Sons of the Desert (1933)

Since 1926, when Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were first officially teamed up together in motion picture comedies, the duo had become a strong staple of humor at any local movie house. Together they produced many comedic shorts, made the successful transition to talkies because of their knack for visual comedy, even won an Academy Award for a short subject, and had begun to produce full length features. 1933’s Son of the Desert continued to spread the wings of the slapstick team, helping audiences forget their troubles during the Great Depression, as they played everymen type characters, allowing the film to one day be hailed as one of their finest works in cinema.

Sons of the Desert is a Laurel and Hardy comedy of two friends and their desperate attempt to attend a lodge convention despite the objections of their wives. As long time members of the social fraternity lodge known as the Sons of the Desert, Oliver (Hardy) and Stanley (Laurel) are set to attend the lodge’s great convention in Chicago; that is until Ollie is reminded that he was to take a trip to the mountains with his wife (Mae Busch). In order for the two to still attend the gathering of the year Ollie concocts a scheme to fake an illness and have fake doctor prescribed a long voyage to Honolulu for he and his pal Laurel while the wives stay at home. The plan goes swimmingly until news spreads of the ship that was said to carry Laurel and Hardy, while they were in fact in Chicago, had sunk in a great typhoon. The two fiends scramble to find their way out of the lie they got themselves into, Ollie making up a fantastic story about the shipwreck, while Laurel caves in to his wife. Once again Laurel comes out more on top while Oliver gets the brunt of the blow being caught in his plot.

The picture makes for a wonderful piece of simple humor. The team takes their usual place in the comedy structure as a duo, Hardy being the fat schemer just trying to have fun while forcing his friend into the plot, while Laurel is the thin gentleman that is pushed around, but all the while they are two good friends. The film is a classic story structure of clowning their way through an alibi that literally falls apart. Taking from a few short film routines they had performed in the past, the pair expand on their story and range in a piece classic comedy gold.

The story idea is nothing particularly new, but perhaps it can be said it was perfected in this picture. The story would be remade in other films to come, but it would more successfully be used many times over as a plot structure to many episodes in several television situational comedies all the way up until today. Perhaps the best known example would be an episode of The Flintstones, where Fred and Barney are very much in the same situations in their respective lodge. It must be remembered that the success of those TV shows should point back to the creative genius of this much beloved movie.

Laurel and Hardy would be a unique team of sorts, being one that stayed together for a great length of time. By 1933 they had been working together for over seven years and had an understanding of how they worked and how their films were produced. It may not be easy to tell, but Stan Laurel was the brains of the two, helping in the writing and directing in near all the pictures they worked on. William A. Seiter, a former Mack Sennett player and long time comedy director, was credited for directing Sons of the Desert, but it was known that Laurel had a strong say in what was to shot on set. Hardy all this time understood his role in film production, allowing Laurel to do his thing while Hardy himself produced the memorable character of a forceful friend between the two, whose ideas never worked and was ever to blame Laurel for.

The picture was a meager studio expense that paid well. The supporting cast was not of well known actors. The most publically visible of the cast, beyond Laurel and Hardy, would have been a comedic short subject actor Charley Chase. Chase had his own series at the Hal Roach studios, alongside Laurel and Hardy as well as the Our Gang series. Chase did not care for his role as the fellow lodge brother, but it was work for the actor. Mae Busch would be in her fourth version of the nagging wife of Oliver Hardy, a role she held onto for work when she walked out of an MGM contract a few years earlier. In the past she had once worked her way into being a vamp actress before she walked away from the studio, but settled now on these modest character roles.

Sons of the Desert would leave a lasting impact on cinema comedies. In time it would be hailed as one of the team’s finest works. In 2000 AFI would rate the film to be the #96 on its top 100 comedy list. A loyal group of Laurel and Hardy followers would take the title of the film as they name of their fan club, the Sons of the Desert. Through the years the film can be seem as the finest example of a classic Laurel and Hardy pictures. The story and the men would both be classics among entertainment.