Perfect Day (1929 film)
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| Perfect Day | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical poster for Perfect Day (1929) |
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| Directed by | James Parrott |
| Produced by | Hal Roach |
| Written by | Leo McCarey (story) Hal Roach (story) H.M. Walker |
| Starring | Stan Laurel Oliver Hardy Edgar Kennedy Kay Deslys Isabelle Keith |
| Music by | William Axt S. Williams |
| Cinematography | Art Lloyd George Stevens |
| Editing by | Richard C. Currier |
| Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
| Release date(s) | August 10, 1929 |
| Running time | 19:38 |
| Country |  United States |
| Language | English |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Perfect Day is a 1929 short comedy film starring Laurel and Hardy.
Contents |
[edit] Story
We open on the living room of the Laurel and Hardy home. Mrs. Laurel and Mrs. Hardy are packing the picnic basket for an outing in the country. Uncle Edgar Kennedy is on the couch and when told to get his hat and coat on, he exclaims, "But this gout of mine is killing me! I didn't sleep a wink last night it was palpitating so!" Mrs. Laurel tells him his gout will feel better out in the fresh air, and as Kennedy remonstrates, she hands him his hat and coat. She then calls to Stan and Ollie, who are in the kitchen, offscreen. Ollie's voice is heard cheerily calling back "We're commmmming!" Ollie enters via the kitchen swinging door, bearing a tray laden with sandwiches, followed by Stan, who is carrying a small Chinese take-out type box. The wives excalim over how good the sandwiches look. A sandwich slips off the tray onto the floor. "Pick that up, Stannie," Ollie commands, and when Stan does, he lets go of the swinging door, which swings back as Stan bends over, causing him to butt Ollie in the stomach. Ollie drops the tray, which rests briefly on Stan's back until Stan straightens up to see what all the commotion is about and the tray crashes to the floor. Everyone reacts with dismay. Stan hands the single surviving sandwich to Ollie, who slaps it out of his hand. Stan slaps Ollie's hands, and soon the two are throwing the badly-abused sandwiches and other picnic goods at each other. One sandwich ends up in Kennedy's face, and he does a slow burn as he removes it. The wives break up the squabble. "Remember, this si the Sabbath. It's a day of peace." "Forgive and forget," admonishes Mrs. Hardy. Stan and Ollie sullenly refuse to look at one another, then grin and laugh. "No more arguments from now on," Ollie says, and Stan agrees: "No more arguments." They pick up the sandwiches and rearrange them on the tray. "Hold this while I get a chair," Ollie tells Stan, handing him the heaviuly-piled tray, before doing a double take and saying "On second thought, you get the chair. And don't talk back!" Stan tugs a chair out from under Kennedy's gouty foot, which falls on the family dog, who immediately attacks the foot. Ollie and the rest of the family try to separate dog and Kennedy while Kennedy roars in pain. Ollie, in pulling the dog away from Kennedy's foot, falls backward against the tray, which Stan had placed on the chair as instructed; the tray, along with Ollie and Stan, who is now clutching the thermos bottle, all thump to the floor. Ollie picks up the thermos, which produces a sound of broken glass, indicating the Prohibition-era bottle of bootleg liquor hidden inside has been destroyed. He looks resignedly at Stan and we fade out.
Fade-in on the family outside getting into their Ford Model T, parked at the curb. Kennedy, along with the wives, climbs into the back seat and Stan, who isn't looking, crushes Kennedy's gouty foot by closing the door on it. Ollie then takes a swipe at Stan with his hat and hits the gouty foot, and Kennedy howls a second time. "Get in the car!" Ollie tells Stan. Stan gets in the passenger side. Their next door neighbor, watering his lawn, asks, "Going for a ride?" "Going on a picnic," Ollie tells him. "You've got a lovely day for it," the neighbor says. "So long." "Goodbye!" the family calls back. "Goodbye!" the neighbor says. "Goodbye!" the family calls again. This reciprocal "goodbye" continues for some time, involving more neighbors from across the street, and finally Ollie puts the car in gear. The car moves forward about a yard and runs over a roofing nail. Ollie gazes in amazement as the tire flattens. "You'll have to get out, folks, we've got to change the tire." Everyone exits the car. Ollie takes his coat off and Stan, who has removed the back seat to get at the tools beneath, drops the seat on Ollie's hand. Ollie tells Stan to jack up the car. Stan gets the jack but in exiting the car he drops the jack on Kennedy's gouty foot. Ollie gestures at Stan and Stan, avoiding the gesture, sits on the gouty foot, then closes the car door on it. Finally he places the jack on the outer edge of the axle and jacks up the car; of course he then cannot remove the tire. Kennedy tells him "Pull it out!" and Stan tugs the tire until the jack falls over and the wheelrim lands on Kennedy's gouty foot. Ollie hastily jacks the car up again and Kennedy extricates his foot, blubbering. Stan, meanwhile, has taken the flat tire and removed the nail. Ollie instructs Stan to put the tire back on the car and grabs, not the spare, but