The Fixer Uppers

This one takes the basic idea of a neglected wife pretending to have a lover to make her husband jealous from Slipping Wives, a 1927 silent short that Laurel & Hardy both appeared in, although not as a comedy team, but it quickly departs at a tangent. The neglected wife here is Mae Busch, in a more sympathetic role than usual as the neglected wife in question. Her husband is Charles Middleton, a frequent foe of the boys who, rather than brimming with gratitude to Ollie for showing him how neglectful he had been, challenges him to a pistol duel.

The story is a bit daft, and it's true that this isn't one of Stan & Ollie's stronger shorts, but those two only have to appear on screen to make us smile. They sell greeting cards in this one, and Stan is the writer of such gems as 'A Merry Christmas, husband, a happy New Years nigh, I wish you Easter Greetings, hooray for the fourth of July.' 'We call that our four-in-one,' Ollie advises the unhappy wife.

Laurel and Hardy are door to door greeting card salesmen. They happen across a wife who believes her husband no longer loves her. The duo come up with the suggestion that one of them pretend to make love to her when the husband is due home – if he acts jealous then she will know he loves her. However when the man comes home to find Hardy kissing his wife he, the best shot in the land, challenges Hardy to a duel that is harder to get out of than Hardy expects.

An enjoyable short that allows Laurel and Hardy to do good physical work as well as their verbal banter. The card sales pitches they do are simply `wacky' and display a nice touch of the absurd (the 4-in-1 card that covers all seasons!). I was a bit taken a back by hearing Laurel offer to `make love' to the woman – but it is a different time and meant kiss etc. The build up to the duel is more verbal humour than physical and is funnier for it.

Laurel's confused story telling is good value and Hardy's reactions are pure gold. The support cast are all pretty good – whether it be the comedy drunk, the upset wife or the vengeful husband, they all play their part and enable Laurel and Hardy to bounce off them with ease.

Overall this is a very enjoyable short that allows the duo to play down the pratfalls and play up the verbal and performance comedy.

Stan and Ollie have another one of those innocuous jobs. They are door to door greeting card salesmen. When they come to the door of Mae Busch, she is bemoaning the fact that her husband doesn't seem to love her. To test this, it is suggested that Oliver pretend to "make love" (not quite the same meaning as now) to her and test the husband. Of course, he is Charles Middleton, who played the evil space lord, Ming, in the Flash Gordon serials. He is an artist and the best shot in France, and he decides to fight a duel with our rotund friend. Now the boys must find a way out of this because this guy really means business. Unfortunately, they decide to get drunk and through a series of unfortunate events, end up back at the artist's home, in his bed. This is a little weaker than many of these episodes, but it's still better than what most anyone else was doing at the time.

Fixer-Uppers, The (1935)

*** (out of 4)

Laurel and Hardy are card salesmen who meet a woman who feels neglected by her husband. In order to make her husband jealous Hardy agrees to play the part of her lover but when the husband catches them he challenges Hardy to a duel. Several hysterical scenes are here including the kiss between the woman and Laurel and another wonderful segment involving a drunk who makes matters even worse.

Bohemian Girl, The (1936)

*** (out of 4)

Laurel and Hardy end up taking care of a six year old girl not knowing she's really a princess. This isn't the best L&H feature out there but there's enough smiles and laughs to make it worth viewing once. I doubt I'd ever watch this one again but the potato scene with Laurel is hilarious as is the wine drinking scene. The film really picks up towards the end. Thelma Todd's final film.

Sorry if I`m hurting anyone`s feelings but this is one of the weakest of the L&H shorts . My problem with it is not so much a threadbare plot but the set-up and the coincidence of the husband arriving home at that precise point . Like science fiction comedy relies on sincere credibilty for it to work and sincere credibilty is in short supply when Stan and Ollie sit in a bar when they should be getting the first train out of town . Wouldn`t you in the same circumstance ? And the flaws in the script aren`t helped by the very stagey performances of the supporting cast .

That said both Stan and Ollie greatly rise above the material on display and do give very good slapstick performances with the telephone scene and the duel working simply because L&H have the greatest chemistry of any comedy duo that have ever lived . Even when the scripts aren`t very good Stan and Ollie can still bring a grin to my face

Six out of ten