The Music Box

Laurel & Hardy! Just the names alone brings to my mind the most talented comedy duo ever, bar none! And this, "The Music Box" is probably the finest of their work, though there are others that are very close! Too many to mention in fact.I've spent the last month or two having a Laurel and Hardy film season, and I watched around 35 of their films, and naturally I laughed many many times....theres nothing better to cheer you up. "The Music Box" itself stands out-it was the film that won them an oscar, wonderfully written, and marvellously filmed! Those steps would put most people off just to climb them on their own, but with a piano!!!Classic! If you haven't seen this movie, and there can't be many who haven't, see it as soon as you can, and when you want a good old fashioned laugh! 9.5/10

A LAUREL & HARDY Comedy Short.

Stan & Ollie are hired to deliver a piano - to a home at the top of a monumental series of steps. During this task of Sisyphus, they encounter every kind of hindrance, from a savage nursery maid to outright police brutality - which is only prologue to the chaos that awaits them when they get THE MUSIC BOX to the top...

This little classic is generally regarded as the Boys' best film, and, indeed, it won the 1932 Oscar for Best Short Subject, their only Academy Award. This is slapstick of a very high level, that born of the utmost frustration, and they make it all look so easy. If only one of their films could be saved for posterity, to show future generations what Laurel & Hardy were all about, this would be it.

Highlight (besides the stairs): the Boys' little dance to `The Arkansas Traveler'. That's Charlie Hall as the postman & the one and only Billy Gilbert as the apoplectic Professor Schwarzenhoffen.

Question: why oh why aren't Laurel and Hardy films shown on TV at sensible times any more here in the UK? When I was a lad, they were on at 6pm on BBC2 and I spent many happy evenings as a child laughing my head off at their comedy short films. Now, you're lucky to catch them on TV at all, and they always seem to be scheduled at some unearthly hour of the morning.

Anyway, scheduling rant over. If you're a Laurel and Hardy virgin, this is a great place to start. It won them an Oscar, and it's a hilarious piece of perfectly constructed comedy. They are bungling delivery men who have to deliver a piano to a house at the top of an enormous flight of steps. (The location does exist in real life, apparently, and it's one of my aims in life one day to visit those steps and walk up 'em!) Needless to say, the piano seems to spend more time sliding back down the steps than it does going up them.

It's almost certainly their best short, and is required viewing for anyone wanting to know why Laurel and Hardy are one of the greats of movie comedy.

The Music Box was the first programme on TV that I saw my daughter really laugh at, aged 14 months in 1981, when the piano dragged Ollie at speed down the steps yet again. Probably also the first thing I laughed at too and at the moment the last in the latest of hundreds of times! Well, Laurel & Hardy shaped my and millions of others' senses of humour so I like to think hers was as well. Kids today who get the chance to see this and who can't get past the pre-digital black & white images to the gold that lies within are not only missing a treat but are probably also making an crucial life-choice too. All of the human condition is contained herein, therefore making it essential viewing also for extra-terrestrials!

They have to deliver a piano to an address - all kinds of catastrophes follow thick and fast. The gags are so perfectly written and executed, and are as utterly relentless as Stan & Ollie's drive to deliver the piano come Hell or pond-water. High-class slapstick disasters follow each other every minute of the 27 (un-remastered version), usually happening to Ollie - although Billy Gilbert's cosy little love-nest was looking a little dishevelled by the climax! The steps have been a Los Angeles tourist attraction for many years now, maybe the most fitting monument to L & H that there could be - if you like this little film that is!

All in all and probably predictably my favourite L & H outing, notwithstanding the similar brilliance of Sons Of The Desert, County Hospital, Thicker than Water, Busybodies, Below Zero etc etc etc.

This L&H-short relies solely on a premise. Stan and Ollie have to deliver a piano to a house. To get there, they have to get up an incredibly long staircase before they can even get to the front door. But even when they've reached the house there is no end to the chaos. The greatness of this short lies in it's deliberate pacing and perfect timing. Many jokes you see coming miles ahead, but the timing of the punchline always catches you off-guard and leaves you roaring with laughter. The best gag involves Stan pulling up the piano using a sunscreen, a joke too brilliantly executed to spoil. Watch it, enjoy it, marvel at the legend of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.