BLOCK-HEADS(1938)Written May-June, 1938. Filmed June-July, 1938. Released by MGM, August, 1938. Produced by Hal Roach. Directed by John G. Blystone. 58 minutes. Cast: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Minna Gombell, Billy Gilbert, Patricia Ellis, James Finlayson, Tommy "Butch" Bond. STORY: It is headline news when Private Stan Laurel is found walking the trenches 20 years after the end of World War I (nobody told him the war was over). Old pal Oliver Hardy reads about Stan in the papers, and visits him at the Old Soldier's Home. Thinking Stan is an amputee (he is sitting in a wheelchair with his leg folded under him), Ollie invites Stan home for a steak dinner and indulges him by carrying him to his car before discovering he has two fully functional legs. Back home, they discover that Mrs. Hardy has stormed out in a huff, so The Boys attempt to cook their own meal. They blow up the kitchen, and the film ends as a partial remake of Unaccustomed as We Are. |
This is a film that almost wasn't. For eleven years, Hal Roach Studios had distributed their films through MGM. In 1938, Roach signed a new deal with United Artists, but still owed MGM one film under the old contract. Determined to make a film quickly and cheaply, a new L&H feature was the choice. The production was hurried and chaotic, Stan and Roach were not on the best of terms, and Stan's personal problems with his third wife Illiana distracted him from his work. In addition, both Stan and Babe were nearing the end of their Roach contracts, and there were strong rumors that this would be the last Laurel and Hardy film. Despite the problems, BLOCK-HEADS emerged as one of their best-ever features. |
JB: BLOCK-HEADS, my favorite L&H feature, is divided into three roughly equal sections, all of which tie seamlessly together.
In Part I, which could be titled "The
Reunion", Stan and Ollie show us what they are like when they are
forced to live separate lives. Stan, unable to think for himself,
continues to carry out the last instructions he has received, like a
computer caught in a programming loop. Meanwhile, Ollie becomes
insufferably dull, living a life that is made memorable only by the
occasional burnt finger or skinned knee. BLOCK-HEADS is the film
that definitively states why these two people need to be together.
Without Oliver, Stanley doesn't know what to do with himself.
Without Stanley, Oliver has no excitement in his life.
One of the funniest sequences The Boys ever
created comes when Ollie arrives at the Soldier's Home to bring Stan
back with him. Thinking Stan has lost a leg in the war (see the
story summary above for further explanation), Ollie insists on wheeling
him to the car. When another veteran demands the wheelchair,
Ollie carries Stan instead. Not one to ask questions, Stan just enjoys
the ride. Though based on a darker than usual premise, it is
never tasteless thanks to the brainless innocence of these two
characters.
The sequence is milked for all it is
worth. Stan cannot help being Stan, and so within moments, he has
accidentally soaked Ollie with a hose. But Ollie, overcome with
the sad thought of Stan's missing limb, represses his anger. And
so on it goes, as Ollie carries Stan, drops his derby, drops Stan,
picks him up again, struggles to get him into the car - all the while
never noticing that Stan is still in full possession of both his
legs. Although there are few gags in the sequence, the
laughter keeps building in anticipation of the moment when Ollie
finally realizes the truth. When he does - after both men tumble
out of the car - he angrily blurts out "Why didn't you tell me you had
two legs!?" to which Stan can only reply what Stan always replies to
such questions: "Well, ya didn't ask me."
Part II, which could be titled "Up and Down We
Go", is a freewheeling sequence in which all the The Boys have to do is
go up to the 13th floor and enter the Hardy apartment. But it is
not as easy as it sounds. Fifty years before TV's SEINFELD,
Laurel and Hardy knew how to tell stories about nothing. For
twenty minutes, the film's plot (what little there is of it) is dropped
completely in favor of seeing how many ways The Boys can be interrupted
on their mission to get upstairs. They go up 13 flights only to
be forced to go down again to retrieve a child's football or to duke it
out with irritable neighbor James Finlayson, whose appearance in this
film is almost a cameo role. They stop so that Stan can pull down
the shadow of a window shade, a feat that is completely beyond Ollie,
who, unlike Stan, lives in the real world. And as they walk up
the stairs, Stan keeps mulling over the word "jiffy", a new word to him
which Ollie has not so helpfully defined as "three shakes of a dead
lamb's tail." It's all held together with running gags,
magnificent tracking shots of the cutaway apartment building set, and
Marvin Hatley's lively background music.
The final section, which could be titled
"Still Unaccustomed", is a remake of their first sound short
Unaccustomed As We Are, and it is a tremendous improvement over the
original, even as it uses many of the same gags and situations. Minna Gombel, in her one and only appearance as Mrs.
Hardy, isn't as violent as Mae Busch, but is just as handy with her
sharp tongue. When she complains about Ollie bringing home
another one of his "tramp friends", Ollie explains that he hasn't seen
Stan in twenty years, to which she snaps "I couldn't see him in a
hundred years!" (Another classic reply follows Ollie's declaration that
Stan is different: "I'll say he's different!"). As in
Unaccustomed, the Hardy's tend not to have arguments but rather shout
over each other, with Stan joining in this time. Lost in all the
noise and confusion is a classic Laurelism: "If you want me to go, I'll
stay as long as you like."
Fast-paced, loud and sometimes veering close
to being obnoxious, this final third of BLOCK-HEADS successfully pulls
out all stops to make us laugh. Some of the gags are perfectly in
character (Ollie accidentally blowing up the kitchen), others are just
gags for gags' sakes. But they all work to create a furious and
funny finish to the film. Billy Gilbert, memorable in his final
appearance with The Boys, plays big game hunter Mr. Gilbert, who is not
happy to find his own wife locked in Mr. Hardy's trunk, and displays
his prowess with an elephant gun by chasing The Boys out of the
building in the final moments of the film.
