The Battle of the Century **** (1927, Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy) – Classic Movie Review 7400

‘The big fight – ringside seats extended as far west as Honolulu!’

Director Clyde A Bruckman and producer Hal Roach’s 1927 silent short film The Battle of the Century stars Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, though the team had yet to take on their usual recognisable Stan and Ollie characters. For long a partly lost film, it was finally found again in 2015.

Laurel plays a tiny, puny pugilist fighter called Canvasback Clump and Hardy plays his grasping fight manager who accepts a canny conman insurance agent (Eugene Pallette)’s scheme for an insurance plan for Laurel, who has to fight Thunder-Clap Callahan (Noah Young).

The Battle of the Century is a gently amusing two-reeler short, ending triumphantly with the ultimate in custard pie fights, using more than 3,000 cream pies in the climactic pie fight, and the film is largely famous just for that. But it should also be renowned for its funny gags and hilarious performances: Laurel and Hardy are on good form, and Pallette is very amusing.

For many years the second 10-minute reel, containing the fight, survived only in three minutes of fragments used in the documentary films of Robert Youngson, e g The Golden Age of Comedy (1957) and Laurel and Hardy’s Laughing 20’s (1965). However, the complete reel was rediscovered in 2015 as a 16mm print from the original negative, and was shown at the BFI London Film Festival in October 2015.

Lou Costello appears as a member of the audience at the prize-fight.

Also in the cast are Charlie Hall, Dick Gilbert, George K French, Dick Sutherland, Sam Lufkin, Noah Young, Gene Morgan, Al Hallet, Dorothy Coburn, Bert Roach, Jack Hill and Charley Young.

In 1963 Laurel wrote: ‘We used 4,000 pies and they were actually real pies (filling et al) and were supplied by the Los Angeles Pie Company. A fresh wagon load was delivered to the studio set each day of shooting that sequence.’ It held the record for the biggest pie fight ever staged for a film, but this record was claimed to be broken by the pie fight in The Great Race (1965) for which some 4,000 pies were bought. However, whereas all the pies were thrown for the scene in Battle of the Century, not all of 4,000 pies were thrown in The Great Race. Some 200 of the leftover pies were later thrown at director Blake Edwards, who dedicated his movie to Mr Laurel and Mr Hardy.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7400

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