Pick and Shovel

The big jokes of this one-reel comedy from Stan Laurel's days as a solo leading comic seems to be that he is an Upper Class Twit, complete with top hat and fur coat, who for some reason has showed up for work at a coal mine. That's a pretty funny image -- as is the hat check girl in front of the mine -- and it sounds like a potential ingredient for a good single reel from the Roach studio at the time, if not starring Laurel then perhaps Paul Parrott or Snub Pollard.

However, after one funny gag where Stan keeps trying to hang his coat and hat on the outstretched arm of his boss (James Finlayson in a smaller-than-usual moustache, but the pacing her doesn't really let him do any of his distinctive reaction-based comedy) as the mine elevator goes up and down, this short doesn't really do much else with the concept.

Instead it devolves into Stan filling in a series of standard gags set around a mine, pushing one end of a cart while somebody pushes the other, flirting with a girl who has shown up for some reason while he should be working, accidentally hitting somebody with his pick and starting a fight, &c.

The highlight of the short comes when it slows everything down for a great pantomime it in which Stan sits down to relax and get his tobacco fix. The oil dripping from his 1920s-style miner's hat make his pipe explode, then two of his cigarettes. And it makes his chewing tobacco taste decidedly off. This is a wonderful extended bit of pantomime which reminds me of Stan's great extended scene of eating wax fruit in "Sons of the Desert" after the formation of Laurel and Hardy.

Unfortunately, this scene is miles ahead of the rest of the short, which apart from a couple of nice bits, it has to be admitted is fairly run of the mill.

This is one of many Stan Laurel comedies he made before teaming up with Oliver Hardy. Some of these films were wonderful, but this one is more typical in that it isn't all that funny. Sadly, without Hardy, Stan's films were usually a bit flat.

The film begins with dapper dude Stan going to work in the coal mines--and dressed in a raccoon coat, top hat and tux! After shedding this garb, most of the rest of the film consists of Stan annoying and starting fights between his fellow workers (by hitting them in the butt with his pickax and other such lame behaviors) as well as making passes at a lady miner (a lady miner??!!). None of this was particularly funny or inspiring and apart from the novelty of seeing Stan without Ollie, there's nothing to particularly recommend this film.

For me, the funniest thing about this barely funny slapstick comedy is its title. The movie takes place in a coal mine, so American audiences probably assumed that the title 'Pick and Shovel' is merely a reference to the miners' tools. However, in Britain the phrase 'pick and shovel' refers to hard labour -- any hard labour, with any tools or with no tools at all -- performed by prison inmates. That title indicates to me that some Brit who didn't get a script credit on this movie -- possibly the Lancashire-born Stan Laurel or his Scots crony Jimmy Finlayson -- had some uncredited input.

Apart from that title, the comedy here (what there is of it) is mostly formulaic slapstick, made slightly more cringe-worthy than usual because Stan and the other miners are swinging picks at each other. There are a couple of amusing surrealist gags: Stan reports for work at the coal face wearing a raccoon coat, and the foreman's pretty daughter has a job in the mine shaft. She must be one of those miners' canaries I've heard about.

The beloved James Finlayson performs opposite Laurel here, but I must warn fans of Laurel & Hardy that this movie contains none of the hilarious interplay between 'Fin' and Stan that highlighted so many of the classic comedies which pitted Fin against Stan and Ollie.

Although I enjoy slapstick and physical comedy, I tend to dislike gags which involve someone getting covered in dirt, sludge, slag or industrial waste. Here, I cringed even more than usual when the dirt came, because it involved a load of coal showering down onto Finlayson's head.

I was one of the thousands of volunteer workers at Aberfan in October 1966 just after the mine-tip disaster which killed 144 people, and later I worked as a miner (opals, not coal) in the tunnels at Coober Pedy, so I've some idea of how extremely dangerous pit mining is. (I've also been down the shaft of the now-disused 19th-century anthracite mine at Beamish in Durham.) Just this moment, as I write this review, there are desperate attempts to rescue some miners trapped underground in Utah: let's hope they get to daylight alive! (UPDATE: They didn't. R.I.P.)

Slapstick is my favourite form of comedy, but mining is such a deathly dangerous profession that I just couldn't laugh at the mishaps in 'Pick and Shovel'. Nice title, though. My rating for this miner comedy, which is indeed a minor comedy: just 2 out of 10, partly in appreciation for pretty Katherine Grant's performance.