(October 1937-February 1938, 72m) Director: John G. Blystone Released: MGM, May 20, 1938  The weakest of Laurel and Hardy's final half a dozen features before moving to Twentieth Century-Fox, a misguided operetta that sees neither star at the top of their game. With Hardy then for once his shy responses to being in love (the infamous tie-twiddle, the bashful smile) are not endearing or charming, but forced and pantomimic. What perhaps make this version of Oliver unpalatable is that he's so unlikeable in this one, a boorish snob who chastises waiters, rather than the perpetual loser with delusions of grandeur that he normally plays. There's a marked difference, and many scenes shock with how completely out of character Hardy is written. The simple-minded script doesn't allow for three dimensions in his portrayal, and so Hardy overplays his stock of mannerisms, forcing it into caricature. Perhaps most unsettling is that he doesn't allow us into his world, his every look towards us virtually excised by the editor's scissors. As a result we're left watching him without him calling upon our sympathies... the final result doesn't produce a pleasant image. Most worryingly of all is that he's the biggest he'd ever appear in a Hal Roach Laurel and Hardy picture, his weight having ballooned dramatically. Gone is the cherubic face of just the previous year and in its place is a man who looks like he has a serious weight problem that could impact upon his health. Stan, for his part, doesn't fare much better. During the making of the film he'd parted with a second wife, getting divorced from Virginia Ruth on Christmas Eve. In an event worthy of a Laurel and Hardy film in itself, Stan had actually married Virginia Ruth twice after not realising that his first marriage to Lois hadn't been fully finalised. Some years later Stan was quoted in American Weekly as saying that the reason marriage with his second wife never worked is that he still couldn't get over Lois divorcing him. Whatever the circumstances, Stan looks drawn and detached throughout the film, where even one of the few celebrated scenes - Stan tricks a Saint Bernard dog into letting him drink his brandy barrel - sees his face lined and looking every inch a man in his late forties. Interestingly, this is the only feature in which Stan doesn't do his trademark cry, further increasing the feeling that we're not watching Stan but a tired actor creating an approximation of the character. Strangely for something he did so often then it was a part of Stan's comedy make-up that the star never felt any affection for, but an effective part of his comedy nevertheless. (For those curious about such trivia, then the small list of sound films that Stan doesn't cry in are as follows: Hog Wild, Another Fine Mess, The Stolen Jools, On The Loose, The Music Box, County Hospital, Twice Two, Me and My Pal, The Midnight Patrol, Busy Bodies, Wild Poses, Hollywood Party and Tit For Tat). It's not all bad, of course - a scene where musical notes are trapped in bubbles is genuinely inspired. But when the major set-piece is two toy models on a rope bridge being chased by a man in a gorilla costume in front of a painted backdrop then it seems a long time since Way Out West. Entries like Swiss Miss and Bonnie Scotland show a weakness in the bowler hat rating system, because while both are as near to two stars as can be, they - just about - scrape average, the same as far superior films like The Music Box (of which this one reworks) and Sons of the Desert. Perhaps most notable of all is that the film's punchline - the gorilla hurls a crutch through the air, KOing them both - was used as part of a spoiler-insensitive clips montage that auto-played on the region two DVD release from Universal. Although that particular boxset was very well put together, it was a marketing strategy just this side of the Planet of the Apes releases that have a picture of the Statue of Liberty on the cover. The film, made under the working title 'Swiss Cheese', recently received some notoriety after it was revealed that it was a particular favourite of Hitler's. In recently discovered diaries of Martin Bormann it was noted that on the 21st of June 1938 Hitler ordered a screening of Swiss Miss (two days later it was Way Out West!) with the observation that 'The Fuhrer is in a playful mood after the film'. Well, the guy always did have bad taste.  (May-July 1938, 57m) Director: John G. Blystone Released: MGM, August 19, 1938  In many ways a 'best of', featuring material reprised from earlier pictures (including Unaccustomed As We Are and We Faw Down), Block-Heads was announced as the final Laurel and Hardy film and was the last in Hal Roach's distribution deal with MGM. There's a certain kind of poignancy in the opening moments where Laurel, having spent twenty years in a bunker not realising the war was over, reunites with Hardy. Lines like 'Gee Ollie, you know, this is just like old times you and I being together. We sure used to have a lot of fun, didn't we?' It's almost like the words of two old friends looking back and realising that this is the last time they'd ever have so much fun, because after Block-Heads Laurel and Hardy would never be quite as good again. An added bittersweet layer comes from Stan in that bunker, not realising that the war had been over for two decades... unbeknownst to the team when they made it Stan would have only had to stay in that bunker for another year after release for that long-dormant war to start back up again. In all, Block-Heads stands up alongside Sons of the Desert as what a Laurel and Hardy film would most look like if you'd never seen one and had to guess. If you put a child down in front of the shorts and asked them to imagine what a full-length Laurel and Hardy vehicle would be like then no child in his right mind would say that it would look like an 18th century operetta. Block-Heads is just Stan and Ollie doing what they do best, and even at this late stage adding new touches of surrealist humour, such as Stan playing with shadows and his hand pipe. If there's one criticism then it's