La bohémienne

I have never understood the lambasting `Bohemian Girl' has received. It is not the best L&H (I leave that for others to debate, but the lean is towards `Way Out West' or `Sons of the Desert'), but it is far, far from their worst.

The operetta background seemed to work as well for Stan and Ollie as the opera did for the Marxes (`A Night at the Opera'), Mae West (`Goin' to Town'), and the Stooges (`Microphonies'), giving them something different and deliberately starchy to play against.

It is a shame that Thelma Todd died just about the time BG was released. Stan was said to have felt it inappropriate to show her in such a big part with her lurid death – which many claim was a mob-related murder – still heading the headlines. The Hollywood hush-hush surrounding it may have also contributed to its excising…and the sadness was only worsened by its occurrence during the Christmas season and the arrival by mail of presents to various friends (including Stan) after her body had been found. Roach himself (with the bigwigs in his corner) was said to have helped head off the DA's second inquest after Thelma's attorney had protested the suicide verdict…another reason, perhaps, behind her severely edited and retooled role. Who begs for a dark cloud?

But how WELCOME to see Mae Busch back! She always worked especially well with the team and gives that extra boost to Ollie in particular that one always got from a Maggie Dumont, Jan Duggan, or Symona Boniface. Mae could play an absolute bitch, and you still loved her. The added reunion with Jimmy Finlayson was great (`Oh, my GOOD eye!' – an insider's joke that kills me every time), and we have the bonus of Our Gang's Darla as the adopted Arline. Sweet, without being cloying.

One might decry songs such as `The Heart Bow'd Down by Weight of Woe,' but it's an operetta, folks. There's going to be singing.

And with routines like `the eyes are the windows to your soul'; the fingers bit in the bar; the odd wrap-up gag; the wine bottling; Stan's bass/soprano switch; his search for Ollie's money; Darla's bedtime prayer; the butter churn…even something as simple as Ollie claiming to be leaving for a zither lesson and then miming it with his fingers (whereupon Stan suddenly gets it – `Oh!')…it's all great! What more could one want? They couldn't re-film `Sons of the Desert' every year! Give this baby a chance!

None of the latter day Fox-MGM movies can touch it; not even the best of `Jitterbugs.' `The Flying Deuces,' unfortunately so long in public domain that it appears one is watching it through a pillowcase, is pretty good, but this one seems warmer and cinematically superior. I prefer BG to some of its contemporaries, too. I mean, take `Bonnie Scotland,' with several good scenes sandwiched between the lachrymose bits with the whiney lead. Then look at the highly Roach-edited `Swiss Miss,' which butchers a L&H song and makes us sit through Della Lind and Walter Woolf King (who is decent here, but a far cry from the love-to-hate-him Lasparri (sic))…give me a dubbed Thelma and a nice helping of Mae any day.

Why complain and deride it? It's a pleasant evening, with lots of merriment. And it's Stan and Ollie in their prime, even if not in the best of their films. We should be so lucky as to have another BG filming in Hollywood today. Go jump on `The Big Noise' or `Air Raid Wardens,' if you just want to gripe.

But if you want some fun, pop BG into your VCR and prepare to laugh.

THE BOHEMIAN GIRL (1936)

Aspect ratio: 1.37:1

Sound format: Mono

(Black and white)

Two bumbling gypsies (Stan 'n' Ollie) are left holding the baby when Ollie's wife (Mae Busch) steals the infant daughter of a contemptuous nobleman (William P. Carleton).

The last of three L&H vehicles based on popular comic operas (following FRA DIAVOLO and BABES IN TOYLAND). Derived from a work by Michael William Balfe, THE BOHEMIAN GIRL is theatrical in every sense of the word, with its exaggerated performances (by everyone except Stan and Ollie), cramped sets and predictable plot. Some of the songs are lovely (particularly the ode to Ollie's fatherly love, sung at breakfast by Julie Bishop, here billed as 'Jacqueline Wells'), but most are rendered quaint by antiquity. Ollie is just as punctilious and accident-prone as ever, but Stan steals the picture with effortless grace, getting drunk on home-made wine and saving Bishop from Carleton's misguided nobleman. Favorite gag: After being told that Ollie has become a father, Stan shakes his hand and declares, "I hope you grow up to be as good a mother as your father was!". Mae Busch plays Ollie's duplicitous wife, and L&H regular James Finlayson turns up in a bit part as one of Carleton's guards. Though previewed in 1935, the movie underwent extensive re-editing following the death of co-star Thelma Todd, who appears only briefly in the finished version as the gypsy queen's daughter. Directed by James W. Horne and Charles Rogers.

