Pardon Us
Encyclopedia
Pardon Us is Laurel and Hardy
's first feature length comedy film
. It was produced by Hal Roach
and Stan Laurel
, directed by James Parrott
, and originally distributed by MGM in 1931.
, 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. Stan has a loose tooth that causes him to emit a razzberry at the end of every sentence; the inmate interprets this as a coolly defiant attitude and is impressed — nobody else ever stood up to him like that. He and Stan and Ollie become fast friends.
After a prison break, the boys escape to a cotton plantation, where they hide out undetected, in blackface
. When they attempt to repair the warden's car, they are discovered and are sent back to prison. They inadvertently break up a prison riot and the grateful warden issues them a pardon.
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 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 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 structure has been criticized as that of a string of short subjects thrown together to make one episodic feature. The pacing is deliberate, allowing 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 includes a number of silent film
veterans, including Walter Long
. As a foil to the child-like antics of L&H, his snarling portrayal of "The Tiger" is decidedly tongue in cheek. Long would be put to similar use in some later L&H ventures such as Any Old Port!
, Going Bye-Bye!
, and The Live Ghost
.
The warden, played by D.W. Griffith regular Wilfred Lucas
, meets Stan and Ollie upon their arrival at the prison. "My, my... And still they come..." he intones with a saintly air, until he mistakes Stan's loose tooth razzberry for 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
. In the original script, she was to appear at the climax of the picture trapped inside the prison during the final jail-break attempt scene. An elaborate sequence was filmed but not used, in which the convicts set the prison on fire as part of their escape plan and the warden's daughter was seen screaming from her second floor bedroom surrounded by flames and menaced by the lecherous "Tiger". Laurel and Hardy were then to enter for a grand slapstick finale involving a fire hose and a ladder. This scene wasn't made available until a 2004 DVD
issue (see below).
Stan Laurel did not find this sequence satisfactory, and re-filmed the much simpler ending involving the boys holding the convicts at bay with a machine gun. In the released version, June Marlowe does not 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.
The plantation scenes with the boys in black face were key to the movie's plot. Although no Negro actor had a significant camera role, the Etude Ethiopian Chorus, directed by Freita Shaw and managed by her partner Mattie Duckett, can be heard singing "Swing Along", "Hand Me Down The Silver Trumpet Gabriel", and other numbers during the plantation scene.
It was released in the UK under an alternate title, Jailbirds.
version was filmed, 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 and Italian versions no longer exist, but some extracts from the German version were discovered in 1999 and are available on DVD.
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 irreplaceable. 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.
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 (although this is really a duplication of an earlier scene with different dubbed lines from The Boys in their cells), and second performance of "Hand Me Down My Silver Trumpet Gabriel" in re-edited cotton field footage. 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 Fools' Day
salute to Laurel and Hardy. Finally, in 2004, Universal Studios
issued a DVD
which includes a restored black-and-white version with added scenes taken from preview copies (including the fire scene where the boys rescue the warden's daughter) as well as a shorter computor-colour version.
Laurel and Hardy
Laurel and Hardy were one of the most popular and critically acclaimed comedy double acts of the early Classical Hollywood era of American cinema...
's first feature length comedy film
Comedy film
Comedy film is a genre of film in which the main emphasis is on humour. They are designed to elicit laughter from the audience. Comedies are mostly light-hearted dramas and are made to amuse and entertain the audiences...
. It was produced by Hal Roach
Hal Roach
Harold Eugene "Hal" Roach, Sr. was an American film and television producer and director, and from the 1910s to the 1990s.- Early life and career :Hal Roach was born in Elmira, New York...
and Stan Laurel
Stan Laurel
Arthur Stanley "Stan" Jefferson , better known as Stan Laurel, was an English comic actor, writer and film director, famous as the first half of the comedy team Laurel and Hardy. His film acting career stretched between 1917 and 1951 and included a starring role in the Academy Award winning film...
, directed by James Parrott
James Parrott
James Parrott , was an American actor and film director; and the younger brother of film comedian Charley Chase.-Early years:...
, and originally distributed by MGM in 1931.
Plot
It is prohibitionProhibition
Prohibition of alcohol, often referred to simply as prohibition, is the practice of prohibiting the manufacture, transportation, import, export, sale, and consumption of alcohol and alcoholic beverages. The term can also apply to the periods in the histories of the countries during which the...
, 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. Stan has a loose tooth that causes him to emit a razzberry at the end of every sentence; the inmate interprets this as a coolly defiant attitude and is impressed — nobody else ever stood up to him like that. He and Stan and Ollie become fast friends.
After a prison break, the boys escape to a cotton plantation, where they hide out undetected, in blackface
Blackface
Blackface is a form of theatrical makeup used in minstrel shows, and later vaudeville, in which performers create a stereotyped caricature of a black person. The practice gained popularity during the 19th century and contributed to the proliferation of stereotypes such as the "happy-go-lucky darky...
