Sons of the Desert (1933) - film review

At a meeting of the Sons of the Desert, an all-male fraternal lodge, Stan and Oliver take a sacred oath to attend the forthcoming conference in Chicago.  Stan is anxious that his wife will not let him go to this, the most important event in the lodge’s calendar, but Oliver reminds him that the oath cannot, under any pretext, be broken.  If Oliver thinks he will have an easy task persuading his wife to agree to his Chicago jolly he is mistaken.  She has arranged for the pair of them to go on a mountain trip and is no mood for compromise.  By feigning a life-threatening illness, Oliver convinces his wife that he must take a recuperative trip to Honolulu with Stanley.  The ruse works like a treat but later backfires when the boys return home after their frolicsome break in Chicago.  What they do not know is that the cruiser in which they were supposed to make their return trip from Honolulu has sunk in a typhoon. Hoping that Stan and Oliver are among the survivors who were saved by a rescue trip, the two wives leave for the shipping offices - just before the two hapless husbands return home.  Stan is thrown into a panic when he sees a newspaper report of the sinking, but Ollie devises another foolproof scheme to save their bacon.  They will spend the night hiding in the attic and present themselves to their wives in the morning, with a well-rehearsed account of the sinking and their timely rescue.  The scheme might have worked, had it not been for the fact that the two women chanced to see a newsreel report of the Sons of the Desert conference...

With its gag-laden script, spirited performances and plethora of hilarious slapstick routines, Sons of the Desert is easily one of Laurel and Hardy’s better film offerings.  A reworking of the duo’s earlier silent short We Faw Down (1928), the film is a merciless satire of two ripe-for-lampooning institutions, Masonic Lodges and marriage, with Stan and Ollie yet again proving their male inadequacy when it comes to dealing with the fair sex.  A propos, the film’s title gave its name to the International Laurel and Hardy Society.

It is interesting that in this film Oliver Hardy’s marriage looks like a grotesque parody of his relationship with Stan Laurel.  There is an obvious role reversal, with Oliver the underdog, cowering under a relentlessly domineering spouse.  By contrast, Stan’s marriage appears to be a model connubial compact, since Stan naturally fulfils the same subordinate role with his wife that he does with his friend Ollie.  The moral: if you want to save on broken china and live happily ever after, find a complementary partner.  Or buy a hard hat.

As was typical in the Laurel and Hardy films of the 1930s, the visual gags are executed with faultless aplomb and never fail to elicit a full-blown belly laugh.  The scripted jokes are also pretty inventive and provide further nougats of comedy gold.  "Why did you hire a veterinarian?" asks a dumbfounded Ollie.  To which Stan answers: "I didn’t think his religion would make any difference."   Classic stuff.

© Brian Evans 2010

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