What was omitted or mistaken: Wrong on two scores: Hardy had talked to the camera in the French version of Be Big. This then-fresh device was popularized in the Hope & Crosby ‘Road’ Pictures.” (page 12) Statement in the book: MacGillivray writes of Hardy, “He does the unimaginable in Great Guns not only does he look straight into the camera, he actually talks straight into the camera for the only time in history. In that film, the routine had been a throwaway gag in Great Guns, it was a highlight of the whole film. What was omitted or mistaken: MacGillivray said that this is “one of the oldest gags in the Laurel & Hardy book.” The earlier film is not identified as The Finishing Touch. Statement in the book: MacGillivray discusses the gag in Great Guns where on the bridge Stan is carrying planks, befuddling Ollie by appearing where he shouldn’t.
What was omitted or mistaken: This is not an error, but I would add that the gag is more similar to the lightbulb bit in the comedians’ 1932 short Their First Mistake. Statement in the book: The lightbulb gag in Great Guns is said to be similar to that in their previous feature, Saps at Sea. The new cut was indeed two reels longer (21 minutes, on the basis of subtraction from the two running times), but with the Oxford sequence now longer, because of incorporation of the previously-unused takes that are mentioned in MacGillivray’s next paragraph. The employment agency sequence and the scenes it leads to (where Stan and Ollie work as servants) total about twelve minutes, not two reels (about twenty minutes). (The street-sweeping sequence had originally been filmed as the opening scene and remained the opening scene in the shorter cut.) Even making this allowance, MacGillivray’s account does not correspond to the facts. What was omitted or mistaken: The employment-agency sequence is a very few minutes in the length, so let’s assume that MacGillivray meant his statement to embrace all of the footage in the longer cut which precedes the street-sweeping sequence. The added material was an employment-agency sequence, which preceded the street-sweeping scene.” (page 3) Statement in the book: In relating the production history of A Chump of Oxford, it’s said that after the film had been presumed finished, producer Hal Roach “called Laurel & Hardy in to shoot two more reels of footage. I say “mostly” because in a few instances I found it instructive to my reader to include mentions of what was omitted from the book where the absence of the information might differently color the text or where the reader of the book might be curious about something left unsaid.
With an appreciation for what I learned from Laurel & Hardy: From the Forties Forward, I herein present what is a list of what is mostly errata. Errors in any book are unfortunate, and perhaps one should not think unkindly of an author whose errors are few. Everson’s discussion of the compilations in The Films of Laurel & Hardy, yet MacGillivray researched and wrote of the theatrical re-releases of the late 1940s and the companies that participated.
Previously, the only recycling of the films given discussion had been William K. Whereas most such books devoted much fewer column inches to the 20th Century-Fox and M-G-M films than they did to the Roach ones, MacGillivray sought to even the score. Publication of Laurel & Hardy: From the Forties Forward by Scott MacGillivray filled a gap left by earlier earlier films on the team. Errata list for Laurel & Hardy: From the Forties Forward by Scott MacGillivray Observations by David Hayes
0 kommentar(er)
