"Putting Pants on Philip" (1927)

The first dialogue card in “Putting Pants on Philip” (1927) informs us that we are about to see “The story of a Scotch lad who came to America to hunt for a Columbian half-dollar -- his grandfather lost it in 1893,” but that’s not what the film is really about.

Yes, Stan Laurel is Philip, fresh off the ship from Scotland, but the printed narration is a diversion. The real joke is Philip’s kilt. You’ll be relieved to know that he does sport underwear beneath. We know because at one point, he loses them.

This two-reel farce has frequently been billed as the first Laurel and Hardy picture, but that’s misleading, too. They’d appeared in over a dozen shorts together by the time this one was shot. If anything, PPOP is the first time they were beginning to develop the characters we know as The Boys. We see the famous nitwit duo here only in flashes. There are times when we can actually see them thinking.

Stanley is much more aggressive in the film, and Ollie is more dapper and capable of living in the real world. But is this the real world? The street scenes, of which there are plenty, look like a mid-sized, middle class area of Los Angeles or one of its near neighbors, but if Philip has just arrived by ocean liner from Scotland, he wouldn’t be docking on the west coast.

Of course, no subliminal message was intended by the filmmakers--it’s just the usual marriage of convenience and economics—but it presages the moments of mini-surrealism for which Laurel’s gags would become famous.

We open on the Hon. Piedmont Mumblethunder (Hardy), who is waiting on the docks to meet his sister’s son, Philip, arriving from Scotland. We see that sis has sent a letter by way of introduction and she warns her brother (hereafter called Hardy because if I have to type Mumblethunder too many times I may just forget the whole thing) that Philip (Laurel) has but one weakness—women.

Philip disembarks with another Scotsman, and the ship's doctor (an uncredited Sam Lufkin) insists on giving him a quick physical. As the doc probes and gropes him and tries to search his hair for lice or worms, the crowd on the pier begins giggling. This crowd includes Hardy who, despite the fact that he knows he’s meeting a Scot and Laurel is wearing a kilt, pities the poor sucker who's stuck with meeting his nitwit. Ollie's slow realization who the sucker is, is vintage Oliver Hardy.

Other than the kilt, there is no joke in their appearance. Hardy is in a natty sports coat and boater. Laurel is wearing a tam, but both of them have clothes that are clean and well-fitted, unlike the tight suits that Hardy will later adopt.

Pulling his nephew away from the chortling crowd, Hardy asks Laurel what he wants to do, when SHE (Dorothy Coburn, uncredited) walks by—and She is a leggy flapper with bobbed hair and a pert attitude. Laurel, instantly smitten, delivers the first of many scissor-jumps and Hardy has to grab him to keep him from pursuing her.

Walking down the street, Hardy insists that Laurel stays several steps behind him as he is an influential citizen and he doesn't want anyone to see him strolling along with a man in what looks like a dress. Every time Laurel catches up to him, he links arms with his uncle and the following crowd erupts in laughter. When Hardy asks a cop for help in keeping the crowd from ridiculing them, the cop laughs, too.

Then She passes by again, up jumps Laurel, and the chase is on. This time it ends with a slightly larger crowd gathered in the middle of the street. Hardy drags Philip away again, and as Laurel walks over an air vent in the sidewalk, his kilt flies up (a la Monroe in “The Seven Year Itch”). This happens a couple of times before Hardy moves him away from the vent. Laurel then decides to take a sniff of snuff and when he sneezes, his drawers, unnoticed by anyone, fall down.

Cut to the crowd. We can't see what happens to Laurel and his kilt, but several women pass out or move away in horror. Note that this action takes place in front of what I assume is a pub called "The Pink Pup." The boys could be risqué when it suited them. And it suited them more often than you may remember.

A passing stranger retrieves Laurel’s underwear—how times have changed—She returns, another scissor jump, more pursuit.

Hardy has had enough and he takes Laurel to a tailor to get him fitted for trousers. There is some foolery with measuring the inseam, with Laurel's reactions becoming more exaggerated each time. As the tailor (Harvey Clark, uncredited) becomes more and more frustrated, Hardy offers to help. Eventually, all three of them wind up rolling around on the floor.

Getting serious, Hardy removes his coat and follows Laurel through some curtains hanging in a doorway. He chases Laurel back and forth, the doorway being used as a frame for their action. Finally, Hardy emerges disheveled. His vest is pulled up and he has to straighten it. Then Laurel emerges, also mussed up. His tie is loosened. Here Laurel indulges in some superb silent face acting.

