Helpmates - a Laurel and Hardy Review (1932)

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 I'm taking my time reading my next book review, so for now, you'll get more 1930s content. Today I picked a short film starring Laurel and Hardy. Let's get into it. 

Courtesy of Pinterest


Made in 1932, I'm reviewing Helpmates. This is an MGM production. The basic plot is simple. Hardy (Oliver Hardy) had a wild party and Laurel (Stan Laurel) gets a call from Hardy to help clean up, because Hardy's wife was coming home at noon. With all the physical comedy and verbal jokes (this is a talky) I expected, they mess it all up. Hardy comes home to a house burned down because Laurel tried to make a fire and spilled something flammable. Also, his wife is not with him when he returns. 

I've grown up watching Laurel and Hardy films. My dad loves these two actors and this era. The top films on my watch list are films I've already seen. This was lower on the ranked list I have. I wanted to watch something I'd never seen before. I do remember one of the lines, so it's possible I did watch it. These never get old. I love them. 

Overall Thoughts

Ten out of ten, for sure. These really do age like wine to me. This was one of the ones Laurel wrote with Hal Roach, which means it is better than their later work. If you didn't know, Laurel and Hal Roach eventually had a falling out, leading to Laurel no longer writing their comedy and only acting in it. This was a great one. I loved it. 

Not only do we have physical comedy going on (so much physical comedy, kind of like a living cartoon), but we also have verbal comedy. This was talky, which means it had recorded sound. All the jokes between the two of them were perfectly timed. I had so much fun watching it. I can highly suggest letting your kids watch these. They are just as good as Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. Fun fact: Laurel was the understudy of Chaplin. 

There was nothing I disliked, nothing that made me cringe, nothing that aged like milk. Everything in this short aged well. I'm watching these for research. I paid attention to what appliances were present. It's a fun exercise to watch old films and note what is normally in a house or how they do laundry. What was normal to wear is also easily observable in film. This tells me a lot about the 1930s and what was common. The telephone number, for example, is a place and four numbers. They speak to a switchboard operator to place a call. 


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