BLOCK-HEADS is a tremendous comedy filled with
energy and wit, but quite different from the other classic Laurel and
Hardy features, SONS OF THE DESERT and WAY OUT WEST.
Something Charles Barr said in his book LAUREL AND HARDY may be true -
this is not a film to use to make somebody a Laurel and Hardy
convert. The Laurel and Hardy of earlier films were much more
sympathetic, whereas the Laurel and Hardy of this film are almost like
cartoon caricatures of themselves. BLOCK-HEADS assumes you
already know Laurel and Hardy, and in 1938, who didn't? By this
time, Laurel and Hardy had done just about everything they were going
to do in their generous and unmatchable contribution to comedy, and
were now content to refine, polish and explore the limits of their
screen relationship..
Five writers, including Harry Langdon,
contributed to the BLOCK-HEADS script, and what keeps the momentum
going is not the story or the characters, but the enormous amount of
gags those writers (plus, undoubtedly, Stan) keep throwing at us, and
the still youthful enthusiasm Stan and Ollie show in the execution of
those gags. It is their wildest and funniest film, and the last
completely great movie they would ever make.
JL:
BLOCK-HEADS is that rare film for which the mere thought of any scene
brings a smile to my face. I still hold out for WAY OUT WEST as
their best feature, if only because it strikes the perfect balance
between high laugh content and a well-made film. But I more than
agree that BLOCK-HEADS is their wildest and funniest film. (And
to take issue with Brennan and Barr on a minor point, my experience has
been that BLOCK-HEADS goes over great with newcomers. But that's
just one man's experience.)
It's not just the abundance of gags in
BLOCK-HEADS, it's their quality. Many L&H films feature stock
routines or jokes we've seen and heard a thousand times, yet we laugh
because of the skill of their execution and the inherent joy that
Laurel & Hardy bring to everything they do. But in
BLOCK-HEADS, nearly every gag is one-of-a-kind. The film contains
what I believe to be the two funniest sight gags in movie
history. The first has Ollie seated in his "practically new" car,
up to his neck in sand, the result of Stan's little mishap with the
dump truck. Here is also an example of Stan Laurel's genius at
topping a gag: just when we think the moment couldn't be any funnier,
he sends us into hysterics by attempting to dig Ollie out, one handful
of sand at a time (I have no idea if Stan conceived this, but it seems
like such a "Stan gag"). The second is the exploding oven that
sends Ollie sailing out of the kitchen, falling splat! on the living
room floor. It usually takes two or three viewings of this scene
to catch the subtle touches throughout -- Ollie grabs the focus on
first viewing, but closer inspection reveals the shaking, falling
pictures and knick-knacks, and the seated Stan floating up in the air.
These two bits are, of course, only the top of the laundry list of
inspired moments in BLOCK-HEADS. Stan with his mountain of bean
cans, Ollie carrying the obviously two-legged Stan, Stan crashing the
car into Ollie's garage, the window-shade business, the ice water in
the pocket, Stan smoking his thumb -- all are unique and perfectly
executed. The final scenes of the film may constitute a remake of
Unaccustomed As We Are but they alter the gags and set-ups to the
extent that the earlier film seems like a mere rehearsal. I'd
never complain about seeing Thelma Todd in her slip after having her
dress burned off by the Boys in Unaccustomed but drenching
Patricia Ellis with the punch bowl, thereby adorning her with
grapefruit slices, is much funnier.
Another indication of the skill with which
this film was made is the seamless nature of its episodic
structure. The patchwork quality of PARDON US calls attention to
itself, but in BLOCK-HEADS we soon forget about the film's original
premise of Stan walking the trenches 20 years after the end of the
war. One scene may not have much to do with the scene that came
before, but the transitions are so logical, we never notice. What
John B. says about Stan and Ollie needing each another has something to
do with this. Once the Boys are reunited, we accept that they
will naturally fall back into their normal relationship. Aside
from the poignant moment at the Old Soldier's Home, the film does not
dwell upon L&H's extended separation, and we never question that
two friends who've been apart for so long would normally take some time
to warm up to one other again. Five minutes after seeing Stan for
the first time in all those years, Ollie is again easily annoyed by his
partner's denseness ("You're better now!"), and we accept that no
additional exposition is needed for them to return to being Stan and
Ollie. We also, therefore, accept the existential nature of this
film: the Boys drift from one event to the next, reacting to the
action around them, rather than initiating the action themselves.
It's a trip through a crazy, almost surreal world with Laurel and Hardy
as our guides, and the film's loose structure is rendered unnoticable
by the consistency of the Boys' relationship.
I agree with Barr on the point he makes about
the Boys' physical appearance, especially that of Ollie. He
speaks of the "boyish expressiveness" of Ollie's face in films up to
about 1931. Notice how in the early films, Ollie's youthful
appearance allows for some wonderful "naughty schoolboy" looks of
petulance. By 1932, a bit of age and the loss of a few pounds has
robbed him somewhat of this quality. This hardly matters with a
comic as skilled as Babe Hardy, but it does give his early performances
an added kick. By the time of BLOCK-HEADS, Babe has regained his
former size (and then some) and we again delight in the comic facial
expressions he exhibits on such lines as "Ooh, I shudder to
think!". I hate to suggest that anyone is funnier the fatter they
are (and, of course, Babe Hardy was never less than hysterical in any
film he made), but it does seem to apply to those performers such as
Hardy and Jackie Gleason, whose appeal is based in part on their
portliness.
It was thought BLOCK-HEADS might be the final Laurel
& Hardy film, and I'm glad they operated under this sense of
finality. The film had a troubled production, but they managed to
go out with one for both themselves and their most loyal fans.