A Perfect Day to be Blotto

After Blogging my heart out on Hitchcock, a return to my roots is in order.  Turner Classic Movies is running Hal Roach movies and TV shows all this month.  Here are two Laurel and Hardy shorts that were on last week.

Perfect Day (1929) - Only Laurel and Hardy can turn a Sunday picnic into a disaster movie.  Uncle Edgar, played by Edgar Kennedy (1890 - 1948), is suffering from the gout in his foot, so it is well wrapped.  L&H start a ruckus in the house and Kennedy's foot keeps getting bumped.  Even the dog grabs it and won't let go.  After destroying all the sandwiches while packing the food, the boys and their wives, plus Uncle Edgar and the dog, all pile into the car.

Trouble with the car, including two flat tires with Stan trying to use a car jack, keeps them stuck.  Then there is an altercation with a neighbor and bricks start flying.  Back in the car, and it won't start.  Ollie is cranking and Stan flips the spark advance lever to cause a huge explosion.  Ollie tells Stan to throw out the clutch, so he rips out the pedal.  You get the picture.  When they finally get moving, there is a big puddle to drive through.  You can guess what happens.

Blotto (1930) - I hesitate to say this is one of my favorites because where will it end?  I have too many favorites as it is.  Stan and his wife, played by Anita Garvin (1906 - 1994) (whom I have had the pleasure to know personally), are at home.  Anita is playing solitaire and Stan wants to go out with his friend, Ollie.  She forbids it so the boys work up a scheme to go to the Rainbow Club.

Anita has a hidden bottle of liquor and the boys plot to take it with them.  She finds out and replaces the contents with cold tea and Tabasco.  At the club, the boys order their two cents plain and pour in the booze.  Amidst some wonderful entertainment at the club, they get blasted and have a great time.  Then they see Anita at another table, with her new double barrel shotgun.

Blotto includes Tiny Sanford (1894 - 1961) as one of the waiters, in a non-speaking role.  Tiny made over 130 films, and over 50 Hal Roach films, and can be seen in many of Charlie Chaplin's classics.  The singer at the club is played by Frank Holliday (1912 - 1948) who was also in It Happened One Night (1934) and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936).

The best part of Blotto is watching the emotional reaction of the boys to the booze, the singing, and finally the realization that they got blotto on cold tea.  Stan goes through crying fits and then laughing fits, and I dare you to keep a straight face whilst watching.

Copyright 1979 Allen Hefner

One other item to mention as you watch the Hal Roach movies this month.  Listen to the music.  Roach used the same music in many Our Gang, Laurel and Hardy, Charley Chase and other movies of the time.  Most of it was written by T. Marvin Hatley (1905 - 1986) and Leroy Shield (1893 - 1962).  My guess is that the same tunes made it less expensive to make so many movies, but there is also a continuity created.  You know you are watching a Hal Roach comedy.

There is still time to catch some of today's movies on TCM.  You can see some of the Thelma Todd (1906 - 1935) shorts this afternoon.  Todd had a tragically short life, but she did shine in her films.  Starting on Tuesday, January 25, 2011 at 8:00 p.m., make sure to catch the Hal Roach features, beginning with the best of the best, Sons of the Desert (1933) starring L&H.

Please respect the photographs I have taken.  If you want to use them, please ask first.  It's probably OK, I just want to know and maybe receive credit under the pic!

Photo of Some Friends, Sons of the Desert

Below is a photo that I took at a 1979 banquet of the Two Tars Tent of The Sons of the Desert.  I have spoken of the Sons before, but if any readers are new, the SoD is the international organization dedicated to the films of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.

Each city has a local group called a tent.  The Two Tars meet in the Philadelphia, PA area.  At the banquets they always try to have guests who were involved in some way with L&H or at Hal Roach Studios, or were active in the era.  These days they are getting much older and hard to find.

Here is the pic -

Copyright 1979 Allen Hefner

In the picture (from left to right) we see Red Stanley (1900 - 1980), his wife Anita Garvin (1906 - 1994) and Rosina Lawrence (1912 - 1997).

