Laurel and Hardy and the Sons of the Desert are at the heart of Bowler Dessert magazine and Bowler Dessert Online
The Laurel and Hardy Essential Collection DVD set
 This is what we in North America have been waiting for! For many years, most of the greatest sound films that Laurel and Hardy ever made were not available on DVD in Region 1. While our friends in Europe and Australia saw releases of practically every Laurel and Hardy film from the 1930s, all we had were some not-so-great-quality videotapes, which were getting hard to find after the '90s. Then there were endless releases of The Flying Deuces and Utopia (Atoll K), which are both in public domain, so it's cheap and easy to make a DVD of these two films. These were usually of fair to poor quality. Then, at the end of the '90s, the Lost Films series of DVDs was issued of the silent films, including many of the early "pre-team" and solo films. Most of the films on this series were of very good quality, and we were all hoping that soon there would be some DVDs of the talkies that Laurel and Hardy made during 1929 to 1940 at the Hal Roach studios. March of the Wooden Soldiers (the reissue title of Babes In Toyland), also became available in its normal black and white, and also in colorized form. Then a big company, which owned the rights to the 1930s films, released a DVD in 2003. It had the ingenious title of Laurel and Hardy. It contained a television videotape transfer of Sons of the Desert, which actually had shots fading out and in again for TV commercials. There were four other shorts on this disc, of varying quality. This big company had access to the very highest-quality 35mm prints in existence of Laurel and Hardy films, and they could have produced a high-quality DVD. Someone pointed out at the time that this DVD looked like someone simply grabbed whatever was on the shelf, and slapped this collection together. They should have known better. Then, in 2005, they released a second DVD, called Laurel and Hardy II. This one was a little better, but should have been much better. It had a grainy Film Classics TV issue of Chickens Come Home, and a contrasty print of Way Out West, where you could watch the wavering tonality on the sides of the frame. People expressed what they thought of these two DVDs, which were discontinued not long afterward. Then, in 2006, we saw a good year for Laurel and Hardy films on DVD. There were two box sets of all six features they made at 20th Century-Fox. The first was released early in the year, and the second was released later that year. While these certainly aren't the best films that Laurel and Hardy made, it is good to be able to see them (they do have a few good scenes in these films, which make them worth a viewing from time to time), and these films all have audio commentaries by authors Randy Skretvedt and Scott MacGillivray, which are quite interesting and enjoyable to listen to. Plus, there are some extra features, like a couple of documentaries, newsreel footage, trailers, etc which make these DVDs worth getting. Then TCM released a DVD of the two features, The Devil's Brother (Fra Diavolo) and Bonnie Scotland, with audio commentary by Richard W Bann and Leonard Maltin. This DVD set included an extra disc which feature a number of the guest appearances of Laurel and Hardy in feature films which starred other actors. That was probably the best DVD of Laurel and Hardy talkies ever released in Region 1 up until that time. At the end of the year 2006 came a single disc of the Boys' two 1940s M-G-M films: Air Raid Wardens and Nothing But Trouble. Now, all that remained was a release of the best Laurel and Hardy of the '30s. Instead of releasing a great set of DVDs of the best Laurel and Hardy talkies, the big company which owned the rights to all these great films tried to junk the 35mm prints. Yes, they actually planned to destroy this one-of-a-kind treasure trove of vintage films. These were literally the best-quality prints in existence, and this company wanted to scrap them, so that no one would ever get the chance to preserve them. Fortunately, they were persuaded to give these hundreds of reels of film to UCLA, where they are safely stored and in the process of preservation. Thank you, Richard Bann, for all your efforts in saving these films from the trash heap. In the meantime, the big bad company which had tried to keep all these Laurel and Hardy films from being seen has since given up, and the companies of RHI and Vivendi have become able to release the films. We can help to support UCLA's preservation project by donating to this ongoing work. For more information, see http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/support/laurel-and-hardy.
