Unaccustomed As We Are 🤵🤵 Laurel and Hardy 💬🎭

1 year ago
14

Stanley is invited over by Oliver for a cozy home-cooked dinner, but Mrs. Hardy disapproves and leaves. Their attractive neighbor, Mrs. Kennedy, offers assistance, but the duo's clumsiness sets her dress ablaze. As her police officer husband looks into the commotion, Oliver conceals a partially undressed Mrs. Kennedy in a trunk. Unfortunately, Mr. Kennedy's bragging about managing his own philandering goes awry when his wife emerges from the crate and gives him a black eye. In the meantime, a curious Mrs. Hardy returns, wondering about the uproar next door.

In their first sound film, Laurel and Hardy introduced two iconic sound-based gags: Officer Kennedy's off-screen altercation with his wife and Stan Laurel's noisy fall down a flight of stairs. Both gags would become classics and be reused in later works.

Three versions of this short film were produced due to uncertainty about the sound technology that would prevail. They included a sound-on-disk version, a sound-on-film version, and a silent version with title cards. The original sound-on-film version is thought to be lost. For over 50 years, only the silent version was available. A rare soundtrack discovered in the late 1970s allowed for the reconstruction of the talkie version seen today.

Mae Busch first portrayed the feisty Mrs. Hardy in this film, having previously played James Finlayson's ex-girlfriend in Love 'Em and Weep (1927). She reprised her role as Mrs. Hardy in Sons of the Desert (1933) and The Bohemian Girl (1936).

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