Putting Pants on Philip

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy had been circling each other at the Roach lot for two or three years by the time this, the first official Laurel & Hardy movie was made. In fact, their first movie together had been in 1919, when Hardy played a bit in Laurel's starring vehicle LUCKY DOG. They don't even act like a team here, being in constant opposition to each other, and Stan's character as a naive Scotchman is nothing at all like the Mr. Laurel we know and love.

Mr. Hardy, on the other hand, is clearly himself. If you look at his earliest surviving shorts from 1914 and 1915, you can see bits and pieces of his slow, pompous character as he begins to put it together.

It's a Laurel & Hardy short, and it's funny, even if it's not Stan and Ollie yet. Even so, Hal Roach and his team knew they were onto something.

This is a very well-crafted short, but I've always been mystified as to why anyone, much less Stan Laurel, would consider this to be the first true Laurel & Hardy film. The first film they appeared in was a comedy starring Laurel with Hardy in support, "The Lucky Dog" from 1921. The second film they made together at the Hal Roach studio, "Duck Soup" (not to be confused with the Marx Brothers film of the same name, nor the Edgar Kennedy short), actually has humor more typical of their mature work.

If you can get past the unusual characterizations in "Philip" (Stan is a kilted, woman-crazy Scot and Hardy is his American uncle, fearful of being embarrassed lest someone find out he's related to this eccentric young man), the film offers some solid laughs. It's beautifully paced and edited; do try to see this in a theater with an audience, where it really comes to life.

The credited director is Clyde Bruckman, known best as a gag writer for Buster Keaton (and later Harold Lloyd, and still later, The Three Stooges). He only made 20 films as a director, but they include Keaton's "The General," Laurel & Hardy's "The Battle of the Century," Harold Lloyd's "Movie Crazy" and W.C. Fields' "The Man on the Flying Trapeze," each of these titles being among the best films their respective stars ever made. Producer Hal Roach was particularly fond of "Putting Pants on Philip," incidentally.

This is one of L&H's shorts most frequently cited as the first "real" L&H teaming and perhaps one of their best silent features. J. Piedmont Mumblethunder (Ollie) is a millionaire who has come to the docks to greet his nephew Philip, whom he's never seen. At first Ollie is laughing it up with everyone when this strange little man unboards and draws a great deal of attention to himself by the way he's behaving during his medical exam, but is quite humiliated when it turns out that this is the fellow he's supposed to be greeting. He has been told that Philip is a good boy, but he has one weakness--women. Mumblethunder and Philip set off to go home, but their journey there is continually interrupted by Philip breaking into a little dance every time he sees a woman, then chasing after the woman. Huge crowds gather each time this happens, not so much because he's chasing skirts, but because Philip himself is also wearing a skirt (a kilt). Finally Mumblethunder manages to drag Philip into a tailor's shop to be measured for a proper pair of pants, but Philip escapes from there as well to chase more skirts. There are lots of laughs all around. It's also nice to see a short like this because the boys aren't exactly the characters we know and love. Ollie is pretty much his usual character, but it's such a joy to see Stan acting so differently from his usual man-child character. It shows he wasn't a one-trick pony and excelled in other types of roles when he got the chance. With a run time of 19 minutes its short and sweet, providing classic one liners which still have me in stitches.

The first "official" Laurel and Hardy movie is not like the ones with which we're more familiar. In this case, Laurel is a man from Scotland and Hardy is his uncle greeting him in the US. To be certain, Stan wears a kilt and tam, while Hardy wears a porkpie hat (like Buster Keaton wore). A couple of the scenes in "Putting Pants on Philip" were probably risqué for the time (a couple of them predict Marilyn Monroe's most famous stunt).

Basically, Stan and Ollie were just beginning as a team, so they hadn't yet figured out a style. Nevertheless, the end gag is funny enough. Mostly worth seeing as a historical note.

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.

'Putting Pants on Phillip' is nowhere near classic Laurel and Hardy, later films, short and feature, had stronger chemistry when fully formed and used their considerable talents better. At this point, Laurel was much funnier and more interesting while Hardy in most of the previous outings had too little to do. 'Putting Pants on Phillip' is still worth watching and is an improvement on some of their previous short films, to me it's easily one of their best at this point of their careers and one of the first to feel like a Laurel and Hardy short rather than a short featuring them.

Personally would have liked more sly wit that made their later entries better, though the slapstick does entertain and is timed well if a bit too far on the simplicity.

The story is a bit busy at times and both slight and formulaic.

Laurel however is very funny, and sometimes hilarious. Hardy is at least not wasted, and he does give one of his funniest and most interesting appearances of his pairings with Laurel up to this point and has much more to do in comparison to their previous outings. The chemistry is certainly much more here than in previous outings of theirs, namely because there's more of them together, if still evolving. Support is nice.

A good deal of the humour is well timed, hugely energetic and very funny, with everything going at a lively pace, and there is a lot of charm and good nature to keep one going, as well as a surprising bizarre one that doesn't feel too much. 'Putting Pants on Phillip' looks quite good still.

To conclude, decent and far from pants. 7/10 Bethany Cox