Come Clean

A LAUREL & HARDY Comedy Short.

Stan & Ollie save the life of a bizarre woman attempting to drown herself. Instead of gratitude, the ferocious female follows them home, ensconcing herself in Ollie's bedroom & demanding money. Not wanting to COME CLEAN to their wives only makes the problem much worse...

A hilarious little film. Highlight: Stan in the bathtub. That's Mae Busch as the female (her name is misspelled in the opening credits) & Charlie Hall as the soda jerk.

The beginning of this film is an almost exact copy of SHOULD MARRIED MEN GO HOME, as Ollie and his wife are trying to spend a quiet evening ALONE, but Stanley (and in this case with his wife) show up unannounced. Ollie and his wife hide and pretend they aren't home, but to no avail. Then, you soon notice that Ollie's wife is a pretty bossy and mean piece of work and she begins nagging him unmercifully. Stan wants ice cream, so he and Ollie leave to bring some back for everyone. On the way back, they catch a woman who appears to be trying to drown herself. Instead of being grateful, she is a major pest who follows them home and tries to make their lives miserable (a rather unbelievable turn of events, I know). And the last portion of the film consists of the boys trying in vain to stop this woman from revealing herself to the wives.

As far as the film goes, it's funny stuff, but also pretty forced. It's awfully familiar and ordinary. Not a bad film, but also not particularly memorable.

James W. Horne does what he does best as a director of Laurel and Hardy shorts with Come Clean, a spry comedic short, which is erect a story and short film on the opportunities that naturally arise from situational comedy. His directorial style, combined with H.M. Walker's writing, is often comprised of coming up with a ridiculous story and continuing to feed its inanity by seeing just how far one could take it. This results in a short that is more than just endless bouts of physical comedy with no real humor whatsoever, but a showcase of two charismatic comedy talents and a screen writing exercise that serves as a fulfilling laugh-riot.

Come Clean may not live up to Horne's other Laurel and Hardy shorts, like Big Business and Thicker Than Water, but there is still an incomparable amount of energy and liveliness within the screenplay and the characters. The short begins by Mr. and Mrs. Hardy wishing they could have a restful, quiet evening in their apartment, but are interrupted, per usual, by the well-meaning but troublemaking Mr. and Mrs. Laurel. After trying to refuse entry, the Hardy's give up and decide to let them in, to which Laurel replies by hanging with his old pal Hardy and the wives are left to mingle in the frontroom. When Laurel and Hardy decide to venture out to get ice cream, they wind up preventing a woman from committing suicide off a bridge, to which she is ungrateful and begins making threats to both men if they dare leave her company. What results is a manic evening between the two men and the shrewish woman, as they try to get back to their wives for a dinner, while preventing the woman from screaming whenever she is unsatisfied with what's happening.

This is the first Laurel and Hardy short I've encountered where little sense is made in regards to the short's narrative or its cause-and-effect relationship. Why would this woman try and commit suicide? Was it all just a ploy to get the attention of someone she could blackmail? Why are Laurel and Hardy's wives so bitter and shrewish themselves? Writer H.M. Walker doesn't concern himself with that information so much as he does try his best to quietly obscure details by making such a ridiculous and wild short film, one that operates with the one-thing-leads-to-another formula of early comedy filmmaking, without so much as clearing up why one thing leads to another.

It's all in the name of comedy, and in that spirit, Come Clean is pretty funny, especially during the last ten minutes of its nineteen-minute runtime, where, per usual, all hell breaks loose and Laurel and Hardy are left to their own thoughtful wits, as lackluster as those often are. Come Clean provides for fun and enjoyment, which is precisely what most of these shorts have been giving me, so far.

Starring: Stan Laurel and Olive Hardy. Directed by: James W. Horne.

Laurel & Hardy return to a favourite plot device - that of blackmail - in this reasonably funny short. They save the life of a woman attempting to drown herself and are rewarded by having her threatening to have them arrested for attacking her if they don't take her home with them. Of course, being Stan & Ollie, this is what they do - with typically riotous results as they try to conceal her from their wives.

This one has a couple of classic moments: the encounter with the ice cream salesman in which Stan wants mustachio with his chocolate ice cream, and the boy's noisy attempts to cover the music blaring from another room by banging their crockery and singing at the tops of their voices. Not quite vintage Laurel & Hardy but still extremely funny.

Keep fooling those women. Stan and Ollie are married and living in relative luxury. They see so much of each other that when the Laurels want to come over, the Hardys try to avoid them. It doesn't work and they end up together. Soon the boys go out for ice cream (apparently a regular event because this is not the only time). They end up with the miserable Charlie Hall making this a hard proposition. While out, they save a suicidal woman from drowning. Instead of gratitude, she begins to extort them for money to be quiet about having dealings with her. Modern audiences would recognize her as a hooker. The police are after her and are offering a huge reward. The fun starts as she makes her way to their home and dresses in the wive's clothing. Of course, the job now is to hide this woman from the wives till they can pay her off. Mae Busch is sort of tragic as the woman. Ollie does get the last word in the final scene.