The Big Noise *** (1944, Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Doris Merrick, Arthur Space, Jack Norton, Veda Ann Borg) – Classic Movie Review 10,122

Director Malcolm St Clair’s 1944 comedy The Big Noise is a still smile-worthy if relatively feeble, padded-out late-period movie from Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, in which the Boys are detective agency janitors who pretend to be sleuths and outwit a ring of spies after a new super-bomb (called The Big Noise) they are supposedly guarding.

(Did every comedian in the 1940s round up spies?)

There are two or three fine, funny highlight sequences reworked from better days, including the scene where Laurel and Hardy are in a radio-controlled aircraft being directed over a target range in the desert. But, overall, it is perhaps the weakest Stan and Ollie full-length feature.

The screenplay is by W Scott Darling. Earlier films to have their material recycled are Berth Marks, Wrong Again, Block-Heads and The Flying Deuces.

Also in the cast are Doris Merrick, Arthur Space, Jack Norton, Veda Ann Borg, Robert Blake, Frank Fenton, James Bush, Philip Van Zandt, Esther Howard, Robert Dudley and Edgar Dearing.

It is the fifth of six features Laurel and Hardy made at 20th Century Fox in the 1940s.

The Big Noise is directed by Malcolm St Clair, runs 74 minutes, is made by 20th Century Fox, is released by 20th Century Fox, is written by W Scott Darling, is shot in black and white by Joseph MacDonald, is produced by Sol M Wurtzel, is scored by David Buttolph, Cyril J Mockridge (composer: stock music) and Emil Newman (musical director), with production designs by Lyle R Wheeler and John Ewing.

The railway station scene was filmed at the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway station in Arcadia, California.

Laurel recalled: ‘With The Big Noise we decided to slash every gag that might conceivably have bearing on wartime wastages and destruction.’

Doris Merrick has a notable supporting role as Evelyn. She turned 100 on 6 June 2019 and died on 30 November 2019.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,122

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