Red Stanley was a musician and appeared in only nine movies.  He was a delight to talk with.  He worked in films with Betty Grable, Fred MacMurray, Harriet Hilliard (of Ozzie and Harriet), Penny Singleton and Arthur Lake in Blondie Goes Latin (1941), and was uncredited as a trombonist in The Horn Blows at Midnight (1945) with Jack Benny.  He married Anita in 1930.


Anita Garvin was one of the most endearing supporting actors used by Laurel and Hardy.  She appeared in 94 films from 1924 to 1940, including about 11 with The Boys, plus some films with Laurel or Hardy, sans the other.  About a third of her films were made at Hal Roach Studios.  My favorite of hers with The Boys was Blotto, a 1930 short where Anita played Stan's wife.  Stan and Ollie thought they would put one over on her and take her hidden liquor to a club.  She had replaced it with cold tea before they left, but they got blotto anyway.  It is one very funny movie.

Rosina Lawrence was one of the nicest people you could ever meet!  Someone once said that she was so sweet, if she went out in the rain, she would melt.  Rosina made 30 films from 1924 to 1939, when she married and became a housewife.  She was popular in some Our Gang comedies as well as some of the best Laurel and Hardy movies.  She had a major role in Way Out West (1937), considered one of their finest feature films.

Rosina's first husband died in 1973.  She married John McCabe in 1987.  McCabe (another acquaintance of mine) was the founder of The Sons of the Desert.  Look for his books about Laurel and Hardy and also Charlie Chaplin.

I have fond memories of all these people, and I will continue to share them with you.  Back in those days I shot these pics on film.  I am in the process of scanning them, which is quite a project!  I just picked up a negative and slide scanner (Thanks, eBay!) and have loads more to go.

Please respect the photographs I have taken.  If you want to use them, please ask first.  It's probably OK, I just want to know and maybe receive credit under the pic!

Anita Garvin

I was just reading The Silent Movie Blog and saw a recently posted production still of Anita Garvin with "Wheezer" Hutchins from Our Gang.  Anita started as a Ziegfeld Girl and appeared in 93 films from 1924 to 1940. 

My favorite role of hers was in the 1927 Laurel and Hardy silent, The Battle of the Century.  (Amazon has it on a DVD collection at The Lost Films of Laurel & Hardy: The Complete Collection, Vol. 9.)  The movie is basically a gigantic pie fight.  Every possible situation for getting hit by a pie was used, and I have been told that the entire day's baking from the pie supplier was used just for this film.  Near the end of the film, Anita has the misfortune to slip on a banana peel, landing her backside right in a pie that was on the sidewalk.  She gets up, and as she walks away from the camera, she lifts her leg and gives it a shake.  It must have been quite a shot to make.  As I remember, her dress flipped up when she went down, so the pie got her bottom under the dress. 

I had the pleasure of spending some time with Anita and her husband, Red Stanley.  Back in the 1980s, Anita was invited to several Sons of the Desert functions, including the 1986 international convention in Valley Forge, PA.  We all spoke with her at length, and she was always ready with stories about the film industry.

She told us that she was doing a silent part with Cecil B. DeMille.  The only C. B. DeMille movie she was in was in 1929 called Dynamite.  Anita told us that she played a waif, but I have never seen this one.  In one scene she was standing in the snow and DeMille told her to cry.  She didn't know how to cry on cue.  DeMille instructed the cameraman to keep rolling, and he walked up to Anita.  He looked her straight in the eye and said, "Cool as a cucumber."  At that moment, Anita KNEW her acting career was over, and she started crying!  She said the tears were rolling and just wouldn't stop!  C.B. got his shot, and everyone was happy in the end.

Anita stopped acting after 1940 and she was eventually tracked down by film buffs only to become popular again.  She passed away in 1994.  I will treasure my memory of meeting her.  I may have some pics at home.  When I get some time, I will dig them out, scan them, and try to post them here.