The Hoose-Gow *** (1929, Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, James Finlayson, Tiny Sandford, Charlie Hall, Sam Lufkin) – Classic Movie Review 7403

‘Neither Mr Laurel nor Mr Hardy had any thoughts of doing wrong. As a matter of fact, they had no thoughts of any kind.’ Director James Parrott and producer Hal Roach’s 1929 The Hoose-Gow is an amusing, outdoors Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy 20-minute, two-reeler black and white all-talkie short, in which they play new inmates at a prison made to dig road ditches, but are soon doing what they do best – causing chaos.

Stan cuts down a tree that is the lookout post and they put a hole in prison governor James Finlayson’s car radiator. They fill it with rice, which boils over, and there is a fine climax in a full-throttle rice-chucking battle.

Of course, Stan and Ollie are innocents, and were just bystanders to the hold-up raid for which they are sent to the prison labour camp.

The Hoose-Gow has plenty of vim, and the boys are on fine form, with a slew of their best pals around them (especially a ragingly apoplectic Finlayson, Tiny Sandford as the warden, Charlie Hall as the tree-top lookout and Sam Lufkin as the prison-camp officer) but the routines are re-runs of better gags in earlier movies.

And yes, it is an outdoors short as one of the few Laurel and Hardy films shot almost entirely outdoors, with virtually no studio work. It was shot at the Arnaz Ranch, Robertson Blvd, Los Angeles.

The rest of the cast are Leo Willis as Leo, Ellinor Vanderveer and Retta Palmer as governor’s guests, Leo Sulky as prison guard, Dick Sutherland as cook and Eddie Dunn, Chet Brandenburg, Ed Brandenburg, Baldwin Cooke, Charles Dorety, Ham Kinsey, Tiny Ward and Blackie Whiteford as prisoners.

H M Walker is credited as the story editor.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7403

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