. When they attempt to repair the warden's car, they are discovered and are sent back to prison. They inadvertently break up a prison riot and the grateful warden issues them a pardon.
Opening title card
H.M. Walker wrote the opening title card to this film, which states, "Mr. Hardy is a man of wonderful ideas — So is Mr. Laurel — As long as he doesn't try to think."Production
After the release of MGM's hit The Big HouseThe Big House
-Places:in Ireland* Bighouse, County Antrim, a townland in County Antrim, Northern Irelandin Russia*Bolshoy Dom , notorious headquarters of state security services in Saint Petersburg, Russiain United States...
with Chester Morris
Chester Morris
Chester Morris was an American actor, who starred in the Boston Blackie detective series of the 1940s.-Career:...
and Wallace Beery
Wallace Beery
Wallace Fitzgerald Beery was an American actor. He is best known for his portrayal of Bill in Min and Bill opposite Marie Dressler, as Long John Silver in Treasure Island, as Pancho Villa in Viva Villa!, and his titular role in The Champ, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor...
, producer Hal Roach
Hal Roach
Harold Eugene "Hal" Roach, Sr. was an American film and television producer and director, and from the 1910s to the 1990s.- Early life and career :Hal Roach was born in Elmira, New York...
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
Louis B. Mayer
Louis Burt Mayer born Lazar Meir was an American film producer. He is generally cited as the creator of the "star system" within Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in its golden years. Known always as Louis B...
agreed to the proposition on the proviso that Laurel and Hardy
Laurel and Hardy
Laurel and Hardy were one of the most popular and critically acclaimed comedy double acts of the early Classical Hollywood era of American cinema...
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 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 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
Comedy
Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...
feature-length offering, running a little under an hour, it is not considered one of Laurel and Hardy
Laurel and Hardy
Laurel and Hardy were one of the most popular and critically acclaimed comedy double acts of the early Classical Hollywood era of American cinema...
's best. Its structure has been criticized as that of a string of short subjects thrown together to make one episodic feature. The pacing is deliberate, allowing 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 includes a number of silent film
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
veterans, including Walter Long
Walter Long (actor)
Walter Huntley Long was an American character actor in films from the 1910s. He was born in Nashua, New Hampshire.-Career:He appeared in many D. W...
. As a foil to the child-like antics of L&H, his snarling portrayal of "The Tiger" is decidedly tongue in cheek. Long would be put to similar use in some later L&H ventures such as Any Old Port!
Any Old Port!
Any Old Port! is a 1932 short film starring Laurel and Hardy, directed by James W.Horne and produced by Hal Roach.-Plot:Sailors Laurel and Hardy disembark and book in a sleazy hotel. The owner Mugsie Long intends to marry a young girl against her wishes, but Stan and Ollie come to her rescue...
, Going Bye-Bye!
Going Bye-Bye!
- Plot :In a packed courtroom, Butch Long vows revenge on 'squealers' Laurel and Hardy whose evidence has helped to send him to prison for the rest of his life, threatening to "break off their legs and wrap 'em around their necks!"...
, and The Live Ghost
The Live Ghost
The Live Ghost is a 1934 American short film starring Laurel and Hardy, directed by Charles Rogers and produced by Hal Roach.-Plot:A tough sea captain is unable to hire on any new crew because his ship is reputed to be haunted, so he persuades fish-market workers Laurel and Hardy to shanghai a...
.
The warden, played by D.W. Griffith regular Wilfred Lucas
Wilfred Lucas
Wilfred Lucas was a Canadian stage and film actor, film director, and screenwriter.-Career:A native of Ontario, Canada, Lucas headed to New York City to work in the theater, making his Broadway acting debut in 1904 at the Savoy Theater in the production of The Superstition of Sue...
, meets Stan and Ollie upon their arrival at the prison. "My, my... And still they come..." he intones with a saintly air, until he mistakes Stan's loose tooth razzberry for the real thing, thus changing his demeanor violently.
June Marlowe
June Marlowe
June Marlowe , was an American actress, who appeared in six Our Gang short subjects as the lovely schoolteacher Miss Crabtree.-Career:...
, 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
Cutting room floor
The term cutting room floor is used in the film industry as a figure of speech referring to unused footage not included in the finished film. In fact offcuts of film are retained in a special cutting room bin and numbered during the editing process in case they are required later...
. In the original script, she was to appear at the climax of the picture trapped inside the prison during the final jail-break attempt scene. An elaborate sequence was filmed but not used, in which the convicts set the prison on fire as part of their escape plan and the warden's daughter was seen screaming from her second floor bedroom surrounded by flames and menaced by the lecherous "Tiger". Laurel and Hardy were then to enter for a grand slapstick finale involving a fire hose and a ladder. This scene wasn't made available until a 2004 DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
issue (see below).
