Schnorrer

Just watched this, the penultimate silent Laurel & Hardy short, on YouTube. In this one, they are repo men trying to get Edgar Kennedy's radio since he hadn't paid installments in the previous 8 years! I'll stop there and just say how funny most of the shenanigans are especially with the sound effects used like when the motor on Stan & Ollie's car is starting or when Kennedy uses his sound prop dog to scare the boys. Charlie Hall also appears as someone who for once tries to help them. And a young lady named Jean Harlow, who also appeared in their last short-Double Whoopee, makes one here as well as...well, watch this if you want to know. So on that note, Bacon Grabbers comes recommended.

This was the 25th short as a team. I'm only now dipping into Laurel and Hardy in a serious way, but the whole 20 year collaboration seems to be based on two things: the comedy of destruction, and a sort of flummoxed humiliation.

We laugh at both, but it is the destruction (or sometimes a chase) that makes the best stories for these guys.

We see a door and we know they will do everything to that door that they can imagine. All the comic possibilities are exhausted. We see a ladder and know that clever minds will invent dozens of gags to surround it.

If there is a radio involved, and we know that each event increases the value of the thing, that it will be destroyed.

This was made the same year as "Big Business: which was the high point of the destructive model. Nothing so extreme here, but you can see how they think.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

This is a very amusing silent slapstick short from Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, this time opposing Edgar Kennedy.

This time Edgar Kennedy does not play a police officer but he is on the other side of the law; a person who hasn't paid his debt for a radio. Laurel & Hardy are sent out to collect the debt and Kennedy does everything he can to keep the boys out of his house, so he can keep his radio.

The movie is fast paced with slapstick moments that rapidly come after each other. Even the moments before the real 'action' and main plot line kicks in, are fast paced and highly amusing and involves Laurel & Hardy regular Charlie Hall, among others. So yes, you can really say that "Bacon Grabbers" is a movie that constantly amuses in a good fast comedy pace.

The real fun really begins from the moment the boys arrive at the Kennedy residence. The boys at first try to serve a summons and once they finally achieved that they try to repossess the radio. The events that happen during these moments is slapstick comedy at its best. Not too much story, just some good old fashioned visual and exaggerated comedy going on the screen, meaning lots of running around and wrecking things, especially towards the ending.

Beside Laurel & Hardy regulars Charlie Hall and Edgar Kennedy, the 18-year old Jean Harlow also shows up once more toward the ending of the movie, in a very small role as the Mrs. Kennedy.

Not the best known Laurel & Hardy movie but definitely worth checking out.

8/10

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Laurel and Hardy are collection agents sent to both serve Edgar Kennedy with a court order as well as repossess Kennedy's radio--since he apparently hadn't made any payments since 1921! However, when they try to give Kennedy the court papers, he's very slippery and doesn't give in very easily.

BACON GRABBERS is a decent Laurel and Hardy short, though far from the team's best. The reason it isn't top-notch isn't because it's a silent short, as some of their very best films (in particular, BIG BUSINESS) were silents. I think the problem, and it's a minor one, is that the film is a bit slow and doesn't pack in quite the same number of laughs as most of their other films. But, even a lesser Laurel and Hardy short is STILL a thing of beauty, so I do recommend you give it a watch--even if the ending is awfully contrived (after all, a steam roller doesn't just come along and do what this one does!).

Ironically, just five years later, Edgar Kennedy himself plays a man trying unsuccessfully to serve a court summons in the film WE'RE RICH AGAIN. I guess the tables are turned!

While it isn't among the best-known Laurel & Hardy films, and isn't as readily available as some, Bacon Grabbers is well worth seeking out for anyone who enjoys slapstick comedy crafted by experts. This movie marked the boys' penultimate appearance in silent films before the switch to talkies, and, like many late silents, it presents the medium in its purest form: the story is told with a minimum of title cards, the wording of the cards is witty, and the cinematography (allowing for brief tattered portions in surviving prints) is a joy to behold. Most of this film takes place outdoors in the Culver City sunshine, giving us interesting glimpses of a bygone suburban lifestyle: the cars, clothes, homes, and household appliances of 1929. But best of all we have a great comedy team in peak form, surrounded by familiar faces from the Hal Roach stock company.

Stan and Ollie work best when they aren't overly hampered with plot, so it's nice to report that the premise here is simple. Seeing as how Edgar "Collis P." Kennedy has stopped making payments on his radio, the sheriff decides to send two men over to serve a summons and repossess it. Guess who he decides to send! The boys have a number of difficulties delivering the document to the uncooperative Kennedy, but, once they succeed in this, they find that seizing the radio itself is no easy matter. And by the way, this is no dinky table-top radio we're talking about here, it's a massive wooden console, about the size of a 3-drawer file cabinet.

This is the ideal structure for a Laurel & Hardy comedy: they are given an assignment, conflict arises almost instantly, and then a variety of complications -- many of which are self-generated -- set in. And then the complications develop complications. When we view a Keystone comedy of the 1910s we often sense that the actors were improvising their knockabout while the cameras rolled, come what may. The Roach comedians of the '20s and '30s were more methodical, and yet they kept the structure loose enough to allow room for spontaneity. The first big laugh sequence in Bacon Grabbers comes at the sheriff's office, when Stan and Ollie encounter great difficulty simply leaving the room with their hats and the summons they're supposed to deliver. The scene rolls along quite smoothly, and may well have been improvised on the spot, but without the mugging and unmotivated violence we get from the Keystone comics. Has anyone noticed what good actors Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were? They do their stuff so naturally, we don't even think of them as actors.

One additional treat is offered in the final scene: when the young actress playing Edgar Kennedy's wife arrives with important information, we are given a peek at Jean Harlow, still a teenager and strikingly pretty. Her brief appearance serves as icing on the cake, for even without her presence, this amusing short is a fast-paced and funny example of silent comedy at its apex.