My all-time favorite entertainers, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, made a lot of great films but they never made a better one than The Music Box, It came out in 1932 and actually won an Academy Award for Best Short Subject. It also got Stan's endorsement as the best thing they ever did and while I might place many other Laurel and Hardy shorts on the same level, I wouldn't want to argue with Stan.
One of the things that makes us Laurel and Hardy fans love it so much is that it's possible — and we've all done it — to visit the famous steps you'll see in this film. They're right there in the Silver Lake area of Los Angeles (here's a map) and the city has even marked them with the above street sign.
I don't think I've mentioned this before here but during the last year of life for my wonderful friend/companion Carolyn, she was in a nursing home that was about a five-minute drive from the steps. When I ran errands for her, I'd sometimes plot a course that would take me by the Music Box Steps and I'd just idle for a brief pause there. It had a strange calming effect on me, especially when I saw others who were coming to see where Stan and Ollie had once walked.
And fallen. And struggled. And fallen again. And struggled some more…
I also don't think I've mentioned it here but the very first night I ever visited the Silent Movie Theater here in Los Angeles, one of the films they were showing was a 1926 comedy from the Mack Sennett Studio called Ice Cold Cocos. It starred Billy Bevan and Andy Clyde as two guys engaged in what once was a thriving business in this country — delivering ice. That job has now, of course, joined the list of vanished or vanishing professions like operating a telegraph, setting up bowling pins or publishing comic books.
In Ice Cold Cocos, Mr. Bevan and Mr. Clyde delivered ice up the same stairs that Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy climbed to deliver a piano. Here's that film with a new musical track and re-created title cards. It's a good example of what second-tier comedians did on film in the twenties and what real icemen did back when that was a thing…