CLASSIC LAUREL AND HARDY SHORTS

CLASSIC LAUREL AND HARDY SHORTS.

TCM recently held a Laurel and Hardy all-day festival in which they showed Pardon Us, Swiss Miss (still with several minutes cut) and quite a few classic shorts. Some of the more memorable ones include: Tit for Tat, in which the boys have a hilarious war with the owner of the grocery that's next to their electrical appliance store; Hog Wild, in which they try to put up a radio antennae and nearly wreck the house to Mrs. Hardy's furor; Our Wife, in which Ollie elopes with a large, economy-sized bride whose wealthy father disapproves of the union; and Be Big!, in which the boys try to sneak off to a party when their wives want them to accompany them to Atlantic City (one sequence has Stan hysterically trying to get Ollie's boot off of his fat foot). In Night Owls, a cop blackmails the boys into robbing his sergeant's house, so he can capture them and impress the boss, and in Their First Mistake they adopt a child to save Ollie's marriage, only to learn that his wife is not only suing him for divorce, but suing Laurel for alienation of affection! "Now that you've gone and gotten me into this trouble, you want to walk out and leave me flat!" Oliver whines to Stan.

Verdict: Some very, very funny stuff. ***.