that the climax reused from We Faw Down lacks a big enough 'pay off' factor for a full-length movie, but then Hal Roach had vetoed Stan's original idea of he and Ollie being wall-mounted hunter exhibits in another of the Roach-Laurel creative spats. Lastly, the film, like Way Out West, was also Oscar-nominated for Marvin Hatley's musical score, though in this case it was purely incidental music and not song. Outside the films, then Stan's personal life picked up during January 1938 as he married a third wife, a Russian singer named Vera Ivanova Shuvalova. In late January Stan married Ivanova again, paranoid that history would repeat itself and that his second divorce hadn't gone through. A third marriage to Ivanova in April - this time as a Russian orthodox ceremony - led to much tabloid speculation that Stan had multiple wives, especially when Mae made headlines as Stan's common law wife from the 1920s. The reality was, however, that at forty-six years of age Stan had been married just three times, albeit in six separate ceremonies. Inside the films then Stan's life was taking a downturn: not only had the director of Block-Heads died of a heart attack thirteen days before the movie was premiered, but Hal Roach had finally had enough of fractions and cancelled Stan's contract just a week before Block-Heads opened. With Stan fired, Roach teamed up a still-contracted Hardy into a series of pictures with a new partner, Harry Langdon. The first, Zenobia, failed to win over audiences who wanted more Laurel and Hardy, and also failed to delight United Artists who had just struck up a deal to begin distributing Roach's output instead of MGM. To make matters even more complicated Stan was suing the studio for breach of contract, and so Roach signed a contract with both stars on a one-year, four picture basis. Whether they liked it or not, Stan and Hal needed each other, and so A Chump At Oxford was born... (April-June 1939; September 1939, 63m) Director: Alfred Goulding Released: United Artists, February 16, 1940  Originally intended as a 40 minute vehicle for Harold Lloyd, Laurel and Hardy filmed A Chump At Oxford as a parody of MGM's A Yank At Oxford and then filmed additional scenes to take it to feature length for the European market. The additional opening scenes, filmed in September, eventually became a standard part of the movie on DVD and home video, but what isn't so well known is that the 42 minute version contains some alternate shots and takes to the original. The extra couple of reels at the beginning of the film see Stan and Ollie once more reunited with Anita Garvin and James Finlayson as a pair of rich house owners looking for a butler and a maid. Cue Stan resuming his 'Agnes' disguise from Another Fine Mess, a policeman with a gun-blasted backside complaining 'you nearly blew my brains out!' just as in Slipping Wives and a reworking of the entire plot of From Soup To Nuts. By this stage Stan and Ollie had earned the right to rework and represent their previous body of work to an audience and Hardy's dinner introduction of 'There's everything from soup to nuts, folks. Come and get it' is an incredibly witty way of acknowledging the usage of their own back catalogue. Sadly, after an amusing opening section the next twenty minutes of the picture are what makes A Chump At Oxford just an average Laurel and Hardy feature and not a great one. Almost in a presaging of their Fox personas, Stan and Ollie spend their time getting downtrodden and humiliated by secondary characters, the humour coming not from their characterisations but their reactions to those around them. Even worse, the once pompous Oliver Hardy, who would never admit to not knowing anything, here declares his own total lack of education. The Ollie we've known over the years was a classic example of pride coming before a fall, but here he has no pride, and the only falls he takes are those artificially generated by those around him. Even though one of the 'upper class' students is played, hilariously, by Charlie Hall, there's precious little laughs to be had here as Laurel and Hardy are no longer the instigators of their own unwitting downfall, but two foils in their own movie, earnestly attempting to get an education and being heartbreakingly bullied as a result. What makes A Chump At Oxford so well-remembered is an all-too-brief final ten minutes where Stan gets a bump on the head and discovers that his 'Stan' persona was in fact the amnesiac fabrication of 'Lord Paddington', an Oxford genius and supreme athlete who lost his memory after getting hit on the head by a loose window frame. Naturally the accident repeats itself and 'Lord Paddington' emerges once more. Although it's saddening to learn that in real life Ollie's last wife revealed that he had severe body confidence issues and hated his weight problem, it takes little shine off the sheer hilarity of 'Lord Paddington' addressing him as 'Fatty'. It was a name that Hardy had heard all his life and one that hurt him deeply, but here he uses that hurt to collaborate in one of the greatest-ever Laurel and Hardy sequences. When Stan loses his memory again and Ollie embraces him without any sense of self-consciousness, it's one of the most touching affirmations of their friendship and could have acted as a great ending to the Laurel and Hardy series. Ironically one of the writers on the film (and also Block-Heads, The Flying Deuces and Saps At Sea) was Harry Langdon, the silent comedy star that Hal Roach had tried to team Hardy with during Laurel's contract dispute. As Stan explained to Arthur Friedman in 1957, the parting of the double act wasn't due to any animosity between himself and Hardy: 'We had different contracts, separate contracts. And my contract had been through and I didn't want to sign up again under their terms and agreements. So that was the delay and the split. So I was threatened by Mr. Roach to put Langdon with Babe, or any other comic, just to... in other words, make me come to terms. But I wouldn't go for it and consequently there was a split up there, but it wasn't between us.' (April-August 