Image of the Week : 3 April 2024

I can’t believe this, but ninety-seven (97!) years ago today saw the release of Stan and Babe’s early appearance together in Slipping Wives. This has become best known as an early Laurel and Hardy silent comedy, though it was never envisaged as such.

A Slipping Wives (1927) Lobby Card

As this – originally released as a Hal Roach ‘All Stars’ vehicle – is rarely seen, lets revisit the plot:

A lady, Priscilla Dean, is married to an artist named Leon (Herbert Rawlinson). However Leon has not been showing much interest in his wife, so she hatches a plot to win back his affections.

Ollie plays Jarvis, the butler who takes an instant dislike to Ferdinand Flamingo (Stan), who arrives at the door to sell paint. Priscilla employs Ferdinand to woo her to ensure Leon becomes jealous. She renames him ‘Lionel Ironsides’, a writer of fairy stories, in order to enhance the deception (or confuse the situation – you decide). Jarvis’ job is to wash and dress Ferdinand, and make him look presentable enough to fool Leon at a dinner party that night.

Priscilla eventually admits to Leon what she has done and he pulls a gun to teach the ‘home-wrecker’ a lesson. Leon corners Lionel/Ferdinand and admits he is just acting to help Priscilla make him jealous. Jarvis however does not realise this and he chases Lionel out of the house with a rifle and returns returns looking shaken. A police officer with a smoking rear end follows him and says “You nearly blew my brains out”

A couple of items above might sound familiar? Firstly, the ‘make-the-husband-jealous’ plot was reworked beautifully into the penultimate Laurel and Hardy short The Fixer Uppers in 1935, and the “You nearly blew my brains out” scenario would re-emerge in Wrong Again the following year by when the boys were very much a team with the characters we love almost fully developed a year later. We would also see the gag in, coincidentally, the penultimate Hal Roach production A Chump at Oxford in 1940.

We hope you enjoyed this splendid image, the plot and trivia. Please feel free to leave any thoughts you might have in the reply/comments box below. We’d love to hear from you and your comment will receive a response on this page

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