User Reviews

Having heard that the long lost second reel of 'The Battle of The Century' was to be screened with the present extant footage after the former's recent rediscovery,it was an opportunity as a devoted L & H buff I simply could not turn down.So I waited with baited breath for the screening at the Southbank Centre,London,on October 16th 2015.

Hosts the BFI rather cleverly prepared for this very special occasion in both Laurel and Hardy and film history by showing three L & H silents (You're Darn Tootin',Double Whoopee,Big Business) with excellent live piano and flute accompaniment while we waited for the eagerly anticipated coda.It wasn't quite a full house,but nearly,and the disappointment of the still missing sequence where Eugene Palette sells The Boys an insurance policy was soon tempered by it's segue into the second reel (indicated in such terms by a brief subtitle).How exciting it was for me to see the first 'new' footage of Laurel and Hardy since previously lost films like 'Duck Soup' and 'Why Girls Love Sailors' became available on the home video market around two decades ago.

The found footage begins with the well-documented scene where Ollie tries to cause Stan an accident by throwing banana skins on to the pavement,only for a cop to slip onto the ground,with Ollie blaming Stan and getting hit on the head with the cop's truncheon,developing a massive bump on the head.The famous pie fight that starts soon after is far more carefully constructed than the previous extant version which had been edited by Robert Youngson for his compilation film 'The Golden Age of Comedy',and is perhaps all the better for it.Previously,after Charlie Hall had slipped on another of Ollie's banana peels,he retaliated immediately with a pie in Ollie's face,but the full version sees some initial comic business beforehand.We see several more combatants involved around the pie wagon compared to the previous footage,most surprisingly of all Eugene Palette,who reappears and states in as many words: "...you can't throw pies without proper insurance....." before promptly getting pies in the face himself from all kinds of angles!

There is one more notable variation where the pies hit their target;added to subjects like a postman handing soggy letters from a mailbox,a man getting hit by pie while being served pies and a dental patient getting a mouthful of pie,is a homely middle-aged woman getting her rug splattered by a pie while dusting it outdoors.The previous extant footage ended famously with Anita Garvin falling bottom first onto a pie thrown to the pavement by Stan,but the much vaunted final gag where a cop gets a pie in the face after asking The Boys who started the pie fight ("What pie fight?",replies Ollie) and chases them down the street is fully intact.

The whole programme was heartily appreciated by the audience,though perhaps the importance of the rediscovered footage of 'Battle' was not quite fully realised with the exception of myself and other fellow Sons of The Desert (the official Laurel and Hardy appreciation society) present in the large numbers there.When that second reel did start it was just total tunnel vision from my point of view,wide-eyed in virtual amazement like a small child but having to just concentrate on footage that has not been seen in this form for nearly 90 years.It was mightily hard to avoid being too awestruck,but after the most extraordinary evening regarding Laurel and Hardy for decades,my main wish later after discussions with equally astonished friends and colleagues is that this nearly complete version of 'Battle' deserves to be shown to more Sons,the public and indeed the World as Laurel and Hardy belong to us all.And the sooner the better.

Rating:7 and a half out of 10.

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.

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are the most famous comedy duo in history, and deservedly so, so I am happy to see any of their films. In a boxing ring, the predicted winner Thunder-Clap Callahan (Noah Young) is about to fight less impressive looking Canvasback Clump, aka The Human Mop (Stan), and the audience blow raspberries at him and his Manager (Ollie). If they win they get $100, and if they lose they get $5, but it is obvious Clump is very slow witted, he doesn't move from the middle after the Referee (Sam Lufkin) explains the rules to them. Clump sees Callahan jumping in his corner to warn up, he assumes he's dancing, so he improvises some ballet-like stuff in his corner, till he falls. Then Clump is jumping around and swinging his fists ready to fight, his Manager advising him to use his left fist, and when the bell goes, he manages to unintentionally knock Callahan out with his left holding his arm out. The Referee can't finish the countdown till Clump is sat down, and the misunderstanding turn into a little scuffle between them, till he does sit down and Callahan comes round. After a quick fall and near countdown, Clump is ready for another round, but it ends very quickly when Callahan knocks him out, and his Manager faints too, and when he comes round, the whole audience has left, and Clump is sleeping on the ring floor. In the missing footage, a man at the fight recognises Clump, and his Manager buys accident insurance on his behalf, and they try to get money from this insurance by the Manager placing a banana peel on the floor for Clump to slip on. Instead, a Pie Delivery Man (Charlie Hall) slips on it, and presses one of his custard pies in the Manager's face, and when he throws two back, one hits the backside, and the second the face of a woman (Dorothy Coburn). She throws one back, and hits a man having his shows shined, and soon many other people, including a man in a top hat, a dentist patient, a sewer man hole guy, a pie shop customer and a barber shop customer are joining in, while a postman and a man posing for a photo get some pie too. Eventually the boys move away from the chaos, and Stan's last pie goes on the floor, for a woman (Anita Garvin) to slip on, and the rest of the missing film would have the boys questioned by a policeman about how the fight going all the way down the street started, and him chasing them away getting a pie in the face. Filled with good slapstick and all classic comedy you want from a black and white silent film, it is easily the shortest, but it is an enjoyable film. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were number 7 on The Comedians' Comedian. Worth watching!

