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 a particular 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 distributed by a company called Video Treasures. AMC also often aired their short films back when the cable network played mostly classic movies no recent than the 1960s, living up to the channel name, "American Movie Classics." They even ran Laurel and Hardy marathons from time to time, which I often recorded on VHS. I wish I still had those tapes.
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 laugh at how they handle it. The duo 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.
One L&H film stands out in my mind as being different when compared to their other work.
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.

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

Their comedy routines are the same in this movie, and it definitely brings in laughs. 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 with 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 ongoing war.
"Gee, I wish I could go," he says to Stan.
Confused, 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 happens to be marching towards them as he spots an Army recruitment officer heading right their way. Ollie tells Stan to act nonchalant just before he jumps up and runs away.
Stan soon follows though it takes him a moment to realize Ollie ditched him. 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 fellow soldier named Eddie Smith (Don Dillaway).
Smith has a visit from his little girl and her nanny, who hands him 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, who's played by Jacquie Lyn.
Sadly, Smith is killed in action, leaving his daughter an orphan. We don't know why the child isn't left with her mother despite her being a cold-hearted (expletive).
Once they're out of the Army, Stan and Ollie take it upon themselves to take Eddie's daughter to her grandparents. They feel they owe it to Eddie.
They find the girl living with abusive foster parents. Stan and Ollie take her from her foster care despite the legal consequences they'll later get into. As they don't know who Eddie's parents are, they get themselves a phone directory to search for all the Smiths in the area in the hopes of finding her grandparents.

They go from one Mr. Smith to another. 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 catches up to them with questions.
Stan and Ollie hastily do what they can to flee and locate Eddie's parents fast.
The movie did make me laugh several times, particularly one scene where Stan and Ollie, working as a trash crew, misunderstand instructions from the Army cook and end up taking trash bins into the General's Quarters. As a consequence, they're locked up in the stockade along with the same cook who's peeved that they snitched on him.
The comedy comes out in both the dialogue. scenario and the physicality of the two. And it doesn't distract from the drama of the story.
The film is an original plot. At least it feels like such. It deserves more attention because, as a comedy, it really goes outside the box of both L&H routines and the comedy style of the era in general.
I could easily see this story line turned into a modern picture. The story is truly unique for a slapstick comedy.
Despite their normal methods and standards of story telling, the boys fit into the plot very well.
This is a great movie. I'd love to learn the inspiration behind this story as I love its perfect balance of drama mixed with comedy.

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.