FROM SOUP TO NUTS
Written and filmed December, 1927 - January, 1928. Produced by Hal Roach. Supervised by Leo McCarey. Directed by Edgar Kennedy. Two reels.Cast: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Anita Garvin, Tiny Sandford, Edna Marion, Ellinor Vanderveer.
STORY: Stan and Ollie are waiters at a ritzy dinner party. Predictably, they are more adept at spilling things than serving them.
JL:
A funny picture, but most of the bits played better when they recycled
them twelve years later in A CHUMP AT OXFORD. In the later film, there
is a better sense of character and more careful setup for the gags. It
also had Stan drunk and in drag, which added an extra kick to the
"serve the salad undressed" business. From
Soup to Nuts
is a fun, slapsticky twenty minutes, but the gags definitely take
precedence over the characters. Stan and Ollie mess things up and fall
down a lot, but there's little time for any insight in to their
relationship. Stan again seems a bit smarter than his later self,
barking orders at Ollie and coming up with an ingenious solution to
Anita Garvin's troublesome maraschino cherry. (It is Miss Garvin, by
the way, who steals the film.)
JB:
Your observation about Stan seeming smarter than usual goes back to my
point that Stan and the writers couldn't quite nail down who Stanley
was at this early juncture. Perhaps this was because Ollie's character
is probably quite close to the real Oliver Hardy (except for the
difference in intelligence). Oliver Hardy had no pressing desire to be
a comedian --- he was happy just to be in pictures, and his
performances are a delight because they are so effortless --- they are
just a natural extension of his own personality, with a little comic
exaggeration. Stan, however, was a comedian, and had been searching for
a character for years, much like Harold Lloyd. At this point,
he
had not yet found it completely. This is not to say that the early
Stanley was not funny --- just not fully developed yet. It would take
sound to bring him into focus.
