Flying Elephants

After years of reading about this early Laurel & Hardy short in Randy Skretvedt's "Laurel and Hardy: The Magic Behind the Movies", I finally managed to watch this Stone Age-set comedy on Hulu as linked from IMDb. Unlike their later classic work, here Stan and Ollie aren't together much and when they are, they're fighting over a girl they want to marry. As Skretvedt said in the book: "They appear to be as much of a team as Popeye and Bluto." Still they, and James Finlayson, provide much laughs whether hitting each other (or anybody else) on the heads or doing some kind of face dance. I also liked it when Stan landed on a cactus. So on that note, Flying Elephants is worth a look if you're an L & H completist. P.S. The stunning woman playing the girl-Viola Richard-was from Lafayette in my current home state of Louisiana. The title refers to Ollie's talking to another female about elephants flying to the South this time of year as we see just that after he mentions it. That animation was provided by Roy Seawright in his first of many accomplishments at the Hal Roach studio. And this was the last L & H short distributed by the Pathe Exchange as Roach could no longer tolerate the movie company's inept distribution methods. He'd eventually choose M-G-M for his future dealings.

Consider this prospect: Laurel & Hardy & Company are cavemen in furry pelts, running around in a remote canyon somewhere enacting what amounts to a silent version of The Flintstones. It doesn't seem to promise much in the way of great comedy, does it? A capsule summary of Flying Elephants might elicit groans from those who haven't seen it, and, what with comedy being so subjective and personal, there are probably plenty who've seen it and dismissed it as silly, juvenile, low-brow, etc. All I can say is: okay, guilty as charged, but I confess I really enjoy this movie anyway. Whatever else it may be, this two-reeler also happens to be quirky, fast-paced and off-the-wall, with a surreal wackiness that other comedians occasionally attempt but only rarely achieve. The Marx Brothers managed it in Duck Soup and for short stretches elsewhere, and the Fleischer Studio guys and Tex Avery made some cartoons that reached this level, but Flying Elephants is one of a kind. You can't just crank out stuff like this; the charming weirdness would wear thin pretty quickly.

Although Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy each appear prominently, Flying Elephants isn't really a "Laurel & Hardy" comedy as such. At the time this was made they were working together a lot but hadn't yet gelled as the team we recognize. Babe Hardy's performance is quite funny and oddly consistent with his later work; his special rhythms, gestures and expressions are there, despite the wig and the animal pelt he's wearing. But Mr. Laurel is the one who really gets freaky, hopping about in a curly blonde wig like a sissified Harpo Marx. The name of his character, Little Twinkle Star, tells the tale. It's anomalous in his career but nonetheless one of Stan's most energized and memorable turns, and a revelation to anyone who thinks he's a one-note performer. Stan has a fly-fishing sequence that is a comic high point, and it's just the sort of eccentric routine he could make his own.

Much of the plot-- such as it is --concerns courtship and marriage rituals among these cave dwellers. The movie begins with an absurd wedding ceremony which sets the tone for what follows. We learn that a royal decree has compelled the males to take wives, although, come to think of it, you wouldn't expect people in animal pelts to care much about formal nuptials. Much of the dialog (conveyed via title cards, of course) is in a strange, pseudo-Medieval slang. There are gags involving trained goats, animated fantasy beasts, a man in a bear suit, and an animal (a cow, perhaps?) disguised as a dinosaur. Speaking of dinosaurs good old Jimmy Finlayson is on hand, identified as a "wizard" apparently to justify a vulgar but funny pun utilizing the word. A decided bonus for modern viewers is the supporting cast of cute starlets in abbreviated cave flapper outfits, complete with bobbed hair, furry boots, and garters. A gorgeous young actress named Viola Richard plays Finlayson's daughter, Blushing Rose, and her close-ups can melt your heart decades after the fact. Viola seems to have vanished from the screen not long after this film was made, for some baffling reason.

Oh well. There are still prints of Flying Elephants around to amuse, amaze, and tickle those viewers open to this sort of thing.

This relatively early pairing of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy (not quite yet the team of 'Laurel & Hardy' as we know them) has a great deal of silly and goofy material - and it's practically impossible not to laugh as you watch it. Their casual, good-natured approach and the offbeat story material are the movie's most obvious features, but it is their skilled comic timing and the way they blend themselves in with the props, settings, and the rest of the cast that make it work.

It's a rarity amongst their movies in being set in the past - in this case, all the way back to the Stone Age. The setting and characters are presented in an exaggeratedly broad fashion, with plenty of clubs and the like. The two main characters contrast, with Hardy playing a more or less stereotypical caveman, and Laurel playing a character who would have been lucky to survive for five minutes in the real Stone Age. It adds some deliberately anachronistic medieval dialogue in the inter-titles, plus Hardy's "Flying Elephants" line, which comes out of nowhere.

It gets quite amusing at times, although it's very likely that lesser comics could not have made it work nearly so well. The two stars are joined by a good supporting cast, headed by their frequent foil James Finlayson. Viola Richard and Dorothy Coburn play a couple of attractive cave-women who are, nevertheless, not to be trifled with.

Even compared with their own best movies, this is quite unrefined and outlandish. But, at least if you like Laurel and Hardy, it's also pretty entertaining to watch.

One of the last movies in which Laurel and Hardy appeared before they officially became a team was "Flying Elephants", casting them as cavemen vying for a woman. Stan and Ollie were still perfecting their routines, so the comedy here isn't what we're used to for them; there's a lot of bonking heads with clubs. It's enjoyable enough for its brief run time, but just remember that it's more low-key than most of Laurel and Hardy's work.

Although both Stan and Ollie appear in this stone-age comedy, it isn't really a Laurel & Hardy film, because there's no sense yet of the boys working as a comedy partnership. They're simply a couple of stock comics Hal Roach decided to put together in a film. I believe Stan and Ollie appeared together in a number of films for Roach before he twigged to what a comedy goldmine he had on his hands.

Flying Elephants isn't a particularly funny comedy, although it does have a couple of amusing moments. It's decreed that any single man not married within 24-hours will be banished or killed – or both. So Stan and Ollie both go out, club in hand, to snare themselves a woman. Although stone age women seem to be in plentiful supply – everywhere you look there's one of them lounging around on a rock waiting to be picked up – both boys have trouble bagging one for themselves and end up going after the same woman – who just happens to be the daughter of James Finlayson, the victim here of a raging toothache.

The film is enlivened by some amusing special effects which, of course, look incredibly creaky today, but which also add a measure of charm to the proceedings. Stan probably makes more of an impression with his effeminate skipping and shaggy blonde wig, and it's interesting to see the gradual evolution of what would become the movie's greatest comedy duo.