Pardon Us
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| The [Neutral point of view>neutrality] of this article is [NPOV disputedisputed]. Please see the discussion on the [1931 feature comedy film, and the first feature film starring Laurel and Hardy. It was produced at the Hal Roach Studios.
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PlotIt is prohibition, and beer barons Laurel and Hardy are sent to prison for concocting their own home brew. They are put in a cell with "Tiger" Long, the roughest, toughest and meanest of all inmates. After a prison break, The Boys escape to a cotton plantation, where they hide out undetected, in blackface. They are discovered when they attempt to repair the warden's car, and are sent back to prison. They inadvertently break up a prison riot and the grateful warden issues them a pardon.CastStan Laurel . . . . . StanleyOliver Hardy . . . . . Oliver Walter Long . . . . . The Tiger June Marlowe . . . . . Warden's Daughter Jimmy Finlayson . . . . . Schoolteacher Wilfred Lucas . . . . . Warden Opening title cardH.M. Walker wrote the title cards for Laurel and Hardy short films until he quit in 1932. The opening title cart to this film states, "Mr. Hardy is a man of wonderful ideas --- So is Mr. Laurel --- As long as he doesn't try to think."The MakingAfter the release of MGM's hit The Big House with Chester Morris and Wallace Beery, producer Hal Roach decided to feature his top comedy team in a two-reeler spoofing the current prison drama. Roach also felt that since his product was currently being released through MGM, there would be no problem borrowing the sets to The Big House from them to keep costs down. Studio head Louis B. Mayer agreed to the proposition on the proviso that Laurel and Hardy would make a film for his studio in the near future. Infuriated, Roach turned down the offer, hiring set designer Frank Durloff to build an exact replica of the prison sets used in The Big House.The film began production as The Rap in June of 1930. To Roach's dismay, shooting went way over schedule with enough footage already in the can to make two prison pictures. As a result the producer decided to release The Rap as Laurel and Hardy's first starring feature. Previewed in August of 1930, the film ran 70 minutes, and was subject to lukewarm reviews in which critics stated that the movie needed a bit of tightening. Stan Laurel decided to withdraw the film from general distribution and work on the picture by adding new scenes and deleting unnecessary ones. A musical score was then added, and eventually, after much trial and error, Pardon Us (its release title) was premiered on August 15, 1931, a year after its first preview. As a comedy feature-length offering, running a little under an hour, it is not considered one of Laurel and Hardy's best. Its major flaw is that it seems like a string of short subjects thrown together to make one episodic feature. The pacing is deliberate with the Boys going through their routines leisurely, taking some time out for Oliver Hardy to sing a rendition of "Lazy Moon" while Stan accompanies him with an eccentric soft shoe dance. The cast, many of whom are veterans of the silent era, proves memorable with Walter Long provided a terrific foil to the child-like antics of L&H. His portrayal of "The Tiger" is decidedly tongue in cheek, emphasizing the fact that all comic villains should never play their screen villainy totally straight. Long would be put to good use in some later L&H ventures such as Any Old Port, Going Bye-Bye, and The Live Ghost. The warden is played by D.W. Griffith regular Wilfred Lucas, who has a great scene with the Boys at the beginning of the film in which they are brought into his office on their first day of incarceration. "My, my... And still they come..." he intones with a saintly air, until he mistakes Stan's loose tooth razzberry as the real thing, thus changing his demeanor violently. June Marlowe, who portrays the warden's daughter has only a very brief appearance despite her receiving billing immediately after the boys. Apparently most of her role ended up on the cutting room floor. As was originally intended, she was to appear at the climax of the picture trapped inside the prison during the final jail-break attempt scene. A more elaborate sequence was filmed, in which the convicts were to set the prison on fire as part of their escape plan. The warden's daughter is then seen screaming from her second floor bedroom surrounted by flames when "The Tiger" suddenly appears in her boudoir with other things on his mind rather than dousing the flames. Enter Laurel and Hardy for a grand slapstick finale involving a fire hose and a ladder. Foreign language versionsStan Laurel did not find this sequence satisfactory, and refilmed the much simpler ending involving the Boys holding the convicts at bay with a machine gun. In the released version, June Marlowe doesn't appear in this sequence at all. However, she does appear in the Spanish version of Pardon Us, which was entitled De Bote en Bote ("From Cell to Cell"). This version still exists, allowing us to view the alternate ending to the film in which the boys in gray beards are reminiscing.An Italian version was filmed, it was entitled Muraglie ("Walls"). A German version was also filmed, entitled Hinter Schloss und Riegel ("Behind Lock and Bar"). The French version was entitled Sous Les Verrous ("Under the Locks"). Unfortunately, the French, Italian and German versions no longer exist. Each foreign language version was shot simultaneously with the English version, with the actors actually speaking the language. This was accomplished by employing actors who were fluent in their respective languages for smaller roles, with the major parts reserved for the American actors. These films were cunningly conceived, with language coaches reciting the lines and the mono-lingual performers writing their lines down phonetically on cue cards. These cue cards were just out of camera range, and it was not uncommon to see an actor glance off to the side for their next cue in the days before dubbing, but it proved to be too expensive and time consuming. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were so popular, they proved to be irreplacable. So Pardon Us, along with such shorts such as Blotto, Chickens Come Home, and Below Zero had a French and Spanish version. Laurel and Hardy spoke their lines phonetically, and many supporting roles were recast, including Boris Karloff playing "The Tiger" in the French version, before he became famous in Frankenstein premiered in theaters on November 21, 1931. AvailabilityTwo prints of different length are in circulation today. The 56-minute version is the common one, and the one which most viewers have seen over the years. In the mid-1980's, the 3M company issued a series of L&H films on laserdisc and used a long-lost preview print of Pardon Us for this series. It ran nine minutes longer than all previous prints, and contained additional footage with the warden, another scene with The Boys in solitary confinement, and a few additional songs. Though this longer version has not been issued on home video (the 3M series was discontinued in the late 80's), it has been shown several times on the cable network AMC. The 64-minute version also aired on TCM's April Fool's Day salute to Laurel and Hardy.External linksSee also
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