The Battle of the Century (1927)

Touches You

A Major Disappointment

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

This is the first comment of a series of films where I'm attempting to connect two legendary comedy teams: Laurel & Hardy and Abbott & Costello. For this initial one-The Battle of the Century-we're at a time when Hal Roach's duo of a thin Englishman and a heavyset Georgia man were just starting their creative chemistry to an adoring public while a young and thin man (at the time) in his twenties from Patterson, New Jersey, was just attempting to break out in Hollywood any way he can which includes stunt work and occasional extra parts. It's here that Lou Costello makes an appearance in the audience of a boxing match between Stan and Noah Young with Ollie being Stan's manager. Half the time watching I was a little distracted looking for Costello but I still managed to laugh at Stan's antics in the boxing ring. I especially loved his dance at the beginning. I half wondered if Lou thought of this sequence when he did his own comic fights in later A & C vehicles. It certainly was amusing enough for the first reel which for years afterward was considered lost until 1979 when Richard Feiner managed to find it. It's the second part with the legendary pie fight that this film's reputation rests. Good thing when compilation producer Robert Youngston was looking for clips to include in his first project on classic silent comedy-The Golden Age of Comedy-he found what was a decomposing second reel and managed to preserve the last 5 or so minutes of it. Among the classic supporting actors long associated with L & H that appeared in this sequence was Charlie Hall and, in perhaps the most iconic moment at the end, Anita Garvin. The Nostalgia Archive video tape that I watched this one on actually had two versions on it. The first presented the first reel intact before going to the pie sequence. The second had the first reel again before going to a surviving script that details another sequence with Eugene Palette in which he sells Ollie an insurance on Stan. From there, Ollie then tries to get Stan to slip on a banana peel to collect the money before a cop gets mixed up in it. With the script, some stills, and then the Youngston-edited sequence, we get an as complete as possible version of this long truncated short. In summary, The Battle of the Century is well worth viewing for L & H fans as well as Lou Costello completists. Update-9/24/11: I just watched this again at an outdoor screening at the Baton Rouge Gallery with musical accompaniment by The Incense Merchants, whose contemporary stylings add to the fun immensely, but with the stills and script pages representing the missing scenes deleted. At least one female member of the audience behind me laughed as loud as I did. She must have been as much of an L & H fan as me!

This is one of the lost films of Laurel and Hardy--or at least partially lost. Today only about half of the film remains--all of the boxing sequence (which is pretty good) and bits and pieces of the giant pie fight. The rest, sadly, appears gone forever, though fans of the team hold out hope--after all, newly discovered bits and pieces have been found of many great supposedly missing or truncated films (such as the great recent find of a longer version of METROPOLIS). Because this film isn't totally intact, it's not fair that anyone should have to give it a numerical score, but IMDb forces this for all reviews. My score of 6 is because I really didn't think much of the pie fight and there just isn't enough of the original film left to get a better score.By the way, according to IMDb, Lou Costello is an extra at ring side. I looked but couldn't really tell he was there. Perhaps he was the guy who caught Hardy at the end of the fight. The problem is that Costello would have been a lot thinner and younger--as he had himself been an amateur boxer about this same time period.As far as pie fights go, this is probably the best and was the inspiration for the one in THE GREAT RACE many years later. Despite people thinking this is a slapstick cliché, there were actually very few pie fights ever shown on film and the few that did occur were rarely as big or crazy as this one--usually just a pie or two (like you'd see in a couple of The Three Stooges' films).Also, and this is an odd one, during the fight scene, you see a pretty lady walking by "The Pink Pup". This is the same place you see featured in THAT'S MY WIFE and THEIR PURPLE MOMENT--two other silent Laurel and Hardy shorts.If you do want to see this ten minute film, it's included in the huge UK DVD Laurel and Hardy collection.

The title of this comedy is based on the situation at the beginning: Stan's boxing match (Ollie is his manager) against Noah Young (the heavy they shared with fellow Hal Roach alumnus Harold Lloyd). In 1927 the American sports loving public was fully aware of what was "the battle of the century". It was a reference to the second boxing match between Gene Tunney and Jack Dempsey (the one that again ended with Tunney's victory, but has lasted in sports controversy because of the notorious "long count" that may have denied Dempsey his victory). The idea of comparing any boxing match that Stan Laurel is in with the likes of one between Tunney and Dempsey is laughable in itself, but it sets the stage here.John McCabe gave a brief description of the boxing match in his biography MR.LAUREL AND MR. HARDY. But seeing it on the recently restored Video, one can appreciate it all the more. Young is ready for real boxing business, but Stan is all weird business (some at the expense of manager Ollie). After about ten minutes Young sees a chance, and lands one punch, and Stan falls down.What adds to the comic beginning is that one sees in the nearby bleachers a dozen or so boxing fans. One of them is young - and thinner than he subsequently looked. It's Lou Costello. I don't know if Costello was working alone in Hollywood at the time, or if he knew someone at Roach's studio, but he gives an interesting little performance in a way he never showed in his own comedies with Bud Abbott. He reacts incredulously at the antics of Stan (and Ollie) in the ring - in fact he acts fairly realistically. It is a curious moment in film history, as it unites Stan and Ollie with half of the film comedy team that slightly eclipsed them in the 1940s, and it presents that half in a quieter manner than as the "baaad boy!".The rest of the film dealt with insurance and pies. Ollie has a real boxing loser, and he has to recoup his financial loss. So he meets Eugene Palette, an insurance salesman, who sells him an accident policy on Stan's life. Now all Ollie has to do is organize some accident. Unfortunate, he's Oliver Hardy, so we know he will keep bungling it (especially when he tries to get Stan to trip on a banana peel). This is the straw that breaks the wrong camel's back. Charlie Hall is delivering pies, and he trips on the peel. He happens to see Ollie trying to hide the tell tale banana peel, so he knows who is responsible. Soon he puts a pie in Hardy's face. But Stan doesn't like that, and he takes a pie and puts it into Hall's face. Soon what McCabe calls "reciprocal destruction" spreads over the street, involving all types of people (including Palette, who tries to use the fight as an opportunity to sell more insurance policies!). The culmination is when Anita Garvin slips on a pie, sitting on it. She does not realize it is a pie, and her embarrassment is priceless.It was their second film - and it was one of their best ones.

Only about 50%+ remains of The Battle Of The Century, which is a huge tragedy as the footage we do have indicates this is one of the best silent shorts of the screens greatest comedy team. The opening boxing bout is extremely funny, with a sly take on the famous "long count". Cue much missing footage which gives form to the basic plot - Ollie, as Stan's manager, realises the only way to earn money from his Chumpion is to deliberately injure him and collect on the insurance! The legendary pie fight, which, on viewing, can be discerned as missing several shots at least - more likely a minute or two has gone - only makes me pine for the full version. If, oh wonderful miracle, a rediscovery occurs, you can almost certainly add three stars to the above rating.They were great, weren't they?