BABES IN TOYLAND aka March of the Wooden Soldiers (1934) Laurel & Hardy | Comedy, Fantasy | 4K | B&W

Babes in Toyland is a Laurel and Hardy musical Christmas film released on November 30, 1934. The film is also known by the alternative titles Laurel and Hardy in Toyland, Revenge Is Sweet (the 1948 European reissue title), and March of the Wooden Soldiers (in the United States), a 73-minute abridged version.

SYNOPSIS
Opposing the evil Barnaby, Ollie Dee and Stanley Dum try and fail to pay-off Mother Peep's mortgage and mislead his attempts to marry Little Bo. Enraged, Barnaby's Bogeymen are set on Toyland.

CAST & CREW
Virginia Karns as Mother Goose
Charlotte Henry as Bo-Peep
Felix Knight as Tom-Tom Piper
Florence Roberts as Widow Peep
Henry Kleinbach as Silas Barnaby
Stan Laurel as Stanley "Stannie" Dum
Oliver Hardy as Oliver "Ollie" Dee

Directed by Gus Meins, Charles Rogers
Screenplay by Frank Butler, Nick Grinde
Based on Babes in Toyland (operetta), book by: Glen MacDonough, Anna Alice Chapin
Produced by Hal Roach
Cinematography Francis Corby, Art Lloyd
Edited by Bert Jordan, William H. Terhune
Music by Victor Herbert, Glen MacDonough, Harry Jackson
Production companies Hal Roach Studios, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Distributed by Loew's, Inc.
Release date November 30, 1934
Running time 78 minutes
Country United States
Language English

NOTES
Production
RKO Pictures considered purchasing the property as an animated feature film to be shot in Technicolor by Walt Disney, however the projected price of the film gave pause to RKO's plans. Hal Roach, who had seen the play as a boy, acquired the film rights to the project in November 1933.

The film was completed in November 1934. The village of Toyland was built on sound stages at Hal Roach Studios with the buildings painted in vivid storybook colors, leading Stan Laurel to regret that the film wasn't shot in Technicolor.

Reception
Critics' reviews were positive. Andre Sennwald of The New York Times called the film "an authentic children's entertainment and quite the merriest of its kind that Hollywood has turned loose on the nation's screens in a long time." Variety proclaimed it "a film par excellence for children. It's packed with laughs and thrills and is endowed with that glamour of mysticism which marks juvenile literature." John Mosher wrote in The New Yorker: "It's certainly far more successful than was last year's Alice in Wonderland, and the children will probably be far less bored by it than they generally are by those films designed especially for them". Film Daily called it "delightful musical fantasy" and "dandy entertainment". The Chicago Tribune review read: "It's been many a long day since I've had so much pure (and I MEAN pure!) fun as I had watching this picture".

Copyright status
1950 re-release poster for Babes in Toyland (1934)
The original 79-minute film is under copyright to Prime TV Inc., the assets of which as of 2020 are owned by Nexstar Media Group, with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios (under Orion Pictures, which like MGM is now part of the Amazon corporation) still handling partial distribution rights of the film.

In 1950 a 73-minute edited version was distributed by Lippert Pictures, retitled March of the Wooden Soldiers; it was released without a copyright notice. The edited version of the film had the opening tune "Toyland" trimmed and the "Go to Sleep (Slumber Deep)" number cut completely. Also removed were Barnaby's attempted abduction of Little Bo-Peep and his ultimate fistfight with Tom-Tom. March of the Wooden Soldiers has been distributed by many motion picture and home video companies over the decades, as if it were in the public domain; however, because it relies entirely on copyrighted material from the 1934 film, March of the Wooden Soldiers itself falls under the same copyright as its parent film and will not truly enter the public domain until that film's copyright expires in 2030. Nexstar has not enforced its copyright on March of the Wooden Soldiers, effectively making the film an orphan work.

History
Hal Roach first sold the film to Federal Films. Federal Films, in turn, leased the rights to Lippert Pictures. In the early 1960s, Prime TV took over distribution. Shortly thereafter, Prime TV passed distribution on to WPIX and its eventual owners, Tribune Broadcasting. In the 1970s, Thunderbird Films released 16 mm prints drawn from a heavily spliced (and incomplete) master. In the 1980s, Tribune leased the film to The Samuel Goldwyn Company. The Samuel Goldwyn Company's select holdings (particularly the non-Samuel Goldwyn-produced films) ultimately became part of the Orion Pictures library. Finally, Orion became a division of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, thus after nearly eight decades, bringing partial rights full circle.

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