Stan Laurel did not find this sequence satisfactory, and re-filmed the much simpler ending involving the boys holding the convicts at bay with a machine gun. In the released version, June Marlowe does not appear in this sequence at all. However, she does appear in the Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
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.
The plantation scenes with the boys in black face were key to the movie's plot. Although no Negro actor had a significant camera role, the Etude Ethiopian Chorus, directed by Freita Shaw and managed by her partner Mattie Duckett, can be heard singing "Swing Along", "Hand Me Down The Silver Trumpet Gabriel", and other numbers during the plantation scene.
It was released in the UK under an alternate title, Jailbirds.
Cast (in credits order)
- Stan LaurelStan LaurelArthur Stanley "Stan" Jefferson , better known as Stan Laurel, was an English comic actor, writer and film director, famous as the first half of the comedy team Laurel and Hardy. His film acting career stretched between 1917 and 1951 and included a starring role in the Academy Award winning film...
as Stan - Oliver HardyOliver HardyOliver Hardy was an American comic actor famous as one half of Laurel and Hardy, the classic double act that began in the era of silent films and lasted nearly 30 years, from 1927 to 1955.-Early life:...
as Ollie - June MarloweJune MarloweJune Marlowe , was an American actress, who appeared in six Our Gang short subjects as the lovely schoolteacher Miss Crabtree.-Career:...
as Warden's Daughter - Wilfred LucasWilfred LucasWilfred Lucas was a Canadian stage and film actor, film director, and screenwriter.-Career:A native of Ontario, Canada, Lucas headed to New York City to work in the theater, making his Broadway acting debut in 1904 at the Savoy Theater in the production of The Superstition of Sue...
as Warden - James Finlayson as Schoolteacher
- Walter LongWalter Long (actor)Walter Huntley Long was an American character actor in films from the 1910s. He was born in Nashua, New Hampshire.-Career:He appeared in many D. W...
as The Tiger - Tiny SandfordTiny SandfordStanley J. "Tiny" Sandford was a tall, burly actor who is best remembered for his roles in Laurel and Hardy and Charlie Chaplin films. He was usually cast as a comic heavy, and often played policemen, doormen, prizefighters, or bullies.Sandford was born in Osage, Iowa. After working in stock...
as Prison Guard
Foreign language versions
Besides the Spanish version De Bote en Bote mentioned earlier, an ItalianItalian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
version was filmed, entitled Muraglie ("Walls"). A German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
version was also filmed, entitled Hinter Schloss und Riegel ("Behind Lock and Bar"). The French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
version was entitled Sous Les Verrous ("Under the Locks"). Unfortunately, the French and Italian versions no longer exist, but some extracts from the German version were discovered in 1999 and are available on DVD.
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 irreplaceable. So Pardon Us, along with such shorts such as Blotto
Blotto (1930 film)
Blotto is a comedy film starring Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.-Production background:The film survives only in a censored 1937 re-release print which has had Pre-Code sequences removed and a new music track added.Although the original 1930 version is now...
, Chickens Come Home
Chickens Come Home
Chickens Come Home is a 1931 short film starring Laurel and Hardy, directed by James W. Horne and produced by Hal Roach. It was shot in January, 1931 and released on February 21, 1931...
, 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
Boris Karloff
William Henry Pratt , better known by his stage name Boris Karloff, was an English actor.Karloff is best remembered for his roles in horror films and his portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in Frankenstein , Bride of Frankenstein , and Son of Frankenstein...
playing "The Tiger" in the French version, before he became famous in Frankenstein
Frankenstein (1931 film)
Frankenstein is a 1931 Pre-Code Horror Monster film from Universal Pictures directed by James Whale and adapted from the play by Peggy Webling which in turn is based on the novel of the same name by Mary Shelley. The film stars Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, John Boles and Boris Karloff, and features...
premiered in theaters on November 21, 1931.
Availability
Three 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-1980s, the 3M3M
3M Company , formerly known as the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation based in Maplewood, Minnesota, United States....
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 (although this is really a duplication of an earlier scene with different dubbed lines from The Boys in their cells), and second performance of "Hand Me Down My Silver Trumpet Gabriel" in re-edited cotton field footage. 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
Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies is a movie-oriented cable television channel, owned by the Turner Broadcasting System subsidiary of Time Warner, featuring commercial-free classic movies, mostly from the Turner Entertainment and MGM, United Artists, RKO and Warner Bros. film libraries...
April Fools' Day
April Fools' Day
April Fools' Day is celebrated in different countries around the world on April 1 every year. Sometimes referred to as All Fools' Day, April 1 is not a national holiday, but is widely recognized and celebrated as a day when many people play all kinds of jokes and foolishness...
salute to Laurel and Hardy. Finally, in 2004, Universal Studios
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....
issued a DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
which includes a restored black-and-white version with added scenes taken from preview copies (including the fire scene where the boys rescue the warden's daughter) as well as a shorter computor-colour version.