You're Darn Tootin' (1928)

User Rating:

7.0/10   

Director:

Edgar Kennedy

Writer:

H.M. Walker (titles)

Release Date:

21 April 1928 (USA)

Genre:

Short | Comedy | Music

Plot:

Members of a municipal band, Stanley and Oliver seem to be always following someone else's lead, rather than that of the temperamental conductor...

Plot Keywords:

Conductor | Musician | Landlady | Horn | Concert Hall

Cast

Stan Laurel	...	Stanley, clarinet player
Oliver Hardy	...	Ollie, French horn player
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Wilson Benge	...	Musician
Chet Brandenburg	...	Manhole worker
Christian J. Frank	...	Policeman
Dick Gilbert	...	Boarder
Charlie Hall	...	Musician
William Irving	...	Musician
Ham Kinsey	...	Musician
Otto Lederer	...	Bandleader
Sam Lufkin	...	Man in restaurant
George Rowe	...	Pedestrian
Frank Saputo
Rolfe Sedan	...	Drunk
Agnes Steele	...	Landlady

Also Known As:

The Music Blasters (USA) (working title)

Runtime:

20 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Silent

Filming Locations:

Culver City, California, USA

Company:

Hal Roach Studios

Movie Connections:

Featured in "Silent Clowns: Laurel and Hardy (#1.3)" (2006)

Forget Clausewitz and the other military theorists, THIS is how wars begin!

This is a first-rate Laurel & Hardy comedy, definitely among their most enjoyable silent films and, in my opinion, one of the best things they ever did, period. It maintains just the right pace from the opening sequence to the wild climax, it's funny throughout, and beautifully photographed (Ahhh, the sunny streets of Culver City!). The story follows a basic three-act structure, yet it's loose enough to allow for plenty of laughs. We begin with a band concert in a public park that starts placidly but turns rowdy; proceed to a quieter (though still amusing) mid-section at the boys' boarding house, where they are far behind on paying their rent; and conclude with a grand finale of contagious shin-kicking, pants-ripping, and other harrowing symptoms of civic chaos, all topped with a memorable pay-off gag.

YOU'RE DARN TOOTIN' is one of only two L&H comedies directed by their frequent co-star Edgar Kennedy (the other is FROM SOUP TO NUTS), and based on the results in both cases it's too bad Kennedy didn't direct Laurel & Hardy more often, as he demonstrated a real flair for their brand of comedy. The boys themselves-- who still look pretty boyish at this early stage of their career --operate like the consummate professionals they were, with exquisite precision, playing hapless musicians whose professional status declines sharply in the course of one disastrous day. The opening scene in the band shell at the park is so methodically timed and builds so rhythmically you can practically hear the music, even when watching a silent print. (The sequence was in fact given a perfectly synchronized musical track by Robert Youngson for his compilation THE FURTHER PERILS OF LAUREL & HARDY in the '60s.) For me, the great moments often can be found in the smaller gestures rather than in the vistas of full-scale mayhem. Watch the guys' faces during the medium two-shot at the boarding house dinner table, all filmed in a single take, when Stan persists in taking the tops off the salt and pepper shakers, using each condiment, and then failing to put the tops back on properly. Ollie falls victim to this maneuver not once but twice, first dumping too much salt into his soup and then too much pepper. We know what's coming, but somehow our anticipation of this little tragedy translates into amusement. And they make it look so natural. We're amazed when Buster Keaton blithely crashes a bicycle and sails over the handlebars, but with Laurel & Hardy it's the nuances that count, the way they work off each other. It's Ollie's fingers as he delicately breaks the crackers into his soup, soup that we know is about to be ruined because he's not paying attention as Stan takes the top off the pepper shaker. Ollie takes such pleasure in breaking up those crackers it's heart-wrenching, and he looks so crushed when his soup gets ruined, but we laugh.

Everything comes to a head in the unforgettable finale, when the boys try to make a go as street buskers. They fail, and instead manage to draw a growing number of passersby into their violent quarrel. We learn once again that it doesn't take much to start a full-scale riot in Culver City. On some level I suppose I enjoy these "total warfare" sequences because they use slapstick to cheerfully confirm our worst suspicion about humanity: i.e. that just under the veneer of Civilized Behavior, whether disguised in the natty suits and snap-brim hats of the 1920s or the power suits of today, we're quite ready to drop all pretense of civility and clobber each other for the stupidest reasons imaginable, or for no reason at all. That's what I love about the comedy of Laurel & Hardy: their films represent life as it's actually lived, more than any 'Reality Series' yet devised. Kind of appalling, isn't it?