That's My Wife

That's My Wife (1929)

**** (out of 4)

Hysterical Laurel and Hardy film has enough gags for two films. Hardy's wife leaves him because she can't stand Laurel living with them. This causes a problem because Hardy's rich uncle is coming over to meet the new wife. With nothing else to do Laurel dresses up as the wife and everything goes to hell. This is now one of my favorite shorts from the duo because of the non-stop physical gags ranging from Laurel falling down a flight of stairs to a crazy scene involving a dance floor. This short is also something new because it adds quite a bit of sexual, Pre-Code laughs including the boys trying to give Laurel breasts and another scene where the two appear to be having sex.

Undoubtedly the most hilarious Laurel & Hardy of all - but that's just my opinion. The first time I saw this film I was literally crying from laughter, especially during the lost necklace/dance sequence in the restaurant. Laurel in drag as Hardy's wife is absolutely priceless! No matter how many times I see it, I still laugh out loud, thank heaven for DVD and for Laurel & Hardy for leaving us with so much laughter and happiness!

A very conventional L & H plot. A rich uncle is looking to give the Hardys a large amount of money if they are happily married. Unfortunately, the wife takes off in the opening scene. When the uncle shows up, Ollie gets Stan to pretend to be the wife. This then becomes a steamroller as they try to pull off the charade. There are some particularly funny scenes in a night club. We know things will never work out for these guys. But Stan is a hoot.

Comic drag routines are a matter of taste, and despite the skill of the comedian involved such sequences can easily cross the line into vulgarity, but for my money the silent two-reeler That's My Wife offers the best of Laurel & Hardy's female impersonation scenarios, thanks to the skill of Stan Laurel and the Hal Roach Studio's crack team of gag writers. The premise that constitutes the plot (i.e. Ollie's uncle will leave him a fortune only if he is happily married) is familiar from many a comedy of stage and screen, and is far-fetched to put it mildly, but the creative team was drawing upon basic elements of stage farce: an absurd demand provokes panic and a hastily contrived deception, which in turn causes bigger complications, which eventually snowballs into disaster. When this formula works as well as it does here, the pay-off is rich.

We know from the opening sequence that Mrs. Hardy (Viven Oakland) is sick and tired of dealing with Stan, her perennial house-guest. She leaves in a huff, just as Ollie receives word that his Uncle Bernal (William Courtwright) is coming for a visit. The eccentric old man has vowed to leave the Hardys enough money for a fine new home—IF they are happily married. Since his uncle has never met Mrs. Hardy, Ollie figures that Stan can play the role for one evening. Stan isn't happy about the scheme, but goes along with it. To dismay of both men, however, Uncle Bernal insists on taking them out to the Pink Pup nightclub, where the masquerade must continue in a public setting.

Stan Laurel ventured into drag on several other occasions, but never so amusingly as in That's My Wife. His reactions throughout are priceless. After a somewhat slow opening the gags in the film's second half are non-stop, and the laxity of the censors in those days before the Breen Office was established allows for some surprisingly risqué material. Case in point: the extended running gag in the nightclub, when jewelry has been dropped down the back of Stan's dress and Ollie attempts to retrieve it. Despite the boys' efforts to be discreet, they are interrupted again and again by other patrons in increasingly embarrassing positions, reminiscent of the repeatedly interrupted pants-switching routine in 'Liberty.' This climaxes in a spectacular humiliation when they accidentally wind up on stage before the entire assemblage, instead of the advertised floor show "Garrick and Lucille in The Pageant of Love." The result? Two middle-aged men, one obviously in drag with wig askew, grappling on the floor doing God knows what. Even today, a startling sight. And yet despite it all, Stan and Ollie retain their childlike innocence, even when engaged in a blatantly dishonest scheme to grab money that, according to the uncle's stipulation, they don't deserve.

Casting note: the drunk in the restaurant who flirts with Stan is played by Jimmy Aubrey, a one-time colleague of both Stan and Charlie Chaplin in the Fred Karno troupe of English music hall players. Subsequently Aubrey starred in his own series of short comedies, which often featured Oliver Hardy in support, but by the late 1920s he was no longer a top-billed comedy star. He has a nice featured role in this film, but worked only sporadically at the Roach Studio. (He's a drunken lodge brother who gets paddled in L&H's 1933 feature Sons of the Desert.) He wound up playing sidekicks in Westerns and doing comic bits in movies for decades. Aubrey lived a very long life, dying at the age of 94 in 1983. Unfortunately he was embittered in his later years, and had nothing good to say about any of his onetime colleagues, including Stan and Ollie!

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were comedic geniuses, individually and together, and their partnership was deservedly iconic and one of the best there was. They left behind a large body of work, a vast majority of it being entertaining to classic comedy, at their best they were hilarious and their best efforts were great examples of how to do comedy without being juvenile or distasteful.

Although a vast majority of Laurel and Hardy's previous efforts ranged from above average to very good ('45 Minutes from Hollywood' being the only misfire and mainly worth seeing as a curiosity piece and for historical interest, and even that wasn't a complete mess), Along with 'Two Tars', 'Liberty' and 'Wrong Again', 'That's My Wife' is one of the best and funniest Laurel and Hardy short film up to this point of their output, one of their best from their overall early work and very nearly one of my personal favourites of theirs. Their filmography, apart from a few bumps along the way, was getting better and better and 'That's My Wife' exemplifies this.

Slightly too slow to start with, but very quickly picks up and hardly anything to criticise here.

Once again, 'That's My Wife' is non-stop funniness all the way, its best part being the riotous ending. There is insane craziness that doesn't get too silly, a wackiness that never loses its energy, the lack of vulgarity (despite that being the biggest traps of portraying female drag in comedy) that is a large part of 'That's My Wife's' memorability and the sly wit emerges here, some of the material may not be new but how it's executed actually feels fresh and it doesn't get repetitive.

Laurel and Hardy are on top form here, both are well used, both have material worthy of them and they're equal rather than one being funnier than the other (before Laurel tended to be funnier and more interesting than Hardy, who tended to be underused). Their chemistry feels like a partnership here too, before you were yearning for more scenes with them together but in 'That's My Wife' we are far from robbed of that.

'That's My Wife' looks good visually, is full of energy and the direction gets the best out of the stars, is at ease with the material and doesn't let it get too busy or static. The supporting players are solid.

Concluding, great. 9/10 Bethany Cox