A Laurel & Hardy Party #1: “Unaccustomed as We Are”

(1929; director: Lewis R. Foster)

My Christmas gift to myself in 2016 was the Laurel & Hardy Essential Collection 10-DVD box set.

Christmas 2017, I’m finally watching it because that’s how I roll: Slowly, forgetfully and focused on things that no one cares about it.  I intend to write about EVERYTHING on this monster, even if one of the special features turns out to be a ninety-minute interview with Stan Laurel’s dentist. I will be here to report.

The first film on the first disc is the short Unaccustomed as We Are from 1929.

Now, to modern audiences one of the biggest anomalies of 1920s American comedies is that almost nobody in them ever dates or takes their time in relationships. They tend to skip all of that and go straight to wedlock for the big feelgood climax. A first kiss is usually accompanied by a marriage proposal. Buster Keaton, in his silent masterworks, was constantly sealing eternal matrimony with women he’d known for less than a day. That was just how Hollywood gave you happy endings back then.

So, me, I like to interpret the miserable marriages in Laurel & Hardy films (and W.C. Fields films) as the next phase of that same story. The bloom is off the rose. The champagne’s gone flat. The wife is a shrieking harpy and the husband is an idiot.

Arguments that seemed small at first turn nuclear somehow in a split-second and now doors are slamming, at least one person is yelling and a once-comfortable home is now a very uncomfortable place. There’s no rational way to resolve it and no good part to play. Like the aftermath of a volcanic eruption, sometimes the only thing you can do after fights of this sort is to give it time until everything cools down. Apologizing can be a big help, even if you don’t think you did anything wrong. Peace often trumps pride though, and you can be a pretty great actor when you just want to be happy again. I’ve been robbed of the Academy Award a few times myself.

It’s an annoying situation to be in, but it’s also one of the most fertile grounds there is for comedy.

Enter Laurel & Hardy, who understand everything that some of us have gone through. They take our pain and re-spin it as sugary marshmallows. Here, all Oliver Hardy wants is to bring his friend Stan home for dinner one night, which his wife wasn’t expecting. She blows up at him for that and about twenty other unspoken things, storms out and now it’s up to Stan and Ollie to make dinner. All hell breaks loose, of course.

This is Laurel & Hardy’s first two-reeler talkie and it holds up. Both men had been performing for almost fifteen years at this point and had been together for three years. They take their pratfalls like artists and are confident with both the cameras and these new microphones.

Meanwhile, the film obeys one of the top rules of good movie comedies: Every main character in it MUST be a jerk or an idiot. Or attractive. That’s where platinum blonde Thelma Todd comes in as Oliver Hardy’s sexy, yet friendly, neighbor. The eyes of 1929 must have popped out when she’s stripped down to her slip after her dress catches fire.

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