![Laurel & Hardy and friends]()
Shasta County Arts Council Presents
Shasta County Arts Council PresentsLAUREL & HARDY & FRIENDS
A weekend with the world’s most beloved comedy team and other stars from the golden age of Hal Roach Studios!
Wonderful comedies, shown as they should be seen: vintage film prints on the Big Screen, with laughing, family audiences!
Six programs – all different — September 10 and 11, 2016
Old City Hall, 1313 Market Street, Redding
Tickets: $25 – All-Festival Pass! two day festival, all film blocks
Live introductions to the films by Dan Weggeland, Grand Sheik of the “Towed in the Hole” tent of the Sons of the Desert, the International Laurel & Hardy appreciation society.
Saturday, September 10, 12:00 noon: Laurel & Hardy: LIBERTY (1929, with original Vitaphone score). As escaped prisoners, they only want to change pants but find themselves on the girders of a skyscraper under construction. SONS OF THE DESERT (1933, feature) They’re errant husbands who trick their wives so they can secretly attend a convention in Chicago; well-plotted, great slapstick. & Friends: WILD POSES (1933) Our Gang comedy: Spanky’s parents take their reluctant boy to get his portrait taken by a prissy photographer (Franklin Pangborn). (Includes L&H cameo). THE PIP FROM PITTSBURGH (1931) Charley Chase agrees to go on a blind date to help out his roommate. But because his last such date turned out badly, he goes all out trying to make himself unattractive. He refuses to shave, wears his friend’s old suit and even eats garlic. Unfortunately for him, however, his date turns out to be the lovely Thelma Todd.
Saturday, September 10, 3:00 Laurel & Hardy: TOWED IN A HOLE (1932). They’re traveling fish peddlers – crabs a specialty – who devise a big business idea: buy a dilapidated old boat, fix it up, and eliminate the middleman. PACK UP YOUR TROUBLES (1932, feature) Misfit army buddies survive the war, then try to reunite their deceased buddy’s daughter with her family; however, since his name was “Smith”, this is not easy! & Friends: HIS WOODEN WEDDING (1925). On his wedding day, the rejected suitor slips groom Charley Chase a note that the woman he is about to marry has a wooden leg! THE LUCKY CORNER (1936) Our Gang comedy: The gang helps Scotty and his grandfather after an obnoxious lunch counter owner forces them to move their lemonade stand.
Saturday, September 10, 7:30 Laurel & Hardy: THE MUSIC BOX (1932) The boys deliver a player piano to a home at the top of a nearly-endless flight of stairs. Academy Award winner! WAY OUT WEST (1937, feature) Arriving in the town of Brushwood Gulch, our heroes attempt to deliver the deed to a gold mine, bequeathed to a deceased prospector’s daughter. Stan Laurel’s favorite work. & Friends: BARNUM & RINGLING, LTD. (1928, with original Vitaphone score.) The gang is living in a posh, but boring, hotel (except Farina, who’s a bellboy). They decide to stage a circus, which gets out of hand. Bonus film: HIS MUSICAL CAREER (1914) A Keystone comedy with Charles Chaplin, Mack Swain and Charley Chase. Charlie and Mack are piano movers in a comedy that anticipates many gags in The Music Box.
Sunday, September 11, noon This is Grandparents day. Free admission all day for kids accompanied by a ticket-buying grandparent! Laurel & Hardy: BACON GRABBERS (1929, with original Vitaphone score). The boys are repo men attempting to recover a radio from uncooperative Edgar Kennedy who hasn’t made a payment since 1921; destruction ensues. PARDON US (1931). Their first feature, a spoof of prison pictures, has imaginative individual set pieces among the boys’ funniest and most endearing. & Friends: YOUNG IRONSIDES (1932) Muriel Evans has decided to defy family convention and take part in a beauty contest in Oceanside, California, and her parents have hired “Fearless” (who turns out to be timid Charley Chase) to find her and stop her. TEACHER’S PET (1930) Our Gang comedy: The beloved Miss McGillicuddy has left school and the gang is faced with a new teacher, Miss Crabtree, whose name suggests a mean old lady to the gang. They plot several means of running off the new teacher, including ants, sneezing powder, and a mouse. On the way to school, one of the gang (Jackie Cooper) is picked up by a lovely lady who asks him about his school. Jackie reveals all the gang’s plans. The only problem is that the sweet young woman is none other than… Miss Crabtree.
Sunday, September 11th at 3:00 Laurel & Hardy: HOG WILD (1930) Stan “helps” Ollie put a radio aerial up on the roof; Ollie wants to hear Japan. The favorite L&H short of many! A CHUMP AT OXFORD (1940, streamliner) Two street cleaners inadvertently foil a bank robbery and are rewarded with an education at Oxford University. & Friends: ON THE LOOSE (1931) Hal Roach tried hard to create a female comedy team to match the success of Laurel & Hardy. Thelma Todd and ZaSu Pitts, tired of being taken to Coney Island by all the local boys, meet up with two Englishmen who offer to take them on a date – to Coney Island. Includes L&H cameo.
LOVE BUSINESS (1930) Our Gang comedy, a follow-up to Teacher’s Pet: Jackie Cooper, who has a crush on his teacher Miss Crabtree (June Marlowe), is afraid that she will get married and leave the school. They mistake her brother for a potential boyfriend, and plot to discourage him.
Sunday, September 11th at 6:00 Laurel & Hardy: WRONG AGAIN (1929, with original Vitaphone score). Gainsborough’s famous painting “Blue Boy” has been stolen. The boys, stable hands, deliver a horse called Blue Boy to the wealthy collector, who tells them to put it on the piano. BLOCK-HEADS (1938, feature) Twenty years after World War I, Private Laurel remains on duty guarding his lonely post in the trenches; no one ever told him that hostilities had ceased. He’s reunited with his long-lost pal Mr. Hardy at the Old Soldiers’ Home for tried and true comedy situations. & Friends: FLY MY KITE (1931) Our Gang Comedy: Grandma, the Rascals’ sweet old neighbor lady, is being victimized by her scoundrel of a stepson, who wants to seize her property and put her in the county poor house. Most of all, he wants her suddenly very valuable corporate stock, which she believes is worthless. Using the certificates as weights, she ties them to the tail of Chubby’s kite. When the wicked wastrel tries to steal the kite, the Rascals and Grandma teach him a painful lesson he won’t soon forget. ON THE WRONG TREK (1936) From the final year of Hal Roach shorts, Charley Chase comedy has him telling of his vacation to California, which turned into a disaster. His comic timing here matches what we see in some of his better silent shorts. There’s a wonderful cameo with Laurel & Hardy as well.
Special Thanks to Richard W. Bann, who programmed the weekend and provided some of the write-ups, to Paul Mular who graciously loaned many vintage film prints from his outstanding private collection, and to Dan Weggeland for his enthusiastic participation.
The post Laurel & Hardy and Friends! appeared first on Shasta County Arts Council.
