Want to see great comedians not at their best? Tonight, Turner Classic Movies is giving you a couple of opportunities.
At 3:30 AM — check your schedule to make sure it's not different where you are — they're running The Horn Blows at Midnight, the 1945 movie that Jack Benny always claimed ended his movie career. It's kind of a silly fantasy and it's far from prime Benny…but it isn't awful. The film became a running gag on his radio show and later, his TV program. They did jokes about catching wanted criminals and, as punishment, making them sit through The Horn Blows at Midnight. It's nowhere near that gruesome and much of it is quite delightful, plus it has Margaret Dumont in a rare non-Marx appearance. Well worth seeing once.
TCM is following that with Block-Heads, a 1938 Laurel & Hardy comedy that for a time, looked like the end of their movie careers, too. It's a short (less than an hour) feature that like many of their pictures, starts out as one movie and then changes premises mid-stream. At the outset, it reminds one of two earlier Harry Langdon military comedies, The Strong Man and Soldier Man…and that may be because Langdon was one of the writers on Block-Heads. So that may be where the plot about Laurel being a World War I vet came from.
But wherever it came from, it quickly disappears. The movie suddenly turns into a remake of one of the umpteen films Stan and Ollie did where a jealous husband walks in on an innocent scene between his wife and Laurel and/or Hardy and thinks there's hanky-panky in progress. As much as I love The Boys, I never warmed to those storylines and this one is more contrived than most. Still, they were at their peak as comedic performers…and their peak was, to me, higher than anyone else's ever. So in spite of the plot, they're wonderful to watch.
Alas, audiences didn't concur when Block-Heads was previewed before audiences. The reaction showed that some rewriting, refilming and further editing were needed. That was not unusual — they did some of that on most of their movies after the first previews — but this time, it was more difficult. Mr. Laurel was having problems in his personal life and he disappeared and was unavailable. Not only was his expertise in comedy writing and editing absent but so was his body. How do you do reshoots on a Laurel & Hardy film without Laurel? The folks at the studio whipped up a few new brief scenes with Mr. Hardy and filmed a whole new end gag (actually, a repeat of one from an earlier film) using stand-ins.
The movie was, from all reports, improved…and yes, I know. A lot of Laurel & Hardy fans consider the end-product one of their best efforts. But I don't and it's my weblog so that's what it's going to say here…though I hasten to point out again that even Laurel and Hardy at their worst is worth watching. And this is far from their worst.
As I said, it was also (almost) their last. Hal Roach's contract to release Laurel & Hardy movies through MGM had ended and Laurel was in absentia. This led to the announcement that the team was kaput. Here's a news item that ran at the time…
Langdon's movie career had declined to the point where he was working as a gagman for Laurel & Hardy. There's some question among historians about how serious Roach and his associates were about creating a Langdon & Hardy team. It seems to have been more of a publicity stunt and a threat to get Mr. Laurel to behave. In any case, the next movie Oliver Hardy made — Zenobia — did not have Laurel and in it and did have Langdon though they were in no sense an on-screen team…just two actors in the same movie.
By the time they filmed Zenobia, Laurel had dealt with his problems and was ready to get back to work. What stopped him was that he and Hardy had always had separate contracts with the Hal Roach Studio, expiring at different times. This seriously limited their negotiating strength since when one's deal was up, that person couldn't credibly threaten to take his partner and go to another studio. Laurel decided to wait until Hardy's current pact was over and thereafter, they would sign only as a team. While waiting for that to happen, Hardy appeared in Zenobia, and audiences shrugged. Nice enough…but they didn't want Oliver without Stanley. Roach then made a deal with United Artists to release more Laurel & Hardy movies and another deal with those men as a unit and that's pretty much the history. Don't let anything I've written here stop you from watching Block-Heads. Like I always say, even weak Laurel & Hardy is better than no Laurel & Hardy.
