Come Clean

A LAUREL & HARDY Comedy Short.

Stan & Ollie save the life of a bizarre woman attempting to drown herself. Instead of gratitude, the ferocious female follows them home, ensconcing herself in Ollie's bedroom & demanding money. Not wanting to COME CLEAN to their wives only makes the problem much worse...

A hilarious little film. Highlight: Stan in the bathtub. That's Mae Busch as the female (her name is misspelled in the opening credits) & Charlie Hall as the soda jerk.

Come Clean is one of Laurel & Hardy's domestic comedies in which they're each married. Here the boys must grapple with their perennial ethical dilemma: when they get into trouble, should they tell their wives the truth or try to bluff it out? Needless to say, they always try to bluff it out, which only makes matters worse. And man, do they get into trouble this time! The situation in Come Clean is decidedly darker than usual and surprisingly risqué, i.e. about as "Pre-Code" as anything the boys ever encountered. The plot involves a suicidal woman named Kate with a mysterious criminal past who punishes Stan & Ollie for saving her life, refusing to leave them in peace unless she's given money. Kate is portrayed by the formidable Mae Busch, who played a similar role as a blackmailing ex-girlfriend in the silent comedy Love 'Em and Weep and its talkie remake Chickens Come Home. She raised plenty of hell in those incarnations, but here she is a bundle of sheer malevolence. Kate is the middle-class husband's nightmare: a crazy gold-digger with nothing to lose. She responds to good will gestures with contempt, and threatens to scream the place down if she doesn't get her way. And Mae sure could scream!

Recently I saw this short comedy again for the first time in many years, and while it's not at the very top of my L&H's Greatest Hits list it's nice to report that Come Clean stands as one of their funniest domestic comedies. (And hey, how often is it that you watch a movie you haven't seen since grade school and still enjoy it?) In getting reacquainted with this film I realized I'd misremembered a major detail: in my memory Mae Busch's character was a prostitute, perhaps because of her Anna Christie-like outfit, her demeanor, and her demands for money, but in fact we never learn exactly what she does for a living or why the police are looking for her, or why they're offering such a generous reward for her capture. $1,000 was not small change in the depths of the Great Depression! Perhaps Kate is a gangster's moll, or maybe she's a crook who lost her ill-gotten gains somehow, but we never find out and have to fill in this gap on our own for the story to make any sense. In a way, however, Kate's past is irrelevant, because her true function here is to cause Stan and Ollie grief, and this she does with ruthless efficiency.

A bare plot outline for Come Clean would suggest it's a pretty grim excuse for a comedy, but actually the laughs begin almost immediately and seldom let up. The opening sequence is a reworking of a routine the guys first performed in their silent comedy Should Married Men Go Home?, but it works better with sound; this is the bit where Ollie and his wife hope to have a pleasant evening at home by themselves but are interrupted by the unexpected and unwelcome arrival of Mr. & Mrs. Laurel. The Hardys pretend to be out as the Laurels ring their buzzer, but give the game away when Stan slips a note halfway under the door and Ollie foolishly pulls it through while they're still watching. Oops! A lot of forced conviviality follows this faux pas, and when the boys go out to buy ice cream we observe that much of the humor (as in the best Laurel & Hardy comedies) comes not from elaborate gags or chases but in the little moments: just trying to exit the apartment, for instance, Stan & Ollie confound each other repeatedly. After that, the visit to the ice cream parlor is an exercise in confusion and barely-averted hostilities, due mainly to Stan's ineptitude but thanks in part to ice cream vendor Charlie Hall, an actor who must have been put on this earth to serve as a surly nemesis for our heroes.

Once Mae Busch's world-weary Kate has entered the picture, i.e. after the boys have rescued her from a watery grave, the situation turns scary for them and grimly funny for the viewer. When she learns the guys are married she knows instantly that their wives will jump to the obvious conclusion if they catch her lounging around the Hardys' boudoir, wearing one of Mrs. Hardy's negligees-- and she's quite right, of course. Kate insists on going home with them, forcing them to hide her from their wives. Ensconced in the master bedroom, Kate is in no mood to be quiet and when she blasts the radio the boys' attempts to drown out the noise cracked me up when I was a kid and did so again when I saw the film the other day. The ending feels quite abrupt, however, leaving those aforementioned unexplained plot points and suggesting that this two-reel comedy might have benefited from an additional reel. But even as it stands, Come Clean is a brisk, amusing and slightly naughty comedy with dark undertones, and a stark demonstration that no good deed goes unpunished in this world.

Keep fooling those women. Stan and Ollie are married and living in relative luxury. They see so much of each other that when the Laurels want to come over, the Hardys try to avoid them. It doesn't work and they end up together. Soon the boys go out for ice cream (apparently a regular event because this is not the only time). They end up with the miserable Charlie Hall making this a hard proposition. While out, they save a suicidal woman from drowning. Instead of gratitude, she begins to extort them for money to be quiet about having dealings with her. Modern audiences would recognize her as a hooker. The police are after her and are offering a huge reward. The fun starts as she makes her way to their home and dresses in the wive's clothing. Of course, the job now is to hide this woman from the wives till they can pay her off. Mae Busch is sort of tragic as the woman. Ollie does get the last word in the final scene.

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), 'Two Tars' for me was their first truly classic one with close to flawless execution. Didn't find 'Come Clean' as one of their best and a bit disappointing compared to their late 1928 and the best of their 1929 efforts, which were among their best and funniest early work. It is still very good and has much of what makes Laurel and Hardy's work as appealing as it is.

The story is extremely slight to the point of non-existence and the first part takes a little bit too time to get going.

When 'Come Clean' does get going, which it does do quite quickly, it is great fun, not always hilarious but never less than very amusing, loved everything with the ice cream and Laurel in the bath-tub is extremely funny. It is never too silly, there is a wackiness that never loses its energy and the sly wit is here, some of the material may not be new but how it's executed actually doesn't feel too familiar 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 'Two Tars' you were yearning for more scenes with them together but in 'Come Clean' and on the most part from 'Two Tars' onwards we are far from robbed of that. Their comic timing is impeccable, especially Laurel's though Hardy at the end is one of the pleasures here.

'Come Clean' 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, especially Mae Busch.

Overall, very good. Not essential or classic Laurel and Hardy, but a good representation of them. 8/10 Bethany Cox

The beginning of this film is an almost exact copy of SHOULD MARRIED MEN GO HOME, as Ollie and his wife are trying to spend a quiet evening ALONE, but Stanley (and in this case with his wife) show up unannounced. Ollie and his wife hide and pretend they aren't home, but to no avail. Then, you soon notice that Ollie's wife is a pretty bossy and mean piece of work and she begins nagging him unmercifully. Stan wants ice cream, so he and Ollie leave to bring some back for everyone. On the way back, they catch a woman who appears to be trying to drown herself. Instead of being grateful, she is a major pest who follows them home and tries to make their lives miserable (a rather unbelievable turn of events, I know). And the last portion of the film consists of the boys trying in vain to stop this woman from revealing herself to the wives.

As far as the film goes, it's funny stuff, but also pretty forced. It's awfully familiar and ordinary. Not a bad film, but also not particularly memorable.