As part of our celebration of 50 years of Bowler Dessert, we recall an article by ERIC SCHULTZ from our final paper issue (Autumn 2013)
Similarities between
WC Fields and
Laurel and Hardy
Ever since I was quite young, I have loved classic film comedy, especially the work of WC Fields, Laurel and Hardy and Buster Keaton. From time to time, I have noticed some similarities in the work of Fields and the team of
Laurel and Hardy. Many people might think that Stan and Ollie were a lot different from WC. Stan and Ollie were usually so polite (even when fighting with each other and others), while Bill Fields often would be quite blunt (“Get away from me, kid, you bother me!”). In spite of this, I’ve noticed that their approach to comedy and pacing were very similar. Laurel and Hardy and WC Fields aren’t as different as some might think.
For one thing, in the films of Laurel and Hardy and WC Fields, we see a methodical pacing, where many of the gags are allowed to develop and occur as if these silly occurrences were completely natural. We also see some quick and unexpected slapstick gags, but in general there is more of a step-by-step process in which gags and funny situations happen in these films. Some writers have mentioned a “telegraphing” of gags in Laurel and Hardy films, where they “tip off” the audience to what is about to happen, so that a great many of the laughs come from the anticipation of what is about to occur.
In Donald Deshner’s 1966 book The Films of WC Fields, there is a 1934 article written by the great man himself, in which Fields describes this very same thing: “Professors of Humor will tell you the audience must not be allowed to guess what is coming, that humor is always based upon surprise. The theory is often true, but in You’re Telling Me, my most recent moving picture, I have a scene in which the laugh depends upon the fact that the audience knows in advance exactly what is going to happen.
“I play a stupid and self-important inventor and I explain the details of my new burglar trap. According to my plan, I shall become friendly with the burglar, invite him to sit down and talk things over, and, when he sits in a chair, a lever will automatically release an immense iron ball which will hit him, Socko!, on the head and kill him instantly.
“From that moment the audience knows what’s coming – that pretty soon I’ll forget about the iron ball and will sit in the chair myself. The laughter begins when I start toward the chair. It reaches its peak before the ball whams me on the bean.
“If I sat in a chair and the ball fell on my head, and then it was explained that it was a burglar alarm, the scene would fall flat. The success of the scene depends upon the absence of surprise.”
This gag occurred in Fields’s 1934 feature, You’re Telling Me, which also features Del Henderson, who occasionally appeared with Laurel and Hardy, such as in Wrong Again (1929), The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case (1930) and Our Relations (1936).
We see examples of this time and time again in the films of Laurel and Hardy. In one of their very earliest films together as a comedy team, Leave ’em Laughing, a 1928 silent short, there’s a scene where they play a couple of poor tenants in a cheap boarding house, sleeping in one big bed. Stan has a toothache, so Ollie gets up to get him a hot water bottle. He twice steps on the same tack on the floor, and the film gives us a nice close-up shot of the tack each time, to let us know what’s coming. The humor is not in any surprise on our part, but in Hardy’s reaction. Once he’s got the hot water bottle in place, he gets back in bed and tries to sleep, but then the film gives us a close-up shot of the plug slipping out of the bottle, and the water pouring out all over the bed. Then we see an extended close-up shot of Oliver Hardy, at first asleep, and then waking up to become slowly aware of the water that’s soaking the mattress just behind him. Again, the humor is in seeing the expressions on his face.
In a great many other films, like the 1930 talkie Hog Wild, we first see a slapstick gag, followed by two close-up shots: first, one of Hardy reacting, and then one of Laurel, looking sheepishly embarrassed. Usually the close-up shots of the two comedians reacting is at least as funny as the gag was in itself. In other films, we see Hardy’s on-screen wife yelling at him, while he quietly sits there, looking like a child who was caught with his hand in the cookie jar. In WC Fields’s 1941 feature Never Give a Sucker an Even Break there are a couple of moments where the film producer (played wonderfully by Franklin Panghorn) expresses his disgust with the ridiculous script that Fields has brought him to read. There are a couple of close-up shots of Fields with an embarrassed look on his face, in which he plays it very much the way that Oliver Hardy would have done.
Both Fields and the comedy team of Laurel and Hardy were famous for improvising their way through many of their scenes. Fields would spend a lot of time in story conferences, where they would make changes to the script, and then, when the camera was rolling, he would deliver a completely different line, and improvise bits of business which weren’t written anywhere in the script. This was the same case with the films that Laurel and Hardy made while they were at the Hal Roach studios (from their teaming in 1927 until the end of the ’30s). Henry Brandon, who appeared as a villain in Laurel and Hardy’s 1934 feature Babes in Toyland, told years later of his first day on the set. Stan Laurel went over the scene with him, explaining what everyone would say and do. Then Laurel announced that they were ready to shoot. When Brandon asked if they were going to rehearse the scene first, Laurel replied, “What, and spoil it?”
Both Stan Laurel and WC Fields understood the value of spontaneity in comedy. They knew that it most often had to be fresh for the audience to enjoy the performance. In Ronald J Fields’s 1984 book WC Fields: A Life on Film he gives us examples of this. Grady Sutton, who appeared with Fields in such classic films as The Man on the Flying Trapeze in 1935 and The Bank Dick in 1940, found that Fields would never play a scene the same way twice. When a director got angry because Sutton didn’t deliver his line during a scene in which Fields ad-libbed the dialogue, Fields told Sutton, “Now look, Son, we’ll work it this way. When you think I’ve said enough, well you just butt in.”
Stan Laurel was the unofficial director or co-director of the Laurel and Hardy films of the 1930s, just as WC Fields was in most of his films. Laurel always insisted on flat, even lighting of the whole set, so that he and Hardy would be free to go anywhere in any particular shot, as inspiration came to them as they performed the scene. Fields did this, too, in his films. In Ronald Fields’s book, we read Mary Brian’s memories of co-starring with Fields in The Man on the Flying Trapeze. Of Fields, she said that, “He used to have the set completely lit. Every corner would be lit and ready for action because we never knew where we might end up once a scene began. He might say, 'Daughter! Find my bathrobe.' Well, we hadn’t rehearsed it, but I’d have to go and look. Another time, my phone conversation about the Irish Woolen Mills at the end of the picture was not rehearsed. It was that loose.”
So we can see that although the public image of WC Fields and the comedy team of Laurel and Hardy may be somewhat different, they were very similar in their approach to making great comedy films. May their films always be available and be seen by millions of people around the world.