one eye and say 'doh!' (nearly sixty years before Homer). Of course they don't have enough money and Ollie decides he and Stan will have to share one between them. You probably know how that works out, and the simplicity of Stan's line is filled with the kind of crackpot – but understandable – logic that typifies Laurel & Hardy's humour.

The ending's a variation on a theme they had used many times before but it still works because it *is* a variation rather than a rip off. This one's definitely worth a look.

Call me crazy ("Hey, crazy!") but I never enjoyed silent era films. I tried, oh I tried, but each time an actor's mouth moved there was nothing but an awkward silence. Then after what seemed too lengthy of a wait, a placard flashed on the TV screen, reflecting what the actor had just said moments before. I found this to be very distracting, plus it slowed down the natural comedic timing. This lapse between action and dialog, for me, was like watching an entire movie subtitled, and I couldn't square the two up.

That being said, I didn't watch any of the short and feature length "TV reruns" unless they were "talkies." As a kid who was fortunate enough to have a tiny black and white TV set in my bedroom, every Saturday morning before my parents or the Sun were up, I was thoroughly mesmerized by the vaudevillian, overtly physical humor of Buster Keaton, Our Gang (The Little Rascals), The Three Stooges, and of course, Laurel & Hardy.

The first Our Gang (The Little Rascals) talkie was "Small Talk" released in 1929. Buster Keaton's first talkie was "Free and Easy," released in 1930. The Three Stooges (Larry, Moe and Curly) most recognized talkie was The Woman Haters (1934). "Unaccustomed As We Are," released worldwide in 1929, was Laurel and Hardy's film debut with sound. It was an immediate hit with audiences.

Unlike many of their silent film era contemporaries who couldn't make the transition from silent to sound film, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy effortlessly slipped into this new media. Both actors had the rare gift of "comedic timing," and the duo knew how to thoroughly exploit sight gags. Moreover, lovable Hardy routinely broke the "fourth wall" of film, and after each hilarious yet tragic gag, he would often look straight at the camera as if to say, "Can you believe what just happened to me?"

"Men O' War" (1929) was Laurel and Hardy's third sound movie. Like the first two, it is a short. The plot is simple: Stan and Ollie are Navy sailors on leave who, while walking through what looks like Echo Park in Los Angeles, meet two attractive ladies also walking through the park. A very shy Ollie invites the giggling women to join them for a soda, but they only have enough money for three people. Afterwards they rent rent a row boat with the women, which turns into a war with the other boaters. From there it escalates into sheer mayhem.

It's all brilliantly performed by two of the most iconic comedic teams in history, and supported by a wonderful set of actors who would often appear in many future Laurel & Hardy shorts and feature length films.

No spoilers here as usual, but I will reveal that this was vaudevillian actor James Finlayson's first venture into a talkie, and it is also the first time (but certainly not the last time) in which we hear his trademark exclamation: "D'Oh!"

Starting right now, I'm reviewing a Laurel & Hardy film, and then an Abbott & Costello one with something similar, one after another. So it is that I'm reviewing Men O'War, L & H's third talkie. In this one, they are sailors charmed by a couple of young women. So they go to a soda shop and Ollie finds out there's only enough money for three drinks. So he tells Stan to refuse. I'll stop there and just say Bud & Lou go through something similar in Keep "Em Flying which I'll review next. So then they also go row boat riding and...well, if you've seen many L & H shorts it shouldn't surprise anyone what happens. This was pretty funny if not completely hilarious but still a treat to watch, just the same, especially when James Finlayson is involved, that's for sure! This short was early in the talkie era so the timing involving sound wasn't perfect, yet. So that's a recommendation for Men O'War.