Les rois de la gaffe

MAE BUSCH is having domestic problems with her husband, CHARLES MIDDLETON, and comes up with a scheme to get him back by making him jealous. She uses Christmas card salesman OLIVER HARDY as the man but things go wrong when Middleton not only becomes jealous but threatens to kill Hardy in a shooting duel.

STAN LAUREL steals the show in his usual bumbling way and ARTHUR HOUSMAN comes close to doing some scene-stealing of his own as a drunken neighbor.

It's foolish stuff, of course, typical of the sort of scrapes Laurel and Hardy were famous for, their Christmas card greetings written by Stan being both dismal and daffy.

Middleton is excellent as the villain of the piece, playing his part without a trace of humor in order to make him the fearsome character he is as Busch's jealous hubby.

Good for a few laughs, but definitely not one of the duo's best.

Stan and Ollie have another one of those innocuous jobs. They are door to door greeting card salesmen. When they come to the door of Mae Busch, she is bemoaning the fact that her husband doesn't seem to love her. To test this, it is suggested that Oliver pretend to "make love" (not quite the same meaning as now) to her and test the husband. Of course, he is Charles Middleton, who played the evil space lord, Ming, in the Flash Gordon serials. He is an artist and the best shot in France, and he decides to fight a duel with our rotund friend. Now the boys must find a way out of this because this guy really means business. Unfortunately, they decide to get drunk and through a series of unfortunate events, end up back at the artist's home, in his bed. This is a little weaker than many of these episodes, but it's still better than what most anyone else was doing at the time.

Laurel and Hardy are selling greeting cards door to door. When they enter Mae Busch's flat, they find her in tears. She feels her husband, Charles Middleton, is neglecting her. She offers to pay Ollie $50 to make love to her to make Middleton jealous and reawaken his feelings. The plan is successful. Middleton feels it necessary to challenge Hardy to a duel.

It's a very late short for the Boys, filled with nonsense and sight gags, and Arthur Housman doing his drunk act. It's also the last short that longtime Roach stalwart, Noah Young would appear in with Stan and Ollie.

Sorry if I`m hurting anyone`s feelings but this is one of the weakest of the L&H shorts . My problem with it is not so much a threadbare plot but the set-up and the coincidence of the husband arriving home at that precise point . Like science fiction comedy relies on sincere credibilty for it to work and sincere credibilty is in short supply when Stan and Ollie sit in a bar when they should be getting the first train out of town . Wouldn`t you in the same circumstance ? And the flaws in the script aren`t helped by the very stagey performances of the supporting cast .

That said both Stan and Ollie greatly rise above the material on display and do give very good slapstick performances with the telephone scene and the duel working simply because L&H have the greatest chemistry of any comedy duo that have ever lived . Even when the scripts aren`t very good Stan and Ollie can still bring a grin to my face

Six out of ten

THE FIXER UPPERS was one of Laurel and Hardy's final short films, and its a classic. One thing to note, there were more clever lines and situations at work here, as opposed to the usual crashes and explosions. The boys manage to mess things up either way, now working as greeting card salesmen who happen upon weepy customer Mae Busch --who wants to use Ollie to make her stubborn husband jealous!

This was a good switch for Stan and Ollie, and with Charles Middleton playing the "deadly serious" husband, who happens to know how to use a gun! Middleton was always a fun bad guy for Laurel and Hardy, usually playing a bitter, revengeful chap, ready to strangle them. In one goofy bit, Hardy phones him and lets the insults fly, followed by Stan, prompting Middleton to hang up and declare he'll kill them both, the sooner the better!

By the way, Mae Busch never looked lovelier, and exceptionally well dressed, as opposed to her usual exasperated housewife roles opposite Hardy. Not to forget she was a leading dramatic actress in silent films. Arthur Houseman is again cast as a loony drunk (with an ice pack on his noggin), one of the boys customers, probably the best actor ever to play such a role.

The bedroom scene with the cops carrying Stan and Ollie (who drank too much also) into Mae's room ---before her husband arrives --is outrageous. This short was originally computerized colored for vhs with a few other L & H films.

Note that some of Laurel and Hardy's short films are on European dvds that will not play on U. S. made dvd and blu ray players. Be sure to check where the box set was produced.