From Soup to Nuts *** (1928, Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Tiny Sandford) – Classic Movie Review 7412

‘Mrs Culpepper is an idol to the snobs – and a pain in the neck to everyone else.’

Director Edgar Kennedy’s and producer Hal Roach’s 1928 short comedy film From Soup to Nuts is an inventive, often hilarious Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy slapstick silent, in which newly rich Mrs Culpepper (Anita Garvin) is planning a smart, high society dinner party and Stan and Ollie are inept waiters/ butlers hired to serve Garvin’s guests.

Hardy’s outrage is particularly amusing, Garvin is deliciously funny and of course everything that can go wrong does so to inventive comedic effect. For example, Ollie ends up in a giant cake and, when the simple, literal-minded but always amenable Mr Laurel is told to serve the salad undressed, he does so in his underwear.

It is written by H M Walker and Leo McCarey.

The material is recycled and remade as a 20-minute section at the start of Laurel and Hardy’s A Chump at Oxford (1940) and scenes from it are included in Robert Youngson’s compilation feature Laurel and Hardy’s Laughing 20’s (1965).

Director Edgar Kennedy billed himself E Livingston Kennedy.

Also in the cast are Tiny Sandford as Mr Culpepper, Otto Fries as Chef, Edna Marion as Maid, George Bichel, and Dorothy Coburn, Sam Lufkin, Ellinor Vanderveer and Gene Morgan (as Dinner Guests).

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7412

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