Battle of the Century

Because I had a post to do already today on Rock Hudson's being TCM's Star of the Month, I wanted to do a short of some sort. I had a couple from when TCM did a day of movies on the UCLA Film and TV archive, and from that I selected the Laurel and Hardy short Battle of the Century.

Information before the short begins informs us that most of this was for decades considered lost, but most of it is now extant, with a few production stills used to finish a transitional scene involving Eugene Pallette. In the first reel, Stan is a boxer and Ollie his manager/trainer. Stan seems to be going up quite a ways in terms of weight classes, but somehow his first punch manages to knock out his opponent. Except that Stan isn't bright enough to go to a neutral corner so the referee can start the 10-count. Stan later gets knocked out, meaning a very small purse for him and Ollie.

The first reel ends with the missing bit involving Pallette. Pallette is an insurance agent who sells Ollie a policy that will pay out big... if Stan gets injured. So of course, Ollie spends the second half trying to get poor Stan injured, by buying a banana and dropping the peel for Stan to slip on. Stan, unsurprisingly, doesn't slip on it, while other people do.

The climax of the movie comes when a pie maker slips on it and cream pie goes all over the place. As you can guess, this is an opportunity to have a huge pie fight, since pie fights were considered funny back in the day, and that pie fight takes up the final third or so of the short, although since it's a two-reeler that's only about six minutes of pie fighting.

Even then, I felt the pie fight went on too long. And Stan is asked to be too stupid during the boxing scene. Battle of the Century isn't terrible, but there's definitely better Laurel and Hardy stuff out there.