Zenobia

Oliver Hardy stars as a small-town doctor in Mississippi who hits on hard times when he insults the local rich woman (Alice Brady). Meanwhile his daughter (Jean Parker) is engaged to the rich woman's son (James Ellison). Brady will not have Parker as a daughter-in-law because the the family's low social standing. Hardy's wife (Billie Burke)invites everyone to dinner to try to smooth thing over. Disaster.

When Hardy is summoned to come help someone who is sick, he races across town only to find that the patient is an elephant (Zenobia) in a traveling carnival. Zenobia's owner (silent comic great, Harry Langdon) helps Hardy figure out how to treat an elephant. Zenobia is so grateful, she falls in love with Hardy and refuses to leave his side. Langdon gets mad and sues Hardy (with the help of mean-spirited Brady). There is a good court room scene and the usual ending.

The cast works well in this mild but pleasant comedy. Many will be disappointed by Langdon's standing in for Stan Laurel, but it's interesting to see Langdon in a talkie. Definitely a B film, but not without its good points.

Hardy is very good in a comic role that allows him a little room to act. Burke and Brady are total pros, and Jean Parker is pretty and pleasing. Ellison is a blank.

Hattie McDaniel plays the cook, J. Farrell McDonald is the judge, Olin Howland is the lawyer, Hobart Cavanaugh plays a patient, Philip Hurlic (as the kid) has a great scene, June Lang plays a rival, and Stepin Fetchit plays himself. William Bakewell can be spotted in a bit part.

Oliver Hardy exhibits his talent as a character actor in this well-cast Roach feature. People often make the mistake of expecting a Laurel & Hardy film, which isn't really fair. This is a pleasant diversion, filled with rich characters, including Langdon in perfect form as the owner of a sick elephant.

Oliver Hardy shines as a small town doctor in this amusing comedy set in the Old South. After tending to an ailing elephant Hardy can't get rid of the beast since she is so appreciative and an elephant never forgets. It's a fun path as Zenobia follows the portly doctor just about everywhere he goes. This is one of the few times that Hardy appeared in a film without his partner Stan Laurel however he handles it quite well. Co-starring are Jean Parker, James Ellison, Alice Brady, Billie Burke as the doctors befuddled wife and the ever dependable Hattie McDaniel. It's available on VSH folks.

I had always been interested in watching this curiosity (Oliver Hardy without Stan Laurel!) - however, it finally came about by way of a colorized and atrociously-dubbed version on Italian TV! I don't know if it was intended as such but, rather than Harry Langdon, the character that was made to fill Stan's shoes, as it were (complete with the Italian voice typically associated with him), was Billie Burke - playing Hardy's wife - but she came off as such an irritating dim-wit that I wanted to strangle her!! To make matters worse, with the story taking place in the Old South, we're treated to the unenviable comic relief of Stepin Fetchit (though his antics proved reasonably tolerable, under the circumstances).

Hardy's character, then, isn't the pompous, bumbling and flustered one we'd come to love! Langdon, as the owner of a traveling medicine-show and a pachyderm, is okay (especially during his scenes in court - having learned his deposition by heart, every time he's asked to speak he starts from the very top!); this was only his second Talkie that I've watched - the first occurred only recently with HALLELUJAH, I'M A BUM (1933). Jean Parker and James Ellison provide bland romantic interest and the supporting cast also features Oscar winners Alice Brady and Hattie MacDaniel, but their stereotypical characters - snooty matriarch and black cook, respectively - add very little of substance to the proceedings!

In the end, while the elephant's persistent and awkward devotion to doctor Hardy for having cured her (even disrupting a society party and following him into the court-room!) provides some undeniably charming moments, I think I'd still prefer Laurel & Hardy's maligned vehicles of the 1940s over it...

For those wondering what Oliver Hardy was doing in a film without Stan Laurel, we have to remember that Hal Roach created the team back in silent days when he had these two comedians both signed to contracts with him. Their contracts were negotiated separately unlike Abbott and Costello or the Ritz Brothers, etc. So with Ollie signed with studio again and Stan balking at terms, Hal Roach decided to pair Hardy with Harry Langdon who was trying to recapture the stardom he enjoyed in the silent era.

Ollie is a country doctor in post Civil War Mississippi who lives with wife Billie Burke and daughter Jean Parker in genteel poverty. James Ellison, late of the Hopalong Cassidy series, wants her hand in marriage, but his mother Alice Brady forbids it as Jean's parents are just not her sort.

Nevertheless Ollie and Billie try to help Jean with her romance, but Ollie gets himself entangled with traveling medicine show man Harry Langdon and his performing elephant Zenobia. When the pachyderm becomes ill, Ollie effects a cure and the beast's gratitude makes his life miserable.

Though they were advertised as a team, Langdon and Hardy are not a team really in this film, though their scenes with Zenobia are pretty funny. They're like Abbott and Costello in The Time Of Their Lives, a comedy team in two separate roles in which they only interact occasionally. Actually Burke and Brady, a couple of veteran Broadway performers, have some scenes together and they're pretty good in and of themselves.

Getting Alice Brady and Billie Burke was a casting coup of sorts for Hal Roach. Look at the rest of his cast which he got from the major studios, if he was to have a new comedy team, they would be launched properly.

Of course Stan Laurel came to terms and Langdon and Hardy were no more. But Zenobia is a film filled with gentle humor and some good comic situations.