Love 'Em and Weep

Love 'Em and Weep (1927)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

A married man (James Finlayson) gets a call from his old girlfriend threatening to blackmail him so another guy (Stan Laurel) takes her out to make a deal. Oliver Hardy has a small role and it's hard to tell it's him due to his wig and mustache. The film has some good laughs but many of them aren't too big. The film was later remade with L&H working together in Chickens Come Home.

Should Married Men Go Home? (1928)

*** (out of 4)

Laurel breaks up a quiet evening at Mr. And Mrs. Hardy's house but he and Oliver go golfing anyways, which just leads to trouble. This was the first official Laurel and Hardy movie and it works quite nicely. The best moments occurs towards the end of the film with a big mud fight. Another highlight is a gag by the malt stand, which was later borrowed by Abbott and Costello in Buck Privates.

I watched this immediately after watching the 1931 remake (which is a genuine Laurel & Hardy film rather than a movie in which they both happen to appear) and it was a weird experience. The Oliver Hardy role is taken by James Finlayson who plays the butler in the remake. Hardy plays the judge and is barely recognisable behind a wig and thick moustache.

The film is quite amusing, although it's difficult to judge objectively after seeing the remake. By 1931 the boys had had time to polish their act and some of the comic moments were embellished upon. This is still enjoyable enough, though. Elements of Laurel's character as it would become once he teamed with Hardy peep through every now and then, but his hair's slicked back and he isn't quite the helpless child he would become.

LOVE 'EM AND WEEP was a very early pre-team short featuring Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy at the Hal Roach Studios;the only problem is that they share no virtually no scenes together,and the double act working here is Stan and James Finlayson,not Stan and Ollie.The remake,CHICKENS COME HOME(1931),when the Laurel and Hardy team was well established,is far superior with less frantic pacing and better characterisation.Like Finlayson,several L&H co-stars make their first appearance with the boys;Charlie Hall,Mae Busch.Although the above remake has 10 minutes extra footage(foreign versions had even more footage),Laurel and Hardy together are far funnier than Laurel and Finlayson,though Fin is great as the blackmailing butler,played in this silent original by Hall.

Yes, the movie has both Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy in it but it's not a 'Laurel & Hardy' movie. They're not a comical duo in this movie and they actually share very little sequences together, since Hardy's role is only a bit part. The real main character of this movie is perhaps James Finlayson. Not that I'm complaining about it thought, I love James Finlayson! He has an excellent comical timing and facial expressions, which fits the genre extremely well.

The movie was later in 1931 remade again by Laurel & Hardy with sound this time, under the name "Chickens Come Home". That movie is basically a scene-by-scene remake only with the actors in different roles. (Oliver Hardy in the James Finlayson role and James Finlayson as the butler, among other changes.) Yet the remake is better, not only because it has sound but also because it has more sequences with Laurel & Hardy together with also as a result that the slapstick comes over as even more hilarious and the comical moments are just as well, if not better, timed and executed.

The movie is fun from start till finish. It has some excellent comical characters in it and a very good build up. The movie gets more and more funny as the movie progresses and builds up to the unavoidable confrontation in the Finlayson residence. It makes the movie probably one of the better build up comedies from Laurel & Hardy and the silent era in general.

It's a very enjoyable and fun movie but not as good as the inferior remake, that is one of the better Laurel & Hardy shorts.

7/10

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This is one of Laurel & Hardy's "pre-team" comedies, one of several shorts both men appeared in more or less coincidentally before they developed their familiar childlike characters, i.e. the duo with the derby hats we all know and love. In this go-round Jimmy Finlayson is basically the lead player (although Mae Busch originally received top billing), and yet Stan steals the show in a prominent supporting role. Oliver Hardy is relegated to a minor part, and he dutifully reacts to the antics of the other players without any real comic business of his own to perform. Four years later, however, after Laurel & Hardy had become the top comics on the Hal Roach lot, Love 'Em and Weep would be remade as a talkie and retitled Chickens Come Home, with Hardy in the lead, Stan and Mae Busch repeating their earlier roles, and Finlayson reduced to playing Hardy's butler. Something of a comedown for Fin, though it must be said he played his part to a fare-thee-well on that occasion.

At any rate, Love 'Em and Weep is quite enjoyable in its own right, that is, if you enjoy a good old fashioned marital farce. All the ingredients are in place: Finlayson is a respectable bourgeois businessman (profession not specified) who is thrown for a loop when an old girlfriend pops up and attempts to blackmail him. His wife, of course, enters at an inopportune moment and the girlfriend is forced to hide in the bathroom. Finlayson must then explain the presence of her cigarette, fur stole, etc., to his gimlet-eyed wife. The angry girlfriend later shows up uninvited at Finlayson's home while he's entertaining guests and creates even more havoc.

This sort of thing can be tiresome if not well handled -- lesser comedians cranked out dozens of interchangeable short comedies along these lines -- but in this case, the first-rate performers manage to squeeze a lot of laughs out of the situation. Mae Busch is every inch the foxy, smirking troublemaker in the opening scene, and Finlayson's pop-eyed double-takes are as strenuous as ever. Okay, so maybe he was a one-note performer, but he certainly perfected that one note! Stan is quite funny as Finlayson's assistant, a man who (we are told) has great control over women, although we are offered no evidence of this. Quite the contrary! Stan's hair was still slicked down at this point, but he'd already perfected that familiar look of blank vacancy, and when the plot reaches a crisis we get a quick sample of the Laurel Cry.

Love 'Em and Weep is by no means the best comedy short ever made, but it's also far from the worst, and it amounts to a very pleasant diversion for the undemanding viewer. For me, this movie also served to demonstrate the difference an audience can make when viewing a silent comedy of this vintage. I first saw the film at home on TV with a friend and found it moderately amusing, but later, when I was fortunate enough to see it again at a public screening, with live music and an appreciative audience, it was as if a fossilized dinosaur skeleton had suddenly come back to life with a roar. Gags and pratfalls that seemed mildly funny at home rocked the house when seen with a crowd. I can only urge interested viewers to try to see these movies with an audience whenever possible, and if there's no place in your community where this is taking place, then start your own Film Society!