Cinema: The New Pictures: Aug. 31, 1931

Pardon Us (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) is the first full-length comedy made by Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Hopelessly in effectual in all their doings, they are particularly and painfully inefficient in this picture. First shown planning to manufacture homebrew, they are next seen being sentenced to prison because of their clumsiness. Added to the basic handicap of the Laurel face — blank, ugly, absurd —is the handicap in Pardon Us of a loose tooth which causes him to punctuate all his sentences with a vulgar and sarcastic noise.

These noises, perpetrated at inopportune moments, cause Laurel and Hardy to be persecuted by their jailers and fellow prisoners. When they escape from prison and, wearing blackface, take to working in a cottonfield, Laurel's impolite articulations cause their disguises to be penetrated.

Returned to jail, Laurel & Hardy attempt to take part in a jailbreak. But so muddled are their efforts that they aid the authorities more than the inmates and are rewarded by a pardon.

Screen comedians reach a crisis when they graduate from two-reel comedies to six-reel feature films. Funnymen Laurel & Hardy emerge from the crisis as funny as ever but no funnier. Their incapacities, hilarious in earlier and briefer studies, seem protracted in Pardon Us: they have added nothing to their formula except vulgarity. Funny shots: Laurel & Hardy making friends with the bloodhounds which have been sent to trail them; sing ing "Good morning, dear teacher," in the prison school; going to bed in the same cot so awkwardly that they break the cot.

Stanley Laurel and Oliver Hardy use their own names for the characters whom they impersonate in their pictures. Funny man Laurel was understudy to Charlie Chaplin when they both belonged to Fred Carno's London comedy company. When Mack Sennett saw Charlie Chaplin and Chaplin left the company to go into cinema, Laurel considered him "a fool for leaving." In 1917, playing a vaudeville engagement in Los Angeles, Stanley Laurel met Chaplin again, was persuaded to try a movie contract himself.

Oliver Hardy's father was an Atlanta, Ga. politician. Oliver was graduated from the University of Georgia Law School but preferred to sing for his living. He went into cinema from vaudeville, joined the Hal Roach (Our Gang) company in 1926. In 1927, he stopped using the nickname "Babe," changed to Oliver for numerological reasons. In 1927, also, he met Stan Laurel. They formed an immediate partnership, now have a song about it: "Ham & Eggs, Salt & Pepper, Bread & Butter, Laurel & Hardy, United we stand—divided we flop."

An expert golfer, Funnyman Hardy has won 24 cups and two gold medals; nonetheless, he is fat and soft-looking. Laurel is thin and pale, speaks with a low-grade London accent. Funnyman Laurel seems to be the more stupid of the two, but not by very much. In Pardon Us, the teacher in the prison school asks him how many times 3 goes into 9. Laurel's answer: "Three times—and two left over." Hardy's answer: "He's wrong—there's only one left over."