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Hardy suddenly inherits a fortune, installs
himself in a mansion with costly new furniture and décor,
and puts his erstwhile buddy Stan to work as his butler. Stan is
conscientious, but Ollie, revelling in his new-found power and
affluence, takes delight in tormenting his pal, pouring ice-water on him
while he sleeps, and so on. Stan finally rebels, and threatens to
resign. Inadvertently, a piece of Hardy's expensive new furniture
is damaged and, seeing Hardy's horror, Laurel realizes his power.
Systematically he goes on a rampage of destruction, Hardy trying
desperately to save the huge vases and other bric-a-brac that are
crashing around him.
Although a lesser Laurel & Hardy, Early
to Bed contains good gags, amusing titles, and an interesting
variation on the usual relationship between them. Laurel's
retaliatory bursts of vengeance were infrequent but fairly evenly spaced
in about one picture in eight, so that to those who saw all their films
the cumulative effect was even funnier, such sequences acting as a kind
of steam-valve in the overall saga of Laurel & Hardy.
Early to Bed, however, is climaxed by
a magnificent sight gag which, curiously, they never repeated perhaps
because they themselves had borrowed it from an earlier Roach comedy
with Mabel Normand. Mabel's film hardly scratched at the surface
of the gag's possibilities, however, while Laurel & Hardy milked it for
all it was worth. During a climactic chase sequence, Hardy takes
refuge in the garden. Dominating the set is an elaborate
decorative fountain, its base encircled by a number of identical little
stone cherub heads, from the mouths of which pour forth steady streams
of water. Coincidentally, these little heads are dead ringers for
Oliver Hardy! To escape detection, Hardy submerges himself in the
water, removes one of the stone heads, and rests his own head on its
pedestal. He even contrives to eject a constant though none too
steady flow of water from his mouth. The head, somehow a little
different from all the others, attracts Laurel's attention. Under
his close scrutiny, Hardy remains immobile, eyes starring [sic]
glassily ahead, water continuing to pour forth from this human fountain.
But, inevitably, Hardy's well runs dry. With all the other cherub
heads in perfect working order, Laurel deduces that this one has
developed a mechanical defect. Perhaps if he knocks it a few times
the clogged mechanism will free itself. Further verbal elaboration
on this gag is surely unnecessary; it's one of the most captivating
routines they ever did, and must have delighted Buñuel,
Dali, and the other surrealists who were just beginning to delve into
film at that time. |
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