On a gaffé

Stan Laurel and the writers for the Laurel and Hardy series of shorts and features on occasion reworked their movies from the pair's previous films. A good example is their December 1928's "We Faw Down." The story concerns the two falsely telling their wives they're going to a movie, but they're really playing poker at their friend's house. They get sidetracked helping two women get one of their hats wedged underneath a car. Laurel and Hardy's charitable act leads to a messy situation with one of the ladies' husband. When the two wives hear about what happened, there's heck to pay. If this sounds like Laurel and Hardy's 1933's "Sons of the Desert," this is exactly the outline of their classic feature film.

In addition, 1932's 'Their First Mistake' copies the telephone gag from "We Faw Down," pretending the call is from the pair's new boss. There were also scenes in "We Faw Down" that didn't make the final edit, but ended up in their next release, 1929's 'Liberty.'

Oliver Hardy told the pair's team of writers the tale he heard was from his laundress that spawned the "We Faw Down's" plot. It was a rare instance where Hardy's suggestion resulted in a storyline. Most of their movies' inspiration came from Laurel, who sketched a majority of the team's screenplays. Years of experience in comedy made Stan adept in shaping his writers' scripts, improving and adding a number of hilarious sequences. His working sessions were loud affairs with several writers in a conference room where each attempted to top the others by suggesting increasingly outrageous situations.

"We Faw Down" was Leo McCarey's first short directing Laurel and Hardy. He claimed he was responsible in pairing the two as a team the previous year (1927). McCarey's name was always listed in the credits as the 'Supervising Director.' For the first time he found out just as other directors before him that Laurel essentially ran the movie set. There was an unwitting understanding the head director always deferred to Stan. Hal Roach, their producer, said if Laurel didn't like what the director was telling them, "the director didn't say 'Well, you're going to do it anyway.' That was understood." Laurel would suggest the direction the scene was going to take, and the director picked up on the comic's idea and ran with it.

An early pre-talkie Laurel & Hardy short with the formula already in place. Memorable for the scene in which Stan's eyebrow shoots toward his hairline every time his flirty companion presses his nose and his tongue pops out when she pokes his throat.

Just watched this Laurel & Hardy comedy on Hulu as linked from IMDb. In this one, Stan & Ollie are trying to get to a poker game but their wives seemed determined to keep them at home. So when someone from there calls, Ollie takes it and addresses him as Boss so he could fool the spouses that he and Stan are going to the Orpheum Theater to see a live show with him. After they leave, they meet a couple of ladies after one of them misplaces a hat...I'll stop there and just say while there's not too much slapstick here (though the give-and-take between Stan and one of the ladies was pretty funny), there is some highly amusing pantomime between the boys when they try to describe what they saw in the show as the wives can only grimace at what they know are bald-faced lies. Don't want to reveal much more than that so I'll just say I recommend We Faw Down. P.S. On YouTube, there's an "extended" version which puts nearly the entirety of Laurel & Hardy's next short, Liberty, in the middle of it. This is obviously because those scenes were originally part of this short but had to be cut for time constraints.

Just a quick note to say that this movie is silent, but was nevertheless released with music and effects on Vitaphone discs. The discs has been found, and at least the German Kinowelt DVD release of Sons of the Desert has We Faw Down as an bonus, complete with the music and effects track.

It is always a bonus to watch the silent Laurel & Hardy comedies with the proper, original music and effects track. This brings us a little bit closer to the film's original state.

In general, the Vitaphone system did not last very long, but the system of having soundtracks stored separately does open the possibility of restoring soundtracks even if the film element has been put together from various prints.

We Faw Down (1928)

** (out of 4)

Routine Laurel and Hardy short has the boys lying to their wives and sneaking out for a poker game but they're picked up by two flirts. This here has a couple good laughs including a wonderful site gag at the end but there's really nothing here that separates it from better shorts dealing with the same subject matter.

I viewed this film in the 21-disc, UK box set, which is a dream come true for fans of Laurel and Hardy. It's certainly worth the money if you are a fan.