the flat tire Stan is holding. Everyone climbs back into the car and as Kennedy blubbers over his injured foot, the wives try to comfort him. Stan and Ollie re-enter the front seat, and after another round of "goodbyes" with the neighbors, Ollie puts the car in gear. This time the car doesn't move at all; we see Ollie has forgotten to remove the jack and the rear left wheel is spinning uselessly as Ollie guns the engine faster and faster. Ollie tells Stan "Get that jack out from under that wheel." Stan lowers the car and Ollie sees that the flat tire has wound up on the car again. Infuriated, he takes the jack from Stan and hurls it at him. An offscreen crash of glass is heard. The neighbor's wife comes out of their home, which now sports a broken window, and says "Look!" while handing the jack to the neighbor. The neighbor goes to Stan and Ollie's Model T and hurls the jack through the windshield. Stan, after exchanging a glance with Ollie, picks up a brick, walks to the neighbor's home, and throws the brick through a window. The neighbor retrieves the brick, walks to Stan and Ollie's home, and throws the brick through one of their windows. Stan and Ollie take their jackets off, preparatory to doing battle, but then look down the sidewalk, blanch, and hurriedly put their jackets back on (Stan ending up with Ollie's and Ollie with Stan's). The entire family scrambles out of the car and into the house and close the door just as a minister walks by. As soon as he has passed out of the scene, Ollie peeps out the front door; the whole family then carefully returns to the car. Ollie notices he is wearing Stan's jacket. "Take that off!" he commands. Stan then gets his arm stuck in Ollie's jacket as Ollie tries to put the jacket on, leaving Ollie floundering trying to find the sleeve. "Boys, boys, stop this foolishness!" Mrs. Laurel reproves them. "Let's get started!" "I'm trying, we can't do it any quicker than we are," Stan says, as he again gets his arm in Ollie's jacket. "Give me my coat!" Ollie barks, shoving Stan against the car. They climb into the front seat and Ollie tries to restart the car. Again we have another round of "goodbyes", minus the next door neighbor. "We're going now!" Stan calls. "I hope so," Mrs. Laurel adds. The engine refuses to catch. "Come on, Oliver, step on it!" Mrs. Hardy says, eliciting a long look of barely-contained irritation from Ollie. He continues trying to start the car. "Come on, Ollie, step on it!" Stan says. "I'll step on you in a minute!" Ollie replies, "and don't call me 'Ollie'!" Ollie gets out of the car with the crank to crank the engine as the family sighs over the delay. "Oh, shut up!" Ollie tells them. He starts to crank the car but Stan leans on the horn. Again Ollie tries to crank the car, but Stan pulls down on the gas feed lever, causing a backfire which sends Ollie flying backwards out into the street, where a speeding car almost runs over him. He walks exasperatedly back to the car and tells Stan, "Throw out the clutch! That's easy!" He starts to crank the engine again as Stan wrestles with something out of sight down on the floorboards, eliciting a series of metallic sounds, before pitching the clutch out onto the street. The family sighs in dosmay. Ollie picks up the clutch, removes Stan's hat, and conks Stan on the head with the clutch. "Now keep your hands to yourself!" he says. He gives the crank one final spin and this time the engine starts. Ollie hastily re-enters the car but as soon as he does the engine backfires and smoke begins to pour out from under the hood. Stan jumps out of the car and runs to the neighbor's yard, grabbing the hose, and runs back to the car, opens the hood, and sprays Ollie, who has opened the hood on the driver's side of the car and is looking at the engine. The neighbor appears and Stan turns to face him, spraying the neighbor with the hose. "Gimme that hose!" the neighbor says, and grabs the hose from Stan. The soaking wet Ollie now approaches Stan and starts to choke him. "Oh, me apple!" stan exclaims. He tries to choke Ollie and Ollie shoves Stan against the side of the car. The engine immediately roars to life. "Oh, it's running!" Ollie shouts, and the family hastily piles back into the car. Another round of goodbyes with the crowd assembled watching the engine fire, and the car moves away. The car proceeds down a street, turns a corner with the family still happily waving goodbye, and continues past a road barricade into a mud puddle. The car crosses the puddle then promptly sinks until Stan and Ollie are immersed.
[edit] Production Notes
Script written around late May, 1929. Filmed circa June 1-8, 1929. Released August 10, 1929. Copyrighted by M-G-M, August 13, 1929.
Present prints of the film derive from a 1937 reissue of the film. For this reissue, background musical scoring was added to the soundtrack (originally the film had no music track other than over the introductory titles) by film editor William Ziegler. The soundtrack was also re-adapted from the Vitaphone sound-on-disc system used in 1929 to the superior sound-on-film technique in use by 1937. Adding the soundtrack to the existing film resulted in a slight reduction of the correct frame ratio: in some scenes in "Perfect Day", the picture is slightly cropped at the top and left hand sides of the frame to allow for inclusion of the soundtrack.
