December 4, 2014
Great Guns – US, 1941
I feel great pity for the supporting actors in Laurel and
Hardy’s later films. After all, imagine the joy that they must have felt upon
hearing the news that they had been cast alongside the legendary duo, the
excitement of those first days on the set, and the difficulty they must have
had keeping a straight face as the comic pair dispensed one comic zinger after
another. In one sense, it must have been a dream come true. Yet I pity them
nonetheless. These same actors were often hampered by scripts that called upon
them to be the polar opposites of Laurel and Hardy on screen. If Laurel and
Hardy were laughing it up, they often had to keep a straight face. If they were
doing slapstick routines or delivering comic banter, their characters usually
just took it all in. They stood to the side either smiling approvingly or
calmly watching as Stan and Oliver worked their magic without fully engaging in
it.
In Laurel and Hardy’s 1941 film Great Guns, the team are paired with Dick Nelson, here making his
big screen debut. It should be said that Nelson makes much more of an
impression than most of his supporting-actor predecessors despite not being
asked to do much. It helps that Nelson has an everyday man quality about him
and that his character, Dan Forrester, is a young man who is not very well
versed in the ways of the world. This makes Nelson’s portrayal of him as being
slightly naïve and apt to miss things in plain sight rather logical. See, throughout
much of his life, Dan has been told that he is so unwell that the slightest exertion
or exposure to germs could send him to his death bed. Despite this, we can sense
his zest to see the world and do his part for Uncle Sam. In the film’s opening
moments, we learn that Stan and Oliver are employed by Forrester, and when he
is drafted into the army, the two of them sign up as well, but only to ensure
that he is properly looked after. After all, they remind the audience
frequently, Dan is a very weak man.
Joining the army was not a new theme for Stan and Oliver. They
had joined the US Army is 1932’s Pack Up
Your Troubles, enlisted in the French Foreign Legion in 1939’s Flying Deuces, played Navy men in 1936’s
Our Relations, and portrayed veterans
of World War I in Block-Heads (1838).
By the time Great Guns was made, they
had begun to show their age, and it only made sense for the pair to be
portrayed as patriotic figures whose services Uncle Sam politely declined, as
happened later in Air Raid Wardens
from 1943. The theme is also not unique to them. In fact, Great Guns appears to have been made as a response to the
overwhelming success of Buck Privates
(1941), which starred another famous pair, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. In Great
Guns, Laurel and Hardy do manage to enlist, but the mistake is clear from
the get-go. In one scene, their regiment is inspected, and a senior officer
comments on what a fine group of men they are. Then Laurel and Hardy show up.
The plot of Great Guns
can be summed up very easily. “Sick” boy gets drafted. Employees go along to
take care of him. Boy meets girl. People try to keep them apart. There in four
simple sentences is the storyline, and if it looks familiar, it should. This
has been the standard plot of countless films, books, and plays involving rich
characters who fall in love with people whose fortunes are far less than their
own. And to be honest, other than the presence of Stan and Oliver, there isn’t
much to distinguish this particular telling of it. There is even the standard
plotline involving a second suitor, this one Dan’s superior, Sergeant Hippo.
Interestingly, the sergeant is played by Edmund MacDonald, and MacDonald
injects the film with so much energy and charisma that it is easy to forgive
his rather blatant James Cagney impersonation. In fact, I couldn’t help
wondering whether the role had originally been offered to Cagney or if the
casting call had been for an actor with a Cagney-like appearance.
As a whole, the film is moderately successful, despite being
rather formulaic. As with most Laurel and Hardy films, it has its fair share of
engaging moments. One of the best of these involves Stan and a light bulb that
just doesn’t work the way it is supposed to. I also particularly enjoyed a scene in which
Stan and Laurel dress up as businessmen (typhoons
as Stan puts it) and try to convince Ginger Hammond, the woman Dan loves, to
give him up. Hammond is played by Sheila Ryan, and in the scene, she, Laurel,
and Hardy ham up the screen with their purposefully overdramatic delivery of
the sort of lines that we’ve seen in countless dramas with this storyline. The
scene is so wonderfully over-the-top that even Stan starts applauding his buddy’s
delivery and commenting on how amazing Gloria’s performance is.
Unfortunately, the film has one particular scene that will make
modern-day audiences cringe. The scene involves exploding gunpowder and the
effect it has on Sergent Hippo’s face, and the unease comes as a result of
Laurel and Hardy’s questionable comments about Hippo’s new appearance. Knowledgeable
moviegoers will likely understand what happens just by reading that
description. The scene is a product of its time, and, truth be told, this is
not the first Laurel and Hardy film to include such a scene. Having
acknowledged that, however, the inclusion of the scene seemed much less forgivable
this time around. After all, it is one thing for a film from 1931 to include
them. Seeing one in a film made ten years later on the eve of World War II left
me disappointed that Hollywood still hadn’t evolved.
Great Guns is
lesser Laurel and Hardy. It had fewer laugh-out-loud moments, and it seems
clear that the pair’s comic zaniness is being kept in check, although I doubt
this is intentional. The film continues the trend of putting the boys in
situations rife with comic potential and then saddling them with scenarios that
limit them creatively. And then there is the small matter of the film’s grand
finale. In an effort to end big and send the audience home happy, the film ends
in a flurry of energy. However, it achieves this energy by taking its
characters so far off their logical trajectory that storylines that a great
deal of time had been spent setting up do not receive proper conclusions. The
result is that instead of producing joy and awe, the film ends with a whimper, with
a scene intended to give the impression that everything is now okay for all
involved. It is an example of telling instead of showing, and what movie has
ever been truly effective employing that strategy? (on DVD)
2 and a half stars stars
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