Laurel & Hardy

One time when I was out in Los Angeles I visited the stairway from The Music Box and there was a couple other L&H fans there at the same time. Had an enjoyable afternoon talking and laughing with them.

 

Cool pic.
Hasn't changed an awful lot.
I need to go see that.

 

But I was pleasantly surprised by the Malcom St. Clair-directed Fox features. "Wait a minute", I thought. "This is like the old Laurel and Hardy!"

 

Being a fan forever, we've made three pilgrimages to the Laurel & Hardy Steps ("The Music Box") on Vendome Street in LA's Silver Lake District. Not only are the steps still there, but the house at the bottom and across the street.

Their "wrong hat" routine from that film (with variations in a couple others) STILL kills me. Arguably the funniest stuff ever filmed. The above set is well worth it.

Oops, I see it was already mentioned, but there's the street...

 

Some are better than others. My favorite is The Bullfighters.

 

I bought this set about a year and a half ago. Reading this thread has reminded me that I need to dig this out and do some binge-watching!

 

I'm not a dad who inflicts my tastes on my kids very often, but I showed my 6 year old daughter and 8 year old son "Brats" a couple weeks back. We've now watched about a dozen shorts off of the magnificent box set-they are hooked and are always asking me to show them some more Laurel and Hardy! It makes me happy because L&H still make me laugh- I love them!

 

Theres a more complete European collection thats OOP.
Considered the holy grail these days.
A non for profit company is also remastering some of their stuff to digital for bluray release.
But its been years and I have yet to see them appear for purchase.

 

Yeah. I put one on for my 5 year old and she loved it.
It is very child orientated comedy I think.
It was the one where the bed inflates right up to the ceiling. She thought it was brilliant lol.

 

What's in the European set that isn't in the US set? I think I actually have it and it has colorized versions, etc but is there anything essential?

 

well, for one thing it includes the silent shorts...

 

As dirwuf states, the box includes silent stuff not available on the US one.
I think the lost films collections are better quality if memory serves me though.

 

I have this box set:
Laurel & Hardy - The Collection (21-disc Box Set) [DVD] https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0001K2KE8/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_yVGtwb60VA13B

My favourites are The Music Box and Laughing Gravy - imo, L&H are geniuses

 

Europe has definitely done better by L&H as far as comprehensive DVD releases than the US has. In addition to the 21-disc UK set linked above, there were three German box sets released by Kinowelt (long OOP, but it looks like they've been reissued using L&H's German nicknames of "Dick & Doof"), and several Dutch sets, which appear to have been repackaged at some point into a single 19-disc box:

http://www.amazon.com/Laurel-Hardy-Collection-Unaccustomed-Netherlands/dp/B00KMIOYGQ

IIRC, all of these were essentially sourced from the same transfers. I have the first two Kinowelt sets as well as the UK set. If you're multi-region capable, any of the Euro sets are well worth exploring.

 

A Chump At Oxford is one of my favs.

 

IIRC, for some reason "We Faw Down" had the original Victor score (not included on the US Lost Films version), and "The Chimp" had original titles, in both cases on the German release but not the UK one (which had a Beau Hunks score and Film Classics titles respectively). Other than that, I think they were mostly the same, though I think the German set had more various "pre-team" Roach silents with Stan or Babe in them (Charley Chase and others) than the UK set.

By the way -- I note a lot of the silents on the European releases seem to have "recreated" opening titles -- like for instance "You're Darn Tootin" and "The Finishing Touch" are two that had the original title cards on the US releases (so they can be compared), but the German and UK releases appear to have remade titles, but very close if not identical to the originals. (I would guess they did this because the original footage was in such a bad state of preservation.) The European DVDs included a version of "Brats" with the original music score, and what looked like original titles (with original audio including both the circa 1930 musical fanfare and the audio of the roaring lion simultaneously, which seems like an oddity for shorts of this era) but then the "target practice" introductory title looked like it was remade (as were many "The End" titles on various shorts). The later US box set has a choice for either the familiar "reissue soundtrack" or original audio for "Brats," but both versions have identical visuals (and therefore both have the picture portion of the reissue titles). I wonder if the European "original 1930" title sequence for "Brats" could actually be a very good recreation? I note the US set also has the 1929 audio track for "Perfect Day" with no musical score, and the video portion is also identical to the one with the reissue audio (that way they don't have to author two separate video files of the entire short) but I suspect (especially in the case of "Perfect Day") maybe they only found the sound discs for the 1929 version, which would have been distributed separately anyway.

 

The German sets had more extras, while the UK set has colorized versions of the films. There used to be a website that went into detail about the differences between the various European sets, but I can't seem to find it anymore. However, I did find a similar site that has quite a bit of info, summed up as follows:

Much more at http://www.inthebalcony.com/shorts/page6.html . Incidentally, they only mention two 10-disc German box sets (which are the two I have), and five separate, additional DVDs, but I could swear that Kinowelt released a third box set comprised of the five individual DVDs plus five additional DVDs of other films.

 

Several years ago I drove by the house where they filmed Big Business (it looked very close to how it was filmed all those years ago). I was tempted to ring the doorbell and try to sell the current owners a Christmas tree but thought better of it

 

You wouldn't have fazed them, they know all about the film and have people recreating bits on their property all the time...

 

IIRC there were five additional German discs released separately, and they were eventually put together in a box.

Also IIRC, only the Dutch sets include the retitled Astor Pictures reissue versions of Bogus Bandits (originally The Devil's Brother) and Heroes Of The Regiment (originally Bonnie Scotland). Either the German or UK set includes the ending (only) of the Spanish Pardon Us as an extra, while the entire Spanish Pardon Us (De Bote En Bote) was only released on DVD in Spain. Speaking of Pardon Us, the (now) commonly-available version is the "director's cut" which first surfaced on a 1980s laserdisc and was later shown on AMC, which is quite a bit longer than the originally-released version. The longer version has become the "regular version" and I don't remember exactly, but IIRC either the UK or German DVD has a shorter version which is supposed to be the originally-released version, but I have read it's actually a cut-down version of the "director's cut" version. Did I also read that the original (55 or so minutes) version was released in the Netherlands? Also, the original cut has been shown on TCM with its original M-G-M fanfare audio (while the US DVD version of the "Director's Cut" has the wrong lion intro tacked on from one of the "Crane Twins" shorts IIRC).

I guess it's still kind of a jigsaw puzzle.

By the way, those colorized versions (aside from Way Out West, The Music Box and Helpmates, which were done earlier) seem to be taken directly from the 1986 syndicated Laurel And Hardy Show, as if they just colorized those versions, so if a short was edited or missing an end title or whatever, so is the colorized version. This is also why a few talkie shorts (not included in the 1986 series) don't have a corresponding colorized version on the UK DVD set. The 1986 series did include both The Flying Deuces and Utopia, which were both later colorized when they went back and colorized "the rest of" the films (originally only three films were colorized) but for whatever reasons, the UK set doesn't include those two public domain features. Also, The Live Ghost was colorized by a different company to run along with March Of The Wooden Soldiers, so that one also has no colorized version in the UK DVD set. I mention these in case anyone cares about the colorized films.

 

What's the suitcase DVD box like.
I assume 21 films like the older big white DVD box ?

 

'Busy Bodies.'
I just love the look on their faces when they're sitting on top of the collapsed shed and they hear the knocking on the door.

 

No wrong. Houses 10 DVDs.

 

HULU has the silent shorts.