Towed in a Hole

This is probably my all time fav. L&H short. right from the start with the call of 'Fresh Fish' (toot), this is a 'hoot'. As always, Stan has an idea this time expressed as only Stan can. 'If we had a boat .....'. The bit that makes me howl is when Olly is painting the rudder and Stan is scrubbing the deck and finds the tiller in the way. The pause before 'what did you put that stuff on your face for' is agony!. As for Stan's method of getting his head out from behind the mast... See this one now.

Laurel and Hardy have a business plan: instead of buying fish and selling it, they'll catch the fish themselves and cut out the middleman. Unfortunately, the people who are going to execute this idea are Stan and Ollie.

It's my favorite short by Laurel and Hardy. There are others just as good, but this is just them. Except for a brief appearance by Billy Gilbert (maybe seconds) to sell them a boat, it's all the Boys and the boat they are trying to recondition, right next to a big mud puddle. The inevitability of disaster is delicious, and the gags are, as usual, great.

THE SELF SUFFICIENCY of the L & H team is presented here in the best example possible. The slow and deliberate method of working a gag to its maximum was very handily put to good use in these shorts. Whereas most all other comedians opted for an array of fast paced comic situations, being rapidly dispatched at sometimes break-neck pace, L & H worked each slowly and deliberately doing their own reactions to whatever. (As a true antithesis to this Hal Roach/Leo Mc Carey style, see some of comedian Larry Semon's silent screen work.)_

ANOTHER SINGULARLY UNIQUE feature of this short subject is that it is all Stan & Ollie. Other than the brief appearance of Billy Gilbert at the beginning, the boys have this one all to themselves. They play out their shtick against the backdrop of their seagoing reclamation project. The now familiar routines of Laurel messing up Hardy's work, Hardy's reaction, stare at the camera and his slow burn are meticulously combined with Laurel's crying to great effect.

ALONG WITH SUCH other titles as ME AND MY PAL. OUR WIFE and THE MUSIC BOX, we have what we like to call "quintessential Laurel & Hardy".

AS IS THE norm, all is lost in the end; bu we know that there will be other moments to come.

Laurel and Hardy are travelling fishmongers, selling door to door on the street. Laurel has the idea to cut out the middle man and catch the fish themselves – hence turning pure profit on every fish they sell. They buy an old boat and begin to do it up – with predictable consequences.

From the opening conversation where Hardy asks Laurel to repeat his sensible and good idea and Laurel proceeds to muddle himself (`if we catch the fish, the people wouldn't have to pay and….') I was sold on this short film. The action follows this banter with a fantastic mix of physical humour and the good old double take stuff they do so well. Here the two (styles) really compliment each other – the highlight being when Laurel causes Hardy to become covered in paint and there is an eternity of looks, double takes and pauses before he asks `why did you put that stuff on your face'!

The stuff around the boat is all good and both men do really good work with their looks and their bodies. Hardy shows his class while leaning on the mast of the boat, hears sawing, looks to camera, looks down towards the sound, looks to camera then goes!

Overall this short has everything in it that I love about Laurel and Hardy and should be immediately seen by anyone who is wondering what all the fuss is about!

While Stan & Ollie are successful fish salesmen, Stan suggests they can be even more profitable if they catch their own fish instead of buying them. So they buy a boat named Ruth (after Stan's about-to-be-second-wife) and work on it, with disastrous results, of course! Great slapstick sequences abound with Hardy, of course, getting the brunt of it. This was the last of their three films directed by George Marshall who left Hal Roach Studios after general manager Henry Ginsberg fired him over production delays. He later helmed classic films starring W. C. Fields, Bob Hope, and Martin & Lewis with a couple of solo Jerry Lewis pictures after that team split up. So as we leave Stan & Ollie attempting to go to sea, we'll next see Bud Abbott & Lou Costello at sea in In the Navy.