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Second-rate Laurel and Hardy material is so good it would be nearly any other comedian's first-rate material and Pack Up Your Troubles is a good example. It takes an exceedingly unfunny subject (WWI), adds in a little-girl-lost plot, meanders about as Laurel and Hardy movies often do and is still timelessly enjoyable.
Comedians have frequently used the lost or orphaned kid plot; it usually generates audience sympathy and gives the comedians someone to play off of. Chaplin created the template with The Kid. Some of the many later examples include Pack Up Your Troubles, Harry Langdon's Three's A Crowd (1927), Max Davidson's The Rag Man (1925) and even Jerry Lewis' The Family Jewels (1965).
The girl in Pack Up Your Troubles, who loses her father in a French trench, is played by Jackie Lyn Dufton. She's perfect for the role and has some charming scenes with Stan Laurel. This Hal Roach production is filled with great character actors who our duo meet as they attempt to reunite the orphaned girl with her real family, including James Finlayson, Tom Kennedy and Billy Gilbert.
Pack Up Your Troubles is short (68 minutes), but sweet.
Pack Up Your Troubles has been released on DVD as a part of Laurel and Hardy: The Essential Collection.
A weird downer of a movie (the poster above shows just how weird; Durante's slayed at the end of the film), MGM's adaptation of Upton Sinclair's novel is like a glossy version of a D.W. Griffith preachathon. It's nearly epic in scope (118 minutes), but bogged down by hammed-up acting and a melodramatic script that couldn't have warranted many raves when the film was new.
The Wet Parade begins in the south, where gentleman Lewis Stone slowly drinks himself to death, his last stop a pig sty. When his son, played by Neil Hamilton, moves to the north, the story and his sister, played by Dorothy Jordan, follow him.
There the binge drinking continues in a hotel best described as Alcohol Central.The owner of the hotel, overplayed by Walter Huston, is a non-stop lush and when alcoholic Neil Hamilton moves in, he's right at home. Robert Young, the most naturalistic and fresh actor in the film, plays Huston's teetotalling son.
Things get worse from there: after prohibition is instituted, alcoholics turn to bad liquor purchased from bootleggers. When Huston kills his wife in the throes of this stuff and Neil Hamilton goes blind from it, Young and Jordan dedicate their lives to irradicating bad alcohol from the planet Earth.
Then it gets even more odd: Jimmy Durante, portraying a treasury agent, is beamed into this movie from another planet, playing his role as if he were teamed with Buster Keaton instead of Robert Young. There's a lot of "ha-cha-cha"s and lame jokes while busting bootleggers!
Without having read Sinclair's novel. it's hard to determine if the story is more anti-alcohol or anti-government intervention (it could be both). Both are shown as very, very bad. Sinclair's politics banned him from the MGM lot when the film was being made, and he wasn't allowed to speak at the film's premiere (though the audience was expecting it). That's cold.
The one scene in the film that really works (and is probably straight from the novel) methodically and with no dialogue shows an assembly line of criminals packaging alcohol unfit for drinking as if it were name brand product. With the exception of this scene, Victor Fleming's direction is rote stuff.
Side note: The film ironically shows footage of Woodrow Wilson signing the 18th amendment into law, when Wilson had actually vetoed the act (thanks for this info, Mary).
The film also features Clara Blandick, Myrna Loy in a small part and Max Davidson in a short, uncredited role. MGM missed the boat in not fully utilizing his talents.
An amusing review of The Wet Parade on Booze Movies.com: http://www.boozemovies.com/2007/07/wet-parade-1932.html
The Wet Parade is not available on DVD or VHS, but has been broadcast on Turner Classic Movies.
The Rag Man's an agreeable Jackie Cooper and Max Davidson comedy/drama, unseen for many decades, but shown on television for the first time on Turner Classic Movies in 2004.
Max Davidson plays a junkman who takes orphan Cooper in as a companion and business partner. Though the movie could have went down the path of pathos (as Chaplin's The Kid did, also starring Cooper as an orphan), it doesn't go there.
It does entertain for its duration, with lots of scenes tailored for Cooper's charming facial expressions and body language. (Davidson's character, ill for much of the film, spends most of his time in a chair or bed - I can barely remember him walking across the room in this movie!). It's a pity Davidson's career took a nose dive after the arrival of sound (to the point that his last roles were uncredited); anyone who's seen his '20s comedy shorts can attest to this German actor's talents.
The Rag Man also has some nicely historic location footage shot in New York and a new score for small orchestra by Linda Martinez - a score that borders on being too dissonant but, again, doesn't go that route.
MGM made a sequel to The Rag Man, Old Clothes, the same year with the same cast and director, excepting the sequel also starred a young Joan Crawford. A print of the film reportedly still exists.
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