Babes in Toyland (1934) - film review

Stannie Dum and Ollie Dee are a pair of happy-go-lucky apprentice toy-makers in Toyland.  They live in a giant shoe with kind Mother Peep and her daughter Bo, who is forever mislaying her sheep.  One day, Mother Peep is visited by Silas Barnaby, a mean-hearted man who threatens to evict her and her tenants unless she pays her mortgage.  Knowing that the old woman has no money, Barnaby plans to pressurise her into letting him marry her daughter.  When they hear of this, Stannie and Ollie decide to help Mother Peep by persuading their employer to give them the money she needs.  Unfortunately, Stannie has mixed up an order for a Mr S. Claus and built one hundred six foot toys soldiers by mistake.  Having been dismissed for incompetence, Stannie and Ollie then attempt to steal the mortgage document from Barnaby, but this fails spectacularly and the two are arrested for burglary.  To prevent her friends from being exiled to Bogeyland, Bo-Peep has no choice but to marry Barnaby, even though she has lost her heart to a handsome young piper, Tom-Tom.  Just when all appears lost, Ollie has a brainwave...

Of the three feature-length operettas that Laurel and Hardy made for Hal Roach, the one that is most loved and has stood the test of time best is Babes in Toyland, which is now better known as March of the Wooden Soldiers (to avoid confusion with the 1961 Disney film).  Loosely based on Victor Herbert’s popular operetta of the same title, Babes in Toyland was a personal favourite of Oliver Hardy and is a film that appeals as much to children as it does to adults.  This is a timeless musical comedy set in the fantasy world of our childhood imagination, a land where nursery rhyme characters are vividly brought to life and where our heroes face their most powerful adversary, an army of rampaging hirsute bogeymen.  It has all the charm and magic of that other fantasy classic, The Wizard of Oz (1939), with the added bonus of being much funnier.

Ironically, this is the film which permanently soured Stan Laurel’s relationship with his producer Hal Roach, creating the rift that would ultimately see them part company on bad terms just when Laurel and Hardy were at the height of their popularity.  Roach had originally envisaged Babes in Toyland as a lavish production, with big name actors and his comedy duo relegated to support roles as Simple Simon and the Pie Man.  Stan Laurel refused categorically to have any part of this and so the idea was shelved.   When the film was finally made, several months later, it was still one of the most ambitious that Roach ever made, a nine-reel picture that included five musical numbers and some of the largest and most elaborate sets to have been erected in his studios.  

Babes in Toyland may be one of Laurel and Hardy’s most popular features, but it is also one of their most atypical films.  Stan and Ollie appear not in their familiar vagabond-like guise but as doll-like toy-makers, each sporting an improbable toy-town costume and an even less probable wig.  They do not get the opportunity to tickle our ribcages with one of their famous set-piece slapstick routines; virtually all of the comedy arises naturally from their situation and the plot.  This is not to say that Stan and Ollie’s comic abilities are not exploited to the full.  The script makes good use of the duo’s talent for visual comedy and does not depart from their established love-hate relationship, which is the basis for much of their humour.

In contrast to many of their subsequent features, Laurel and Hardy are not reduced to an incidental support act.  They may be part of an ensemble, but here they are at the heart of the plot, not stooges sitting on the sidelines.  We do not even mind that so much of the runtime is taken up with other characters, since they are all played with gusto by a likeable cast.  Henry Brandon makes a deliciously evil pantomime villain, skulking about the sets like something out of a German expressionist horror movie.  Charlotte Henry and Felix Knight are delightful as the star-crossed Bo-Peep and Tom-Tom, even if they do end up being out-staged by a variety of toy animals that include a bear-sized cat, three house-proud pigs and an enterprising Mickey Mouse look-alike (who was actually a real-life monkey in a mouse outfit).   

Far from being a soppy children’s fairytale, Babes in Toyland is a sophisticated dark-edged comedy that has as much to offer an adult audience as it does a child audience, one of those rare films that really does appeal to the whole family.  Who can ever forget the climactic battle in which Stan and Ollie team up with a battallion of toy soldiers to fight a rampaging hoard of bogeymen?  Or the cute little mouse parachuting to safety when his airship gets caught in the crossfire?   This film is a joy and a marvel.  Watch it when you are a child and the chances are that you will still want to watch it when you are well into your nineties.  Like all great fables, Babes in Toyland is both timeless and ageless.

© Brian Evans 2010

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