1939, 69m) Director: A. Edward Sutherland Released: RKO Radio Pictures, November 3, 1939  A sign of how faded the relationship was between the two stars and Hal Roach came when Hal arranged to loan out the duo to an ex-Broadway producer known as Boris Morros. Although it was for a one-off picture deal, having Laurel and Hardy given out to another producer would have seemed unthinkable in their primes. Sadly, however, this wasn't Stan and Ollie in their primes any longer... Stan was rapidly approaching fifty, with Hardy not too far behind, and 1939 would be the final year in which they'd make a Laurel and Hardy film that felt like a Laurel and Hardy film. Shot from July-August after the initial June shoot on A Chump At Oxford, The Flying Deuces (less than six minutes actually featuring flying) hasn't had its reputation aided by extremely poor prints being released onto the DVD market. However, it's actually a pretty good picture for this late period, and even arguably better than a handful of the Roach features. It's certainly better than any of the films they made in the 1940s, largely by virtue of them still being in character. Essentially a reworking of Beau Hunks - the third time in eight years they'd done the same plot - what makes The Flying Deuces an essential part of the canon is that it goes even deeper into the Stan-Ollie relationship and also has a uniquely morbid fascination with death. Stan had long been interested in his perverse 'body horror' endings, and as recently as Block-Heads had had a macabre ending vetoed. Here, outside the Hal Roach editorial influence he ends a film with Hardy actually dying onscreen, and, in the belief of reincarnation that fascinated him, has Hardy come back as a moustachioed horse. Yet the blackest humour of all comes from a scene where Hardy attempts to commit suicide. Only the character of Oliver Hardy could be so pompous and oblivious to events that he would chastise someone for wasting his time when in the middle of killing himself. In a perversely twisted line of reasoning he even convinces Stan to join him in a suicide pact, exploring the negative side of their relationship: 'Do you realise that after I'm gone that you'll just go on living by yourself, people would stare at you and wonder what you are and I wouldn't be here to tell them - there'd be no one to protect you? Do you want that to happen to you?' Perhaps the biggest standout comes with Hardy's rendition of 'Shine On Harvest Moon'. Although Stan is clearly getting too old to be dancing around and expecting to hold onto his dignity, the performance of the song itself is absolutely sublime. As with all of the touching moments from the 1939 features, it has an extra layer of bittersweet poignancy knowing that what was around the corner was a run of nine increasingly depressing films and then an ignominious retirement. Stan and Ollie had felt like real friends to so many people all over the world that it's sad to realise we'd only get 'Stan and Ollie' one more time after this, then they'd be gone from the cinema screen forever. Not only that, but this would be the final time we'd hear Ollie's pleasant voice. He'd sing a few notes of melody in the execrable A-Haunting We Will Go, but this is it, the final song proper, that's your lot. Mixed fortunes met the two stars behind the scenes: Stan was going through yet another divorce, this time with Iliana after just over a year of marriage. Meanwhile, a script continuity girl known as Lucille Jones was working on the picture and had taken Hardy's eye. He proposed to Lucille during the making of their following feature and they were married in May 1940. After years of attempting marital harmony Hardy had now found the woman who would be with him for the rest of his life... for Stan it would be six more years before he found himself in the same position. (September-October 1939, 57m) Director: Gordon Douglas Released: United Artists, May 3, 1940  Stan and Ollie, along with treasurer Ben Shipman, formed their own company, Laurel and Hardy Feature Productions before the making of this film. Despite being contracted to the Roach studios for four pictures, their contracts expired after filming Saps At Sea and so both men finally left behind the man that had produced them for over thirteen years. Perhaps buoyed by the realisation that they had produced a half-decent picture for another company in The Flying Deuces, they both had high hopes for a brighter future. Little did they know that Saps At Sea would effectively be the final Laurel and Hardy movie, what following being a pale imitation against their own wishes. Saps At Sea does, in fact, perhaps stand alongside Sons of the Desert and Block-Heads as the feature to most closely resemble a Laurel and Hardy movie... just not a particularly good one. It's not awful by any means, but it's a very average bow out that's likely to produce more consistent smiles than knock out laughs. Perhaps most saddening is that the very amusing Charlie Hall appears in his ninth Laurel and Hardy feature (or tenth if you count Pick A Star) and yet doesn't get a substantial role in any of them. James Finlayson gets an extended turn as a frustrated Doctor, but the very funny Hall just gets a three-line goodbye. Most of this is punctuated by an obnoxious musical score that won't let Stan and Ollie just be funny without full over-pronounced back up, so how funny you find the film may depend on your mood. Rychard (here as 'Richard') Cramer makes a return after being the judge in Scram! and two minor roles in their previous two features. Here however it's a hark back to his first Laurel and Hardy role, that of the fearsome Uncle Jack from Pack Up Your Troubles. To be fair to Cramer, there is a touch more humour there, but one can only imagine Walter Long gurning his way through the part instead. Ultimately it's just an average Laurel and Hardy movie and certainly no bad thing for that. Out in the real world, World War II had just broken out, an event which would have a direct effect on their future output...
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