[edit] Incidental Music Scoring
"Ku-Ku" (Marvin Hatley, arranged by Le Roy Shield); "We're Just a Happy Family" (Shield); "Let's Face It" (Shield); "We're Out for Fun" (Shield); "Carefree" (Shield); "Up in Room 14" (Shield); "The Laurel and Hardy Waltz" (Nathaniel Shilkret); "Up in Room 14" (reprise) (Shield); "Colonial Gayeties" (Shield); "On a Sunny Afternoon" (Shield); "We're Out for Fun" (Shield); "Here Comes the Stagecoach" (Hatley); "Our Relations/Finale" (Shield)
[edit] Film analysis
"Perfect Day" was Laurel and Hardy's fourth sound film and their fifth appearance in a talking movie (the team had filmed a brief sketch for M-G-M's feature "The Hollywood Revue of 1929" just prior to "Perfect Day"). Despite the fact that most film directors and actors were still learning how to deal with the new technology, Laurel and Hardy had mastered the new form quite early, and the overall excellence and high reputation of "Perfect Day" among comedy fans and contemporary audiences alike bear testimony to the team's fruitful use of the new medium. Sound effects to enhance comic effects, such as what the Three Stooges would come to use, were still in a developmental state in 1929, and Laurel and Hardy employ what must have been among the very first in this short, when Stan is struck with the clutch: a loud clang, as of a tolling bell, is heard. One 1929 reviewer termed this effect "the funniest effect so far heard in a comedy" and while Laurel and Hardy would deploy these effects more exotensively in later films, such effects were used quite sparingly in their repertoire. More commonly found in their films is the use of offscreen sounds to suggest comic possibilities, seen in this film when we hear, not see, Stan wresting the clutch from the car, and in the auto klaxon which surprises Ollie after he's been blown into the road by an explosion.
Although John McCabe was the first to suggest this film originally had as its scripted conclusion an actual picnic, discarded when the extended gags centering on the balky auto provided enough comic material to sustain the entire film, "Perfect Day" does adhere to the cinematic structure common to many Laurel and Hardy shorts. A brief opening scene provides the comedic impetus - the impending picnic - followed by a lengthy middle section involving both "milked" gags (the tire changing and engine cranking sequences), running gags (the "goodbye" repetitions and the reactions of neighbors), and what Professor McCabe has termed "reciprocal destruction" (the window-breaking sequence). The film is then concluded with a very brief wrap-up gag, derived in this case from Laurel and Hardy's earlier short Leave 'Em Laughing (1928). Thus a concluding section depicting the picnic is not only unnecessary from a "punchline" standpoint, but unneeded from a structural perspective.
"Perfect Day" also benefits from having been largely shot outdoors, which vitiates the stagebound setting common to many early talking films. The opening scene is the only one set indoors (one can hear the whirring of cameras in some shots, such as the one in which Mrs. Hardy commends the duo to "forgive and forget") and the exterior sound recording must have been technically impressive for this era of filmmaking, when most actors were confined to remaining close to a microphone. This accomplishment helps the short transcend its time period and remain fresh for viewing today.
In his essay on this film in his book "The Films of Laurel and Hardy", William Everson comments that the series of unresolved frustrations can become "irksome" to a viewer as well. Most commentators, among Laurel and Hardy fans, would disgree. The frustrations build logically out of the events of the film, and are relieved or mediated by frequent changes in tone. Again, Professor McCabe argues that each repetition of the "goodbye" running gag serves as a change of tone, signalling the end of one gag sequence and the onset of the next. In structure, this approach is similar to that employed in such Laurel and Hardy films as Two Tars, where gag sequences do not necessarily build in scale so much as increase the comedic tension.
The two homes seen in the film, as Laurel and Hardy's own and the neighbor's, were in fact owned by Baldwin Cooke, the actor portraying the neighbor in the film. Cooke had been one-third of the vaudeville team of "The Stan Jefferson Trio", in which he had worked in the 1915-1916 era with Stan Laurel. The Laurel and Hardy home seen in the film still stands, virtually unchanged, today in Culver City, California.
[edit] Cast
- Stan Laurel (Stan)
- Oliver Hardy (Ollie)
- Edgar Kennedy (Uncle Edgar)
- Kay Deslys (Mrs. Hardy)
- Isabelle Keith (Mrs. Laurel)
- Baldwin Cooke (Irate neighbor)
- Lyle Tayo Barton (Irate neighbor's wife)
- Harry Bernard (Neighbor across the street)
- Clara Guiol (Wife of neighbor across the street)
- Charley Rogers (Minister)