. . . we had to play with "mud pies." We did not have 3,000 custard pies at our disposal to lob around on city sidewalks, as in THE BATTLE OF THE CENTURY. (If we'd have had ONE custard pie, Mom would have stretched it out for at least a week as dessert for all of us.) Legend has it that six or seven years after BATTLE OF THE CENTURY was released, several of its pie fight participants fell on such hard times amid America's Great Depression that they expired due to starvation. The final words of one film pie-died film thespian victim were reported as "This cannot be Real: It's all a hoax. I can still see pie in the sky . . . "

"The Battle of the Century" sure is a big title for a film, especially for a short movie like this because it only runs for under 20 minutes in the original and for over 10 in the currently most distributed version. Or way over 20 in fact with less frames per second. This is a Laurel & Hardy short from their silent days (so please watch it without music!), from 1927 to be precise, so it is already over 90 years old and of course in black-and-white too. The name of writer H. M. Walker is pretty famous, but the bigger, yet much younger, name from the writing duo here is Hal Roach, who became not only an Oscar winner later on, but also a centenarian. Here he was in his 30s still and so were the two directors, on the one hand Leo McCarey and on the other Clyde Bruckman, who is also somebody that fans of really old films have probably come across on other occasions. This is not one of Stan and Ollie's most known works, which may or may not have to do with the fact that it is partially lost, especially the scene with the insurance salesman right after the boxing fight at the beginning where we are thrown into the middle of the action really quickly. But they keep finding stuff here and there and not a lot is missing anymore from this picture. I think the outcome is really nowhere near the duo's best efforts and I usually like the two much more than I did here. It also feels that there is less focus on them than in other works starring the perhaps most successful and remembered duo in (comedy) film history. I mean during the pie fight they are just two of many, even if they kinda started it and return towards the end as well. There's the aforementioned boxing sequence here that has Laurel with his tiny body and non-existent muscles go against a guy twice his size, even if the actual boxing sequences are not too frequent and it is more about everything around it like intertitles making joke of Ollie's hat and he reads it. Not sure how he did that. There is also more of a fight between Laurel and the completely biased referee after Laurel lands a lucky punch early on that really hands it to his actual opponent.

Anyway, then there is the pie fighting sequence too, approximately one, namely the last, third of the film, fairly lengthy that has everybody get their share. Well, honestly the editing did not feel right and how some pies suddenly land inside buildings made no sense at all. They hit people in the face way too often. But it really isn't too funny and pie throwing sequences in my opinion and when it comes to my humor have not aged that well. The one moment when the woman sits down on one, literally has a cream pie under her skirt, is mildly funny near the very end, but that's it. So what do we learn from this little film? That boxing was really big back then, probably bigger than today and that even for icons like Laurel and Hardy, not everyone can be a winner. And I am not referring to the outcome of the boxing fight. I guess some expected Laurel to win it and he was not far away from triumph. I give this short a thumbs-down. Not recommended, but before I end, I also wanna emphasize that this is a fairly anti-authoritarian little film. Look at how the simple worker knows right away who had the banana. Look at how the cop didn't and was clueless enough to hits Laurel instead of Hardy. Quite the reaction anyway. Today he would lose his job. So the police officer is depicted as, gently-speaking, the less intelligent there from the two. I was also ready to say that several other characters from better parts of the society with authority got pies to their faces like the mayor or a wealthy lady who has her own carriage(?) driver and that the cop did not, but this is only true until almost the very last shot. But what was funnier than the cop also getting pie was really the duo denying the existence of a pie fight when pie is all over their clothes and the street was a pie battlefield. So there are interesting aspects to this film, but overall I stand here with my original rating of 2/5 and that this is a film you can skip and won't be missing too much quality. I do not agree with the honor this film received from the National Film Preservation Board.