Turner Classic Movies continues with its Hal Roach Festival this week…and my apologies for not briefing you on what was on last week. (If you knew what was occupying me, you'd forgive.) Tuesday, they run two of the best Laurel and Hardy features. At 8 PM, it's Sons of the Desert. That's the one where the boys fib to their wives so they can go attend a convention and there isn't a dull or unfunny minute in the entire movie. At 4:30 AM Wednesday morn (these are all Eastern times), it's Way Out West, which is the one where they have to deliver a deed and on the way, they stop and do that famous dance that everyone likes to use in music videos. Laurel and Hardy buffs may argue (and do) as to which of these films is better but surely both are in The Boys' Top Three.
Later on Wednesday morn, at 7:30 AM, they're running Pick a Star, which is not really a Laurel and Hardy film but they have a nice, long extended cameo in it. That and the peek the film affords to movie-making in the thirties are reason enough to watch/TiVo it. Then at 5:30 PM on Wednesday, it's Bonnie Scotland, which is really a Laurel and Hardy film…not one of the Top Three in my book but easily in the Top Ten. Stan and Ollie make a wrong turn in life and wind up stationed in India as part of the British Army…yet another reason England lost the empire.
Other films of interest: At 1:45 AM Wednesday, TCM is running Zenobia, which is a film Mr. Hardy made in 1939 without Mr. Laurel. How this happened is a long story that I recount here. This is not a great movie but there's great delight in watching Hardy's every move and gesture, as well as his brief interplay with co-star Harry Langdon.
At 9:15 PM on Tuesday, we get General Spanky, the one Our Gang feature. Roach was seeing a drop in the income from making short comedies by 1936 and he decided to see if he could migrate his star attractions into longer movies. One of his other stars, a wonderful comedian named Charley Chase, made a feature-length comedy called Neighborhood House that year and Roach deemed it unfit to go into the marketplace. Instead of releasing the film, he released Charley Chase…and Neighorhood House was cut down to a two-reeler. General Spanky was released as a feature but didn't do well, perhaps because it took the kids out of their usual world and stuck them in a Civil War setting. Audiences of the day didn't much like it and Roach gave up the idea of any more Our Gang features. It's a pleasant film but not a classic.
There are other Roach classics on Tuesday and Wednesday, including all the Topper films. Consult their website over there for info.
Lastly, this has nothing to do with Hal Roach…or good movies, for that matter. But tomorrow, TCM is running Dondi at 7:45 in the morning. This is the 1961 feature starring David Janssen and Patti Page, based on the comic strip of the same name. In the second part of this interview I conducted, the man who drew that comic strip — Irwin Hasen — called it "the worst movie ever made." It's not that but it's close.