Pack Up Your Troubles (1932)

"Would you happen to tell us where Mr. Smith lives?"

Director
George Marshall, Raymond McCarey

Cast
Stan Laurel - Stan
Oliver Hardy - Ollie
Don Dillaway - Eddie Smith
Jacquie Lyn- Eddie's baby


It's absolutely fitting to start this blog off with a Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy film. I recently saw the 2018 film Stan and Ollie -a fantastic film - and decided I wanted to bring some attention to this movie of theirs.
I don't know if they're the first comedy duo in Hollywood history, but they're surely close. "Two minds without a single thought." 

I watched a great deal of Laurel and Hardy in my youth as my dad had a collection of their movies. AMC also often aired their short films when the cable network played mostly classic movies no recent than the 1960s. They even ran Laurel and Hardy marathons.
Generally, L&H movies carry the same sort of story structure. Laurel (the dim and skinny one) and Ollie (the pretentious, fat, and 'smart' one) end up in different situations so the audience can see just exactly how they'll handle it. The due have played their own offspring in the short Brats. They stayed aboard a haunted ghost ship in The Live Ghost. They famously hoisted a piano up a long flight of stairs in The Music Box, for which they won an Academy Award for best short. And they did some time in jail for selling some home-brewed alcohol in Pardon Us.

Their comedy is often dated - no fault of theirs, of course - but that's no negative mark against these guys. 

But one L&H film stands out in my mind as being different when compared to their other work.

Scene from Pack Up Your Troubles with former child actress Jacquie Lyn,
along with Oliver Hardy and Stan Laurel.

Their movie Pack Up Your Troubles, the team's second feature length film, includes subject matter a bit more serious and dramatic when compared to other slapstick movies where audiences see the two find the comedy in ordinary situations.

They're comedy routines are the same in this movie, and it brings in some laughs. But overall, it's a solid mix of tragedy as well, the likes of which I can't compare to anything else these two have done.

The movie starts in 1917 as we see Stan and Ollie sitting in a park- the usual shot of two minds without a single thought between them. 

Ollie folds up a newspaper with headlines on the world war. 

"Gee, I wish I could go," he says to Stan.

With a confused look on his face, Stan asks, "Go where?" 

"Why, to war!" 

"Well, why can't you go?" 

"There you are! I knew you'd take that selfish attitude," Ollie says. "Why, I'd go in a minute if it wasn't for my flat feet."

Ollie's wish is on it's way to becoming true as he spots an Army recruitment officer marching right towards him. Ollie tells Stan to act nonchalant just before he jumps up and runs away. 

Stan finally follows, but there's no running from the draft. 

We get a dose of their comedy seeing just how inept the two are as World War I soldiers in basic training and combat.

During their time in the service, they become friends with a soldier named Eddie Smith.

Smith has a visit from his little girl, and receives a "Dear John" letter from his wife who tells him she never loved him, and that he should not attempt to follow her. Ouch, lady! Smith has one major concern in mind. That is, what to do with his daughter. 

Sadly, Smith is killed in action, leaving his daughter an orphan. We don't know why the child isn't left with her mother.
But Stan and Ollie take it upon themselves to take Eddie's daughter to her grandparents. 

Once they're out of the Army, they find the girl living with abusive foster parents. They take her from her foster care despite the legal ramifications they'll get into, obtain a phone directory to search for all the Smiths in the area in the hopes of finding Eddie's parents.

They go from Mr. Smith to Mr. Smith looking for Eddie's father. And a lot happens in their search, including disrupting a wedding, running into an angry boxer, and just trying to care for a child while their search carries on.

However, Child Welfare approaches them with questions about the child in their possession to which they have no legal right.
Stan and Ollie hastily do what they can to flee and find Eddie's parents fast.

The movie did make me laugh several times, particularly one scene where Stan and Ollie, working as trash crew, misunderstand instructions from the Army cook and end up taking trash bins into the General's Quarters. They're locked up in the stockade as a result, along with the same cook. The comedy comes out in both the dialogue and the physicality of the two. And it doesn't distract from the drama of the story.
The film is an original through and through, even among other L&H pictures. It deserves more attention because, as a comedy, it really goes outside the box of both L&H routines and comedy in general, especially for that period.
I could easily see this story line turned into a modern picture, but if that happened, it would most likely be a botched mess.
Despite their normal methods and standards of story telling, the boys fit into the plot very well.
This is a great movie - dated humor, and yet still wonderful. I find the story line very intriguing, and appreciate the drama mix with the comedy. This movie is quite a shift for L&H, but is accomplished well.

Film fact:

Actor and comedian Billy Gilbert, who appeared in a number of Laurel and Hardy films including their famous short film The Music Box, also provided the voice of Sneezy in Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.