Their First Mistake

I suspect that a few years after its released "Their First Mistake" might've not been allowed to show all the things that it did. Much of it is Stan and Ollie doing their usual stuff - with Ollie constantly irritated at Stan's idiocy - but their is a scene showing them in bed together with the baby. Maybe it was more acceptable since this was a comedy and thus not to meant to get taken seriously, but I can imagine that a number of people would've found it extreme back then.

Aside from that, it's a funny short, with no shortage of the pair's typical mishaps. As always, Hardy suffers the most due to Laurel's incompetence. The best scenes involve the lamp.

Good one.

This Laurel and Hardy short, with the guys stuck with a baby they adopted to give Ollie's wife something to do during the day (loved that) was an eye opener for me when I first viewed it in the mid eighties, over a half century after it was made.

After the wife storms out, Ollie is holding the baby and Stan is going to leave. Ollie asks where Stanley is going. Stanley asks what does he have to do with the baby.

Ollie: "What do you have to do with it? Why, you're the one who wanted me to have a baby."

Stan: "Well, I can't be tied down to a baby. I have my future, . . my career to think about."

Ollie: "Well, what about me? What will my friends say? I'll be . . . ostracized."

Why are youth panicked into what do and not to do when obviously the same problems have been going on for longer than anyone wants to admit?

Thank you, Laurel and Hardy, for at least documenting it.

An above-average Laurel and Hardy short feature, this two reel affair is directed by George Marshall (later at the helm of many top-flight comedy features) and is marked, specially so during its initial two-thirds, by a greater emphasis upon character development than upon physical humour, to the work's advantage. After Oliver and his wife Arabella (Laurel/Hardy regular Mae Busch) have a violent spat due to his expenditure of a majority of his free time with Stan, the latter suggests that Ollie adopt a baby with which to occupy Arabella's hours, freeing the two pals to enjoy themselves, and Ollie immediately does so (following an optical wipe), but too late because a process server (Billy Gilbert) presents him with divorce papers along with a similar document to Laurel for "alienation of Mr. Hardy's affections." This leads to one of the better developed scenes from the duo's films wherein Ollie pastiches the Abandoned Maiden genre after his buddy tries to leave him alone to care for his new infant, a very funny and original piece of cinematic business that, in addition to a poignant scene when the men revert to boyhood while lolling atop Stanley's bed in his adjacent apartment, make of this a better than standard effort of Laurel and Hardy.

Mae Busch, Oliver Hardy's wife, thinks he spends too much time with Stan Laurel. They decide that what she needs is a baby, so they go out and adopt one. When they return to the apartment, they find Mae is suing Ollie for divorce and Stan for alienation of affection. All well and good but what are the Boys going to do with a baby.

This is sometimes cited as the 'gayest' of the Laurel & Hardy shorts, and there;s something in that, but if so, it raises the implication only to make fun of it. Stan and Ollie are almost all the movie; the baby gets one close up to establish it as real, Miss Busch is gone after the first minute, Billy Gilbert plays a process server, and director George Marshall appears briefly as a neighbor.

THe gags are good, but there's no real ending. Apparently Stan and Ollie improvised so many gags, there wasn't time.

Their First Mistake is a short that really embodies the essence of what Laurel and Hardy were about as a comedic duo. Hal Roach, the famous producer of many of their shorts along with a barrage of other successful ones for the period, famously stated how Laurel and Hardy complimented each other with their slapstick and behavioral tendencies, but what always drove me to their shorts as a means for pleasant escapism besides their inherent humor was how both characters were loyal to one another. It was as if they were all each other had, and no matter how angry they got at each other, they had to stick together, for where else would they go?

When Laurel and Hardy decide to adopt a baby to prove to Hardy's wife (Mae Busch) that they are indeed responsible and trustworthy, they are all they have, and while the short is frequently funny, it also proves this point as it goes on. Notice how even through anger and hostility brew between one another, there both men are, quick to recoup and try to do the right thing, despite going about it in the wrong way. Furthermore, Laurel and Hardy are breathlessly funny, finding a plethora of ways to be entertaining as well as thoughtfully engaging.

Their First Mistake embodies precisely why their careers and shorts have a timeless longevity.

Starring: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, and Mae Busch. Directed by: George Marshall.