The Battle of the Century

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival screened a nearly complete nicely restored copy of The Battle of the Century this weekend (6/4/16). Except for the still-missing part of reel one (the scene with the boys and Eugene Palette in the park), the film is now complete. And the pie fight is all that all of us have hoped for all of these years! Admittedly the newly found material is more of the same, but the same is wonderful! The new print was accomplished by Lobster Films with help from MOMA, the Library of Congress and Blackhawk films. I can find no information about a release so let's start a ground swell for a DVD copy. Please? We're begging you!

Only about 50%+ remains of The Battle Of The Century, which is a huge tragedy as the footage we do have indicates this is one of the best silent shorts of the screens greatest comedy team. The opening boxing bout is extremely funny, with a sly take on the famous "long count". Cue much missing footage which gives form to the basic plot - Ollie, as Stan's manager, realises the only way to earn money from his Chumpion is to deliberately injure him and collect on the insurance! The legendary pie fight, which, on viewing, can be discerned as missing several shots at least - more likely a minute or two has gone - only makes me pine for the full version. If, oh wonderful miracle, a rediscovery occurs, you can almost certainly add three stars to the above rating.

They were great, weren't they?

I first wrote a review for this Laurel & Hardy film over a decade ago...back when only a truncated version of the short was known to exist. Because it was missing so much (other than the famous pie fight), I said it was really impossible to adequately review and score "The Battle of the Century". However, since then something wonderful has happened which has fortunately happened with many other silents....nearly all the rest of the movie was found! I think much of this is because with social media and the internet, many old films in pieces are being reassembled and discovered. A great example are the Vitaphone shorts. Until recently, most were missing their sound/musical tracks but an internet group has managed to reunite the sound tracks with many of the films. Now I am not saying that this Laurel & Hardy short is 100% complete like these other shorts....but much more of it exists now than a decade or so ago.

The film begins with Stanley boxing a guy who might just kill him. After losing the fight (naturally), Ollie has Stanley heavily insured--and you presume he's going to arrange some accident to happen to his 'pal'. In the meantime, a minor street altercation results in a HUGE pie fight--probably the biggest one in film history.

Overall, what's there is quite funny...and worth seeing. Will it ever be 100% complete? We might just soon see.

This is the first comment of a series of films where I'm attempting to connect two legendary comedy teams: Laurel & Hardy and Abbott & Costello. For this initial one-The Battle of the Century-we're at a time when Hal Roach's duo of a thin Englishman and a heavyset Georgia man were just starting their creative chemistry to an adoring public while a young and thin man (at the time) in his twenties from Patterson, New Jersey, was just attempting to break out in Hollywood any way he can which includes stunt work and occasional extra parts. It's here that Lou Costello makes an appearance in the audience of a boxing match between Stan and Noah Young with Ollie being Stan's manager. Half the time watching I was a little distracted looking for Costello but I still managed to laugh at Stan's antics in the boxing ring. I especially loved his dance at the beginning. I half wondered if Lou thought of this sequence when he did his own comic fights in later A & C vehicles. It certainly was amusing enough for the first reel which for years afterward was considered lost until 1979 when Richard Feiner managed to find it. It's the second part with the legendary pie fight that this film's reputation rests. Good thing when compilation producer Robert Youngston was looking for clips to include in his first project on classic silent comedy-The Golden Age of Comedy-he found what was a decomposing second reel and managed to preserve the last 5 or so minutes of it. Among the classic supporting actors long associated with L & H that appeared in this sequence was Charlie Hall and, in perhaps the most iconic moment at the end, Anita Garvin. The Nostalgia Archive video tape that I watched this one on actually had two versions on it. The first presented the first reel intact before going to the pie sequence. The second had the first reel again before going to a surviving script that details another sequence with Eugene Palette in which he sells Ollie an insurance on Stan. From there, Ollie then tries to get Stan to slip on a banana peel to collect the money before a cop gets mixed up in it. With the script, some stills, and then the Youngston-edited sequence, we get an as complete as possible version of this long truncated short. In summary, The Battle of the Century is well worth viewing for L & H fans as well as Lou Costello completists. Update-9/24/11: I just watched this again at an outdoor screening at the Baton Rouge Gallery with musical accompaniment by The Incense Merchants, whose contemporary stylings add to the fun immensely, but with the stills and script pages representing the missing scenes deleted. At least one female member of the audience behind me laughed as loud as I did. She must have been as much of an L & H fan as me!

I viewed a restored version of "The Battle of The Century", put out on video by Nostalgia Archives. Prior to this I had only seen a sequence of a few minutes from the Robert Youngson compilation, "When Comedy Was King". This is a truly funny film, for it shows Laurel and Hardy at their best. The pie in the face was kind of old hat even for 1928. But Hal Roach using Laurel and Hardy created the funniest pie fight of all time. All the different scenarios that were used to deliver the pies as well as a generous helping of laughs has an almost ballet rhythm to it. There was of course to help the madness along, both Charley Hall and Anita Garvin a couple of Hal Roach Regulars. As I said, this film was considered "lost" however the first reel was found and the film is complete except for a couple of minutes of film that are still missing from the start of the second reel. However this was compensated for by a combination of still photos that are intercut with the continuity script. I was very pleased with the film and I am sure any person interested in the silent comedy shorts would also enjoy this fine film that has been carefully reconstructed.