Laurel & Hardy - The Collection (21-disc Box Set) [DVD]

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We use cookies to give you the best possible experience on our site, provide personalised content and advertising, analyse our traffic, and ensure you see more of what you love. Mishaps (the boys never met an open manhole cover they didn’t step into) and pent-up frustrations boil over into a gut-punching, shin-kicking, and pants-ripping mêlée. Serving him a summons is only half the battle; next comes thwarting his efforts to keep them from getting the radio. This ceaselessly inventive gagfest is elevated by atypical grace notes — Laurel distracted at the wheel by the sight of a woman adjusting her skirt, and Hardy’s wife allowing herself a smile as she observes his futile rooftop efforts.

Mae Busch is the blackmailer; Thelma Todd is Hardy’s wife, who is throwing a dinner party for her husband’s campaign backers; and Jimmy Finlayson, master of the double take, is Hardy’s butler. Now we get to hear man-child Laurel’s signature hysterical sobs, and the exasperated Hardy’s plea, “Why don’t you do something to help me? But it’s funnier still if we hear the sound of Laurel’s offscreen sawing and anticipate the imminent disaster.The Music Box” wears its “certified classic” status well both as an introduction to the team and as the pinnacle of their art: This is what we talk about when we talk about Laurel and Hardy. Oliver’s plans for a day out with Stan are put on hold after his wife demands he erect a radio antenna on the roof. Usually when Laurel rains disaster on Hardy, it is accidental or inadvertent, but when Hardy falsely accuses him of stealing the widow’s wallet, the worm ferociously turns. A classic collection of 34 vintage Stan and Ollie films, including early silent shorts, made between 1928 and 1940.

It’s the Sabbath, and a grand day out is planned with the Laurels, the Hardys, and Kennedy’s Uncle Edgar, who is suffering mightily with gout. Sailors Laurel and Hardy pick up a couple of willing young women in the park and embark on an ill-fated afternoon that ends with a massive rowboat mêlée. The set contains 2K and 4K digital restorations of the team’s two best features, Sons of the Desert and Way Out West, plus 17 mostly essential shorts, along with over eight hours of commentaries, interviews, archival photos, posters and studio files, and rarities, such as “That’s That,” an outtakes reel compiled for Laurel’s birthday in 1937. Laurel and Hardy have aged remarkably well with their emphasis on physical humor and slapstick, the universal language of laughter. The highlight is an extended sequence in which Stan and Ollie inadvertently get the lady of the house snoggered, and the illicit trio collapse on the bed in paroxysms of laughter while her husband (yes, the judge) plots duo-cide.Repo men Stan and Ollie are dispatched to retrieve an unpaid-for radio from “tough guy” Edgar Kennedy. The boys sharing an oversize pair of trousers to make a graceful exit from the frenzy they initiated is what passes for a happy ending in a Laurel and Hardy short.

They survived the transition from silent to sound films and made more than 100 shorts and features together. A final gag speaks volumes about the team’s dynamic: Hardy imperiously stops Laurel from fulfilling their kids’ bedtime request for a drink of water. When Charlie Chaplin transformed himself into a literal cog in a factory machine in Modern Times, he was making a satirical point about dehumanizing automation.

This is the happiest day of my life,” Oliver gushes on the day of his marriage to the daughter of an oil magnate and his installation as the vast organization’s general manager.