When I watched this again on a Video Treasures VHS tape, I also rewatched the home movies provided and narrated by Stan Laurel's daughter, Lois, as she told of her father and Uncle Babe Hardy's trip to Europe during the early '30s to crowds nearly everywhere as we see some amusing antics they supposedly ad-libbed in front of their fans. We then see color footage of Stan at his home during the '60s admiring his honorary Oscar-which his daughter says he wished he had received with Babe when he was still alive and which he referred to as "Mr. Clean"-and making fun of it by putting glasses in front of it. As for the movie proper, Stan & Ollie are very funny-as always-and Stan especially is hilarious when he accidentally gets drunk trying to bottle some beer! The straight plot involving them as gypsies and their cohorts almost threatens to take over at some points especially when those cohorts start singing but most of it is tolerable, at best. So on that note, The Bohemian Girl is worth a look for L & H fans. P.S. This was Our Gang member Darla Hood's only time she performed with the boys on film. She's mostly held by Oliver Hardy though when she recounted her time with the boys, she had this to say to Leonard Maltin & Richard W. Bann in their book, "The Little Rascals: The Life and Times of Our Gang": "They were so marvelous, Hardy was a bit more serious, and reserved, but Laurel apparently just loved children, and he'd always pick me up, and hold me, play games. I remember one time I wanted to sit and make mud pies, and he sat right down on the ground with me and helped me mold my mud pies!" Thelma Todd had a large role originally but after she tragically died on December 16, 1935-five days after the preview-she was only at the beginning with her dubbed song. As a result, Zeffie Tilbury-who would subsequently appear as an elderly friend of Our Gang in Second Childhood-was added as a gypsy queen, Antonio Moreno would now be paired with Mae Busch-making her characterization a little uneven having to be both romantic to him and still mean to hubby Ollie & his friend Stan, and Felix Knight-Tom-Tom in L & H's Babes in Toyland-sang a song originally meant for Moreno. By that way, that freak ending was funny but it was also a bit abrupt!

Very happy to contradict other reviewers of this movie, but it is a little-known gem. From the scene where they pickpocket the dandy, to the scene where Stan is filching Ollie's money-bag, to the scene where Stan is filling the wine-bottles, through to the final scene after the torture chamber, when they look at each other, it is a wonderful movie (Ollie: "I'm going to take my zither lesson"; Stan: "Oh, I slept like a top, too," followed by Ollie's great mug). The scene when Hardy is claiming "his" items from the dandy is priceless (his "lorgnette"--now how does a gypsy like Ollie know that word?! Vintage Ollie). I always loved the scene when Stan was singing in the two operatic voices. Great music, great cast (Darla Hood, Mae Busch, Finlayson, et al). See it for yourself (VERY hard to find).

This is Stan's response when Ollie tries to explain the sight of his wife's lover giving her a chuck under the chin.

"The Bohemian Girl" is classic L&H. Two guys who are clearly out of place(does anyone really buy them as gypsies? Especially when Ollie is wearing the same wig he wore in "March of the Wooden Soldiers").

I'm sure everyone by now knows this is the film that was Thelma Todd's last picture, due to her untimely death. That's why the film is so choppy, too many edits.

But there are still so many classic scenes with the two boys. Stan's wine scene, when Ollie recovers his "stolen" property, Stan searching under Ollie's pillow, and on and on.

James Finlayson and Mae Busch steal the picture. They are both so right for their parts, they're hysterical.

I had never seen this film before, but heard plenty about it. For years I have heard my mother-in-law talk about this film that she saw when she was young, and how some of the scenes had stayed with her. She thought that the film was lost, but my wife and I found a copy on Ebay, and gave it to her for this past Christmas. This weekend she loaned us the tape, and I enjoyed it so much I'm sure that many of the scenes will stay with me for a long time as well.