Swiss Miss

You know you are in trouble when Laurel and Hardy don't make their appearance in this film until the six minute mark!! Despite their being the funniest comedy team in the world, the studio insisted on sticking too many diversions into the film--including lots of Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy-style songs and portions where the dialog is done in rhyme! With any comedy team, usually the more songs the more bland the film and this film is certainly no exception. Only a maniac would have thought of doing this or adding rhymes in a film like this!

And, speaking of maniacs, whose idea was it to include a guy in a gorilla suit?! The idea of a "wild gorilla" running about the Swiss mountains just doesn't make any sense--even in a comedy.

Most of the movies in the latter portion of Laurel and Hardy's careers were rather poor and stale. Of the movies made from the late 1930s on, perhaps the best are Blockheads and A Chump at Oxford. While not as bad as the 20th Century Fox Laurel and Hardy pictures or Atoll K, this movie just isn't up the quality of their earlier pictures. Simply put, the duo are looking rather old and ragged and the jokes that worked well the first few times look a bit stale here.

My advice, see something else or else you might not appreciate this comedy team. This is far from their "A game".

SWISS MISS often shows the problems Laurel and Hardy had at the Hal Roach studios when they stopped making their short films and were forced into making only features.It is rather sad that they became victims of their own success;their series of silent and sound shorts are generally acknowledged to be consistently the most famous,loved,best-made and revived series in movie history,even above such comic greats as Chaplin,Keaton and Lloyd.The symptoms of this unparallelled triumph was that their boss Hal Roach was increasingly forced to put the boys into features as well as short comedies,in the name of economy.As a result,producer Roach was forced to exert more control over such more expensive productions,which led to increasing tensions in his professional(and personal)relationship with Stan Laurel. Laurel,of course,was the main creative force behind the camera of the L & H partnership,and Roach rarely interfered artistically when producing their short films.Sadly in the features,Roach took it upon himself to supervise the content on a larger basis,much to Stan's chagrin.While it is true that Roach still left Laurel a substantial amount of creative freedom in most of these features,the two still quarrelled about scripts on occasion.BABES IN TOYLAND,made four years previous,was one example.Roach apparently wrote a script which Laurel rejected;Stan's eventual story was filmed,much to his boss's anger,and relations between the two were said to be somewhat damaged thereafter.

It is remarkable in many ways that Roach didn't sack Laurel on the spot there and then after such apparent insurgence.We can be thankful than Stan and Babe Hardy remained at Roach for another six years,where they still produced some genuine classics(WAY OUT WEST the best regarded),but it was always obvious L & H were more comfortable in the shorter film mould.They still made some classic features(SONS OF THE DESERT and the above;with BLOCKHEADS and OUR RELATIONS not too far behind),but SWISS MISS is decidedly average compared to most of their Roach features.Their best features were those in which the story was just about Laurel and Hardy and their adventures,not needing frequent straight,humourless romantic sub-plots or pauses for musical numbers.It is infested with many of the above faults between the L & H routines in this film,which drag it down considerably and lead to much tedium.SWISS MISS often doesn't have the proper feel of a Roach L & H vehicle either,with an untypical and rather uninspired supporting cast,consisting of mainland European performers as befits the foreign setting.It is nice to see the inimitable British comedy actor Eric Blore present,but he hardly gets a chance to interact with the boys,and his role unfortunately consists of unfunny platitudes.

The only really familiar face on view is Anita Garvin,returning to the L & H world after a gap of seven years.Her scene with the boys is quite amusing,but is all too brief.The best remembered sequences,involving a St.Bernard dog with a tot of brandy,and delivering a piano over a swing-bridge,only to be confronted by a gorilla,are enough to save the film from total mediocrity,but for various reasons,Roach involved himself in the production rather too much for Stan's comfort,editing key scenes out,like a bomb put into the piano(which would have added more power to the piano delivery scene)and a musical number featuring cheese shop owner Charles Judels,in which only a few lyrics remain intact in the released version.

As it is,SWISS MISS also befits from an elaborate production for Roach standards,and although not necessarily as poor as their post-1940 features,it is still heavily flawed and one of their weaker features at Roach.

Swiss Miss would have been far far better had Hal Roach dispensed altogether with the operetta format and just allowed Stan and Ollie to do their thing. Away from them the film sinks like the Titanic.

Walter Woolf King and Greta Natzler are the husband and wife romantic leads and there's a strain in their relationship. He's a composer, she's a singer and poor Walter is jealous of the attention she gets and no one pays attention to what he writes. He goes off to the Alps to compose his masterpiece. She follows him there.

The banter and the songs are typical of a MacDonald/Eddy film, but Nelson and Jeanette never had to sing stuff like I Can't Get Over the Alps and the Cricket Song. They wouldn't have had careers if they did.

Interestingly enough the bit with King composing the Cricket Song after hearing their chirping is similar to Jerome Kern hearing a bird call and getting I've Told Every Little Star out of it. Of course it wasn't Jerome Kern who gave us the Cricket Song.

Walter Woolf King who's best known as the egotistical Lespari from A Night at the Opera just doesn't come across as a good guy. Maybe with better material Allan Jones could have done this part.

But with Stan and Ollie the film is enjoyable. They've got some classic bits, Laurel trying to steal some brandy from a St. Bernard, drilling holes in a shopkeeper's floor and hitting a gas line for their trouble and best of all the insane idea of moving an upright piano across a rope bridge and encountering an escaped gorilla.

Mute the sound whenever Stan and Ollie aren't around and you might enjoy Swiss Miss.

Laurel and Hardy play mouse trap salesmen, who go to Switzerland to sell some mouse traps.There they of course get in many troubles.Swiss Miss offers some very funny scenes with the boys, like the scene with Stanley and the dog and the scene where the boys try to move a piano up to the mountains.Swiss Miss is a great Laurel and Hardy comedy from 1938.And the gorilla is a nice add to the movie.

I can't see what all the moaning is about when it comes to the musical moments in SWISS MISS. So the music isn't exactly up to the standards of a Rodgers & Hart, but who cares? It's LAUREL and HARDY who carry the main weight of the story with occasional interludes from WALTER WOOLF KING as a frustrated song composer and DELLA LIND as a light soprano who actually has a very nice voice and operatic vocal range.

The boys are the whole reason for watching, that's for sure. And why not? They have some classic moments--Stan putting over a clever deception on the St. Bernard dog by throwing a snow of feathers over himself and lying down to pretend he's in need of rescue--after several attempts to take the brandy from the dog's neck. Or the boys assigned to take the piano to a higher perch in the mountains where Woolf can compose his masterpiece without any interruptions. Naturally, they have to negotiate a flimsy rope bridge over a deep gorge, which leads to the kind of mishaps the duo are famous for--including a gorilla who returns at the end of the film for a final joke.

It passes the time pleasantly with some picturesque looks at a Swiss village and Tyrolian garb from the cast members, which includes ERIC BLORE in a minor role. He's rather wasted here, but still the film is good fun for L&H fans.