While the picture quality is extremely good, one could "nit-pick" and say that they could have digitally removed the occasional dust spots, scratches and nitrate blotches, but I'm sure that this would have raised the cost of production up so high that it would have been too expensive to do this at the present time. Anyway, that's something which can be done in the future, now that the films are safe. Someone pointed out that the image of Hog Wild is a bit stretched, horizontally, but that's the only film among almost sixty which has that, so I can't really complain. Just about all the other films look great. It would have been nice for the films to be captioned for the hearing-impaired (in English and other languages), but that, too, might have raised the cost of production to where it couldn't be done. Subtitles could be added for future releases of these films. The foreign-language versions of the films have subtitles, so that's a start. There is audio commentary on only a few of the films. I would have liked to hear commentary for all of them, but there sure are a lot of films, so that would have taken a long time to do, and this probably would have made this set too expensive to make. So far I've found that they have got commentary for Hog Wild (one of my favorite Laurel and Hardy films of all), Another Fine Mess, Sons of the Desert and Way Out West. Each of these films has two commentaries to choose from. Richard Bann and Randy Skretvedt do the commentary twice on Way Out West, and they've always got some interesting things to say. Richard Bann does some interesting commentary on Hog Wild, emphasizing different aspects of the film and its production on each of the two audio tracks, and he also gives commentary on Another Fine Mess. There is additional commentary by a man named Piet Schreuders, who is an expert on the many different musical themes used in the films, and he identifies which themes are used, and who composed them. Sons of the Desert has interesting commentary by Mr Bann, and a secondary commentary by Chuck McCann and Tim Conway. This one seems to be best suited for newcomers to Laurel and Hardy, because most of the information given consists of things that we know already. Chuck McCann does give a couple of incorrect statements. First, he says that Laurel and Hardy were the first comedians to successfully make the transition from two-reelers to features. I only have to mention Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd for one to see how wrong that statement is. Harold Lloyd's films altogether grossed more money than any other comedian in the 1920s, so I would have to say that he had some success in features. Of course, whenever Chaplin had a feature, it grossed more than anyone else. Buster Keaton had some commercial success in his features from 1923 to 1933, too. Another misstatement by Mr McCann is that he mentions that Charley Chase had a brother who directed films, whose name was "Paul". We all know that his name was James Parrott. He did have a brief career in silent shorts for a couple of years in the early '20s, and he used the name "Paul" in these, but only during this short period of time. There are over twenty Laurel and Hardy films in the '20s and '30s (including such classics as Two Tars and The Music Box, and their first feature, Pardon Us), which carry the name "James Parrott" as the director. There are other Laurel and Hardy films which give James Parrott a credit as a writer, up to their 1938 feature Block- Heads. Tim Conway doesn't really say anything about Laurel and Hardy in his commentary. Instead, he tells a silly story about a truck carrying Shamu the Killer Whale in a leaky tank, and then tells about a skit that he performed with John Wayne (without any mention of The Fighting Kentuckian or of Laurel and Hardy). Most of the time Chuck McCann speaks, and he sounds like a great guy to spend time with, but, as I said, he really doesn't say anything that we didn't know already. He announces that Ollie's wife is played by Mae Busch and Tim Conway sounds surprised to hear this. I would have preferred to listen to Randy Skretvedt discuss the film. Tim Conway seems to have more to say about Laurel and Hardy in this documentary than he did on his audio commentary for Way Out West. Penn and Teller have some perceptive comments on Laurel and Hardy. Or should I say that Mr Penn makes some comments, and Mr Teller indicates that he agrees or approves of what the other is saying. This documentary also has onscreen commentary by Bob Einstein. Overall, it is a most enjoyable documentary, apart from those comments by Jerry Lewis, which could fool those who haven't read anything about Laurel and Hardy. The picture quality on most of the films is very good, especially in the later shorts like Thicker Than Water. The set has complete prints of talkies that the Boys did cameo