Babes in Toyland

I have read some of the other comments about this movie and it seems some think it is a childish movie and doesn't do justice to Stan and Ollie. If you ever saw this movie as a youngster, you would not think so. I remember it in black and white back in the sixties and the first time I saw it, it was scary to see the bogeymen and Barnaby's twisted demeanor. I still watch it and I am fifty years old. It almost takes me back to those younger days when life was more simpler and there weren't so many worries. For a little over an hour it is a welcome escape and as far as I am concerned, it is as much a part of Thankgiving as turkey dinner. I can really relate to the toymaker's attitude after years of working and surely we have ALL met enough real life Barnabys and that is what makes the movie still very entertaining and amusing. So I urge you all that while that turkey is cooking to kick back and be a kid again for just a little while.

There are many films based on Victor Herbert's famous operetta, Babes in Toyland. There's the 1961 Disney film with Ray Bolger, there's the 1997 animated film, there's the 1980s TV film with Drew Barrymore, but the one I'm going to look at today is the 1934 Hal Roach Studios film starring the legendary comedy duo, Laurel and Hardy. I've I had to spill the truth, I'd say that this is my third favorite film of all time. It's up there with The Wizard of Oz and in my opinion, it should get a lot more recognition. For 1934, it's a wonder what they were able to accomplish with the hour and a half long film, not just with the special and practical effects, but with the pure spectacle and enchantment. This is a magical film, a film that grabs me and sucks me into it's realm every time I set eyes to it. It's got spectacular songs, brilliant set designs, a monkey in a Mickey Mouse costume and wondrous stop motion effects that rival that of King Kong. If I were to recommend it, I'd say see it in color, which is usually the version that airs on television anyway. The color, in my opinion, makes everything pop more and makes the fantasy land of Toyland seem more enchanted, more storybook like. It's like you are right there, experiencing the film's events with Stannie Dumb and Ollie Dee and routing for the Wooden Soldiers as they kick Bogeyman rump.

Laurel and Hardy are at their finest in this film and it's obvious this dim witted duo were one of the many inspirations for Star Wars' R2-D2 and C-3P0. They're always getting into trouble, getting dunked in a pool of water and getting fired from their job after a wooden soldier reigns havoc in the toy factory. Felix Knight, who portrays Tom-Tom Piper is a fantastic singer and Henry Brandon, who was just 21 years old at the time pulls off a menacing and wicked Silas Barnaby. And those Bogeyman, hoggish and haggard monstrosities are the most terrifying adversaries ever put to film. When I was a kid, these ghoulish, grotesque abominations were one of the elements of this film that made my jaw drop to the floor. I ran to the closet and grabbed my plush stuffed bunny rabbit and hoped the Bogeymen would go away.

Luckily, the Wooden Soldiers arrive to take out the villainous creatures and Barnaby as well. The Wooden Soldier March makes me feel brave and triumphant, like I can take on any peril and come out on top. These soldiers kick the living tar out of the Bogeymen and in one scene, a wooden soldier looses his head as he chases a Bogeyman into a house. In the very end, Barnaby and the Bogeymen are banished, everybody cheers and Ollie Dee gets a butt full of sharp darts launched from a cannon. What a rather macabre ending to an otherwise marvelous and magical motion picture. This is the pinnacle Thanksgiving movie for me and while there are many versions of the operetta in existence, this will always be the definitive version for me. Laurel and Hardy are grand, the look of the film is grand and this film just screams childhood. It takes me back to the carefree, innocent days of youth.

Bring on the Wooden Soldiers!

Given its nature Babes In Toyland unlike most operettas from bygone days will have productions running forever. The Victor Herbert-Glen McDonough music will last forever and productions for Theater companies that specialize in youth will always be putting on this show.

Hal Roach put on this one and it starred his two favorite comedy players Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy playing sorcerer's apprentices to the evil Barnaby played by Henry Brandon. Brandon wants to take over Toyland and he's got special designs on Little Bo-Peep played by winsome Charlotte Henry whose other big role was Alice in Alice And Wonderland. Those designs are of the Snidely Whiplash variety.

Stan and Ollie play characters and for the most part eschew the normal shtick associated with them. Their characters don't stand out as they are well integrated in the story.

The two musical numbers associated with this production are done quite nicely, Toyland and March Of The Wooden Soldiers. The latter is used to great affect in the climax.

Walt Disney did a decent production of Babes In Toyland in the Sixties with Annette Funicello and Tommy Sands. But I'll take Stan and Ollie any day for a mystical journey to childhood.

I am a huge Laurel and Hardy fan, and while this may not be considered one of their great feature length films, I love to get this out for the December holidays. After the rest of the family watches "Wonderful Life", "Scrooge" and the Nutcracker, I pull this out and laugh until I cry. The only link to the holiday is the use of the "March of the Soldiers" music - but that's enough for me. Stan Laurel's ingenious battle tactics just send me into a fit.

