Big Business

Stan (Stan Laurel) and Ollie (Oliver Hardy) are door-to-door Christmas tree salesmen in sunny California, but keep getting doors slammed in their faces. After a man (James Finlayson) throws their tree into the street and cuts it in half, the boys retaliate by carving off the street-numbers from the man's door, and a full-scale war erupts, resulting in the complete destruction of both the boys' car and the man's entire house.

BIG BUSINESS is a sidespitting example of Laurel and Hardy's legendary tit-for-tat routines, raised to an hysterically surreal level of mass demolition. After a brief buildup in which the boys get conked on the head by a hammer at one house, and insult an unmarried woman by asking if her husband would buy a tree if she were married, they encounter their perennial foil, the hilarious, bald-pated, bushy mustached, cross-eyed James Finlayson. After he destroys their tree, the reciprocal acts of revenge escalate at a dizzying pace: Ollie snips the few remaining hairs from the man's head, so he smashes Ollie's watch; Ollie cuts off the doorbell, and the man calls the police, but Stan cuts the phone cord. The man cuts Ollie's shirt and tie, and the boys spray him with a garden hose. A crowd gathers, and a cop drives by and calmly watches this amazing melee, as the man blows up the boys' car, and they retaliate by ripping up the man's lawn, then break into his house and start throwing furniture, vases, and even a piano out the window. The cop finally breaks it up and when he asks who started the fight, everyone starts crying. They all shake hands and make up, and Stan gives the man a cigar, but it explodes in his face, and the cop chases the boys down the street.

Everything in the film is perfect, from the performances to the clever intertitles, to the razor-sharp editing, to George Stevens's crystal-clear photography, but much of the credit must go to Leo McCarey--the comic genius who would later direct DUCK SOUP (1933), among other classics--who not only wrote the story but receives the unusual credit of "Supervising Director," (although reliable L & H regular James Horne is listed as the regular director). In later years, Hal Roach liked to tell the apocryphal story that the wrong house had been destroyed during filming, but in fact, the home belonged to a Roach employee, who was well paid for his sacrifice. The actual destruction, along with the consummate timing of the gags, and Stan's subtle facial expressions, Ollie's incongruously dainty physical movements, and Finlayson's mock-angry reaction shots, all combine to create a masterpiece of comic invention that has no other purpose than to produce uncontrollable gales of laughter, which it most admirably accomplishes. (Violence.) leave a comment