appearances in, like On the Loose, Wild Poses, On the Wrong Trek and Tree in a Test Tube, and these films all look very good. There are two options for soundtracks for Perfect Day and Brats: the original release soundtracks and the 1937 reissues, with overdubbed music. Both versions of A Chump at Oxford are on this set. When you click on the title, it gives you the option of clicking on the "streamlined" version or the feature-length one. The foreign-language films give you the option of having the English subtitles or not. There are three trailers, which are nice, although I think that they should have put more of these on the set, since there are more in existence. The documentary is very nice, except for some of Jerry Lewis's comments, which are as false as any story could be. Mr Lewis seems to be very sincere in his love for Laurel and Hardy, but he says that Hardy had never been in movies until Stan spotted him working as a handyman, carrying a pipe, and that Hardy had to ask Stan a lot of questions because he didn't know anything about what they were doing. The irony is that he had a much more extensive career in film than Stan did before they teamed. Stan was in some films, on and off, and didn't work in film regularly until 1922, while Babe had worked continually in film since the end of 1913, in various studios in Florida, New York and California. Just look at any list of his films in a book or on IMDB and you will see that he was in about three times as many films as Stan was, but Jerry Lewis says that Stan teamed with a guy who had never been in front of a camera. Ironically this statement is contradicted in the same documentary by Chuck McCann, who specifically mentions that Babe played the Tin Man in the silent film production of The Wizard of Oz. Mr Lewis also states that, when Babe died, Stan called the hospital and, when he heard the bad news, his whole arm went stiff and remained paralyzed the rest of his life. Dick Van Dyke himself contradicts this statement in the documentary by stating that whatever stiffness that Stan had after the stroke was barely noticeable in 1962, when they did the Laurel and Hardy imitation on The Dick Van Dyke Show. Other than that, the documentary is a delight. There is a nice edited collection of Ollie camera looks which could have gone on longer. The documentary has a lot of split-screen moments, with clips being shown with the on-camera commentary. This all works quite well. This DVD set is the nicest way to re-introduce Laurel and Hardy to an audience which is all too unfamiliar with Stan and Ollie and their wonderful movies. Eric Schultz |
US DVD set is
selling well The Laurel & Hardy Essential
Collection on DVD is selling well.
This is good, because people in the
business world will see that Stan and
Ollie can still make a profit and that
many people are still interested in their
films. Hopefully, we're going to see
another Laurel and Hardy renaissance
worldwide. I was curious to know exactly how well
(or not well) the new set was doing, and,
while searching on the web, I found a
website called "The Numbers", which gives
the figures for the sales of the top DVDs.
The Laurel and Hardy set wasn't on the
list, since it is always only the
recently-run movies that sell the most, so
I emailed the site, asking about the
Laurel and Hardy set. I was concerned
that, after the initial excitement,
maybe enthusiasm would die down and that
the set might fail financially. If Laurel
and Hardy don't sell well in the DVD
market, we won't be able to expect
any future releases. Anyway, it
turned out that my worries were
unfounded. The reply I received says,
"Based on our sales tracking, it looks as
though the Laurel & Hardy Essential
Collection has sold about 20,000
units, and generated over $1 million in
spending, which is impressive for a
collection like this. It looks as though
it's been a popular gift this Holiday
Season!" I wonder what Hallmark thinks of all
this! Eric
Schultz |
Now,
to get to the subject of this commentary, I must
say that this DVD set is absolutely wonderful. It's
just about everything that one could ever hope for
in a Laurel and Hardy set. All the Hal
Roach-produced films from 1929 to 1940 are
included, except for the two features which are
already available on the TCM set, and March of
the Wooden Soldiers, which is available on a
number of DVD releases. The picture quality is just
about as good as can be, the sound is good, and
there is an disc of extra features: a nice new
documentary, three cameo appearances (which include
the entire films of On the Loose, Wild
Poses, On the Wrong Trek and The Tree
In a Test Tube (which they count as a cameo -
whatever you want to call it is fine, since this
film is a bit difficult to categorize), and three
trailers. I think that just about everything about
this set is wonderful, so let me focus on some
imperfections.