You can see his despair as his uncle has "undone" him. He has been seduced and betrayed. Laurel sits on a chair screen left, and Hardy stands beside him on his left. Their attitudes and expressions superbly parody melodrama of the she-is-more-to-be-pitied-than-censored variety.

The tailor brings them the pants, and Laurel goes into a dressing room to put them on. He sees HER legs pass by (he can see out a basement window at eye level), and he goes after her, still in kilt.

Once more, uncle, nephew and She end up together on the sidewalk. She has tried to slip unnoticed past the two men. She does get by them and when Laurel attempts pursuit once more, Hardy grabs him and, in an attempt to sooth his nephew's passion, asks him if he wants to meet the girl. Yes. Hardy strolls over to her as only he can stroll, and in that overly polite manner with which we will become familiar, is chatting her up when she thumps his nose and walks away.

She marches to the place where the sidewalk meets the street at an intersection. There is a large puddle in the street. Laurel rushes over to her, takes off his kilt and spreads it over the puddle. "An old Scottish custom," he tells her. She makes a quick leap over the kilt and puddle and we cut to her on the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street. She performs a scissor-jump, and walks away laughing.

Hardy comes up to Laurel, chortling. When Laurel bends to pick up his kilt, Hardy stops him with one of his grandiose gestures and indicates that he will go first. "An old American custom," he says. When he steps on the kilt, we see that it covered a waist-deep pit and Hardy goes completely under before re-emerging, soaked to the skin top to bottom. As he stands in the pit, chastened, a crowd comes running over, this time to laugh at him.

He has become what he least wanted to become.

The film’s pace is brisk and the jokes run the gamut from the expected to the oddball. Clyde Bruckman directs with a sure hand. Now remembered only by aficionados of early comedy, Bruckman was once at the forefront of screen farce. He worked again with Laurel and Hardy on “Battle of the Century,” and with W.C. Fields on “The Man on the Flying Trapeze” and “The Fatal Glass of Beer.” He’s the credited co-director with Buster Keaton of “The General,” and he made three talkies with Harold Lloyd.

The end was not kind. In 1955, after eating a meal in a restaurant that he could not pay for, he shot himself with a gun he’d borrowed from Keaton.

This film’s supervising director was Leo McCarey, who would win two directing Oscars. It was photographed by George Stevens, who would also go on to claim two Oscars for directing, and the intertitles were written by H.M. (Harley M. “Beany”) Walker, who wrote stories, titles and dialogue for 309 pictures.

Film historian William K. Everson once listed what each of the great movie clowns was best at, and he wrote that what The Boys did best was deliver more laughs per reel than anyone else. No sentimentalizing, no intellectualizing—just funny.

This is where it started, folks. This one’ll kilt ya.

"All Wet" (1924)

I’ve read that this very funny one-reeler is just the surviving half of a two-reeler, but nothing connected to the DVD release of this film indicates that it is incomplete. Given the fact that some of its elements seem pretty disjointed, learning for sure that there was more than currently meets the eye would come as no surprise.

Charley Chase was among the most popular stars of short comedies in the late 1920s. Some have written that he was the most popular after Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd moved on to features. It’s easy to see why his style of comedy outshone that of the Sennett stable. The A-listers working for Hal Roach all fell under the influence of Leo McCarey, who appreciated situation comedy rather than the slapstick for which Mack Sennett is best remembered. McCarey’s approach could be riotous enough when called for, but he could also take his time and allow a story, simple though it usually was, to unfold. Watch the slow build in a McCarey silent with Chase or Laurel and Hardy, then compare it to the pacing of “The Awful Truth” or even “Going My Way.” Even the Marx Brothers, in “Duck Soup,” took some advantage of McCarey’s deliberation. Check out the scenes with Edgar Kennedy.

“All Wet” (1924) opens in a family boarding house, a species of communal domicile perhaps unknown to young viewers today. Think of it as a combination apartment complex and hotel. We’re told that this is “One of those places where you can tell what day of the week it is by looking at the tablecloth.” (A different meal was served every day, but it was the same meal every Monday, every Tuesday, etc.)

A telegram arrives, which, of course, means bad news. Who would pay the cost of a telegram to send good tidings? “Somebody must have died,” one of the elderly lady boarders says to another. “I hope it wasn’t serious.”

Everyone abandons lunch, rushing upstairs to deliver as a group the message to young go-getter Jimmie Jump. (This is just one of the dozen Jimmie Jump comedies Chase made in 1924, among his 30 films from that year. He’d been in pictures for ten years, and this was his 110th.) Jimmie is as nervous as everyone else as he tears open the envelope, and then laughs heartily when he finds out that he is to pick up a litter of puppies at the train station at 2:40 Wednesday afternoon. These dogs have no bearing on anything and are either just a means of getting him out of the house or are an indication that some film footage indeed is missing.