BABES IN TOYLAND (Hal Roach/MGM, 1934), directed Gus Meins and Charles Rogers, is a musical fairy tale based on Victor Herbert's 1903 operetta that became tailor-made for the talents of comedy team Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy in what's considered to be their very best and highly acclaimed adaptation taken from an operatic work, thanks to its fine script, comedy material and notable storybook characters brought to life on the screen. In spite of Stan and Ollie having to take time away from the screen in favor of plot development, musical interludes and romantic subplot, even appearing nearly ten minutes from the start of the story, the movie, overall, succeeds.

Set in the mythical land of Toyland, Widow Peep (Florence Roberts) is an old woman about to be evicted from her home by the evil Silas Barnaby (Henry Brandon) unless her mortgage is paid. Barnaby is willing to overlook the matter and offer her the deed in favor of being honored for having her daughter, Bo-Peep (Charlotte Henry) as his bride. Bo-Peep loves Tom Tom Piper (Felix Knight, dressed like Peter Pan), and will have nothing to do with him. Stanley Dumb (Stan Laurel) and Oliver Dee (Oliver Hardy), a couple of toy-makers who take up room and board in Widow Peep's home, attempt to help by asking their employer, the toy master (William Burress) for an advance in salary, but because Stanley confused Santa Claus's (Ferdinand Munier) order 600 toy soldiers at one foot high, thus giving him 100 toy soldiers at six foot high instead of 600 soldiers at 1 foot high, they both get fired, and must come up with another solution in rescuing Bo-Peep from the clutches of Barnaby.

A memorable score by Victor Herbert, only a few were selected for the screen, including: "Toyland" (sung by Virginia Karns); "Don't Cry, Bo-Peep, Don't Cry" (sung by Felix Knight); "The Castles in Spain," "Go to Sleep, Slumber Deep" and "The March of the Toys (Wooden Soldiers)." Some reissue prints retitled MARCH OF THE WOODEN SOLDIERS eliminate Mother Goose's opening of "Toyland" as she opens the "Babes in Toyland" storybook and introduces it main characters in song: Little Bo Peep who lost her sheep; Tom Tom the Piper's Son; The Little Old Lady Who Lived in a Shoe (Widow Peep); Silas Barnaby, "the meanest man in town"; Hi Diddle Diddle, The Cat and the Fiddle; Three Little Pigs: Elmer, Willie and Jiggs; and finally Stanley Dumb and Oliver Dee, "they love to sleep as you can see;" along with the "Go to Sleep" number, having recently been restored on both video and DVD distributions ranging from colorized to original black and white photography. The musical interludes are not overdone yet capture the mood of the story. In fact, more than half of Victor Herbert's original score has been cast aside in keeping the story to average length (79 minutes).

Charlotte Henry, who starred in Paramount's fantasy to Lewis Carroll's now forgotten screen adaptation of ALICE IN WONDERLAND (Paramount, 1933), is ideally cast as Bo-Peep. Had fate taken a different turn, one wonders if Henry would have succeeded playing Dorothy in THE WIZARD OF OZ had the L. Frank Baum story been brought to the screen about this time instead of 1939? It so happens that TOYLAND and OZ are similar in nature. They are both set in a mythical land; Silas Barnaby and the Wicked Witch are evil individuals who bring fear to those around them; Barnaby is assisted by hideous Bogeymen while the Witch has her flying monkeys; Laurel and Hardy are do-gooders similar to the Tin Man and the Scarecrow; and finally Toyland citizens bursting into song. Unlike most fantasies of this sort, BABES IN TOYLAND is not one extended dream sequence from which the leading character awakens back to reality as did Dorothy at her farm in Kansas following her Technicolor experience in the land of OZ. This is Toyland from start to finish, with a touch of Disneyland as one of the citizens of Toyland looking very much like Mickey Mouse!

While as Dee and Dumb, Laurel and Hardy perform their roles in their usual traditional manner, but minus their trademark derbys. Their key scenes include having them sneaking into Barnaby's home to retrieve Widow Peep's deed only to get caught, thanks to Stanley, and being sentenced to public dunking in a pond of cold water (only Ollie gets the treatment) and thrown out of Toyland into Boogeyland forever (the same fate later set for Tom-Tom accused of pig-napping Elmer, thanks to Barnaby); their participation in Barnaby's wedding, as well as the grand finale where the toy soldiers are brought to life from the toy factory in their war against the bogeymen with Stan and Ollie's ammunition of darts fired from the cannon. Great march formation and still photography outdoes any computer technology today since more effort was put into this sequence alone. Cartoon violence is the essence here, especially when Ollie falls victim to it in the Wile E. Coyote tradition, but not to the extreme.

More Laurel and Hardy than Victor Herbert, BABES IN TOYLAND is geared for children and adults alike, especially adults who watched this annually on television during the Christmas when they were kids themselves since the 1950s. In recent years, TOYLAND aired on American Movie Classics (1994-1996) and finally Turner Classic Movies (TCM premiere: December 24, 2012, with original theatrical title intact). Remade theatrically in 1961 by Walt Disney Productions, then again as either television movies or new theatrical adaptations in later years, it's the 1934 original that appears to live on happily ever after. (***1/2)