As 2025 draws to a close, Flicker Alley closes out their restorations of the silent films of Laurel & Hardy with LAUREL & HARDY: YEAR 3: THE NEWLY RESTORED 1929 SHORTS. This completes a project that began almost 10 years ago. The goal was to find and restore all 33 of the shorts that L&H made between 1927 and 1929. These encompass the early shorts for Hal Roach when they were yet to become a team through their earliest sound efforts. They made 14 in 1927, 10 in 1928 and finally 11 in 1929 with the last three BERTH MARKS, WE FAW DOWN, and THE HOOSE GOW being sound only. A previous short, UNACCUSTOMED AS WE ARE, was their first sound effort (hence the title) and was also shot as a silent film.
As was the case with the previous FA sets, the 1929 SHORTS were put together with the best surviving material. In one case, THAT’S MY WIFE, a few very brief scenes were taken from 8mm copies as that’s all the restorers had to work with. The 1929 SHORTS were in the roughest shape and took the longest to restore. Considering that no complete 35 mm prints exist of any of the titles, these look as good as they’re going to (which is quite good) but they aren’t perfect nor should we expect them to be. In addition to the 11 shorts there are several additional supplements which include commentaries for each title by L&H expert Randy Skretvedt, rare footage from other MGM offerings of the time, and the final installment of filming locations then and now.
1929 was the year L&H made their most famous silent short BIG BUSINESS about trying to sell Christmas trees with a legendary confrontation with an irate homeowner. This comedy has cropped up in any number of anthologies and documentaries but here it is uncut and looking the best I’ve ever seen it look. Also in the set is DOUBLE WHOOPEE where a 17 year old Jean Harlow loses her dress. Jean also has brief appearances in 2 other shorts BACON GRABBERS and LIBERTY. LIBERTY is the one with the boys stuck on top of a high rise building under construction. The other titles, in addition to those previously mentioned, are WRONG AGAIN which features a horse on a piano and ANGORA LOVE about a troublesome goat that causes havoc.
Several of the shorts come with their original 1929 Vitaphone sound disc accompaniments which have been restored. There is also a choice of new musical scores by Robert Israel and Neil Brand as well as three others including legendary organist Gaylord Carter. The Flicker Alley collections finally supplant the old 10 volume Hal Roach Studios VHS/DVD releases from the 1990s although those contained a few early comedies with Stan & Ollie before they met each other which were not included in Flicker Alley’s LAUREL OR HARDY. These restorations are an important milestone for Laurel & Hardy fans as they make it possible to track their development as one of the greatest comedy teams in history and the only one to flourish in both the silent and sound eras.
The Capsule Critic 