As his disappointed neighbors go mumbling back to their meals, Jimmie grabs his hat and leaves the house.

Chase, whose real name was Charles Joseph Parrott, was a thin 6-footer. Not spectacularly handsome, he had a long, open face that was better at conveying realistic laughter than tears. Usually dressed in a light suit and boater and wearing a reasonable mustache, he was an outgoing everyman, not quite as boyish as Harold Lloyd but never as serious as Keaton. His screen character was consistently the victim of the kind of bad luck that forced him into embarrassing situations. The comedy of humiliation and frustration was his specialty.

And Jimmie’s bad luck begins as soon as he leaves the shelter of his home and ventures out into a world full of thoughtlessness and trickery.

He steps off the sidewalk and gives the handle of a parked car a quick twist. As he stands erect to enter the vehicle and drive away, another motorist (William Gillespie) scoots in ahead of him and drives away. Jimmie’s chance for the last laugh comes quickly as he, in the right car, catches up to the man whose auto is now stuck in a mud puddle.

This must have been a fairly common occurrence on the streets of L.A. at that time as Jimmie, too nice a guy to revel in this jerk’s misfortune, is prepared with a tow rope. He tosses it to the other man, who ties it around his windshield. Jimmie slowly ooches forward, freeing the other car. Then, when Jimmie finds himself stuck, the other man tells him that he has an appointment and no time to give him a hand. Rather than flying into a rage, Jimmie seems to accept this as just another instance of ingratitude. His reaction is low-key and realistic.

Jimmie gets out to push his own car and slips into the mud. There is a feel of familiarity here as JJ reacts normally to wet and slush. Here is another perfect opportunity for over reaction but, once again, McCarey and Chase let it go.

Next comes a pure McCarey bit. A piano mover (Jack Gavin) comes along carrying a piano on one shoulder. JJ calls him and he drops the instrument on the grass. Our stranded motorist gives him a silver dollar to push the car out, and when he does the machine inches forward only far enough to slip into a sinkhole and disappear. The two men watch the car go under in the kind of careful, long take from mid-long range that Laurel and Hardy would make their own. Cut to the men’s accepting faces and hold for a beat before the mover returns the dollar and walks off.

This action is being watched by a kid sitting in front of a garage. When he sees that Jimmie is still stuck, he calls out, “Another sucker,” and a man in a tow truck (Martin Wolfkiel) pulls out of the garage. He backs up to the edge of the puddle and offers to retrieve Jimmie’s car. Since JJ is already soaked, he agrees to go into the water to attach a tow line to the submerged car. Rescue seems inevitable, but the tow truck mechanic only reels in JJ’s rear wheels.

Now Jimmie has to re-enter the water, dive under, and re-attach the wheels. The following segment lasts about 90 seconds and its zany surrealism comes as a complete reversal of the everyday reality that has preceded it.

As JJ works underwater, the mechanic sits on dry land. Jimmie’s hand emerges and points to a wrench, which the mechanic gives him. Hand goes back under. Comes up again and points to a hammer. Back under. Pause. Re-surfaces and points to another wrench. As the mechanic reaches for it, the hand waves him off and more emphatically points to another one. Back under. Pause. The mechanic, wanting to light his pipe, calls for a match. JJ’s hand reaches from below with a match. The mechanic accepts it, lights it, and fires up the pipe. He then asks for the time. Hand up. The mechanic takes a look at Jimmie’s watch, nods his thanks and receives a wave in response.

It’s a gag sequence that elicits laughter not just because it’s funny but because it seems to come out of nowhere. We haven’t been prepared for anything this off the wall. It’s a moment of classic absurdity performed to perfection by an actor we can’t even see, although Chase will vanish in other films and allow his hands alone to carry the scene.

Jimmie’s final frustration comes when he arrives at the train station and asks a worker there the inane question, “What time does the 2:40 come in on Wednesday?” The man replies without missing a beat, “2:40 tomorrow. This is Tuesday.”

This little gem of a one-reeler was photographed by Len Powers, who would do the same job for Laurel and Hardy in 1932 when he shot “The Music Box,” the Boys’ only Oscar winner. Somewhere among the boarding house’s inhabitants is an uncredited Janet Gaynor.

Little movies like this one, especially when they feature comedians whose stars have since waned, are easy to overlook in our enthusiasm for big themes in big stories, but there’s much to be said for the little guys. And while we may never be able to identify with the mania of the Keystone Kops, locating what we have in common with a genial fella who suffers from wretchedly bad luck for most of an afternoon is as easy as getting stuck in the mud.