You’re Darn Tootin’ [The Music Blasters] **** (1928, Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Wilson Benge) – Classic Movie Review 7399

Ollie, French horn player: ‘I wouldn’t mind training a seal or an elephant, but you’re hopeless!’

Director Edgar Kennedy’s 1928 short subject film You’re Darn Tootin’ [The Music Blasters] is one of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy’s finest silent comedy shorts, though sound would have helped for the band scene.

Laurel and Hardy ruin the show when they play the clarinet player and the French horn player, who are municipal musicians hired to play with the band in the local park bandstand.

Funny scenes at the boys’ boarding house (with Agnes Steele outstanding as the landlady) and as street musicians segue on to the hilarious leg-kicking, trouser-tearing finale, when a huge crowd-fight breaks out after Stan throws Ollie’s trombone to be run over in the street.

Also in the cast are Wilson Benge, Charlie Hall, William Irving, Ham Kinsey as fellow musicians, Chet Brandenburg as manhole worker, Christian J Frank as Policeman, Dick Gilbert as Boarder, Otto Lederer as Bandleader, Sam Lufkin as Man in Restaurant, George Rowe as Pedestrian, Frank Saputo and Rolfe Sedan as Drunk.

You’re Darn Tootin’ is directed by Edgar Kennedy (billed as E Livingston Kennedy), runs 20 minutes, is made by Hal Roach Studios, is released by MGM, is written by H M Walker (titles), is shot in black and white by Floyd Jackman and is produced by Hal Roach.

One of the Hal Roach Studios gag men saw some musicians performing in a park bandstand and told Laurel about it early in January 1928, and soon Laurel and Hardy were filming The Music Blasters, a title changed to the witty You’re Darn Tootin’ just before its release.

You’re Darn Tootin’ was filmed in January 1928 and released on 21 April 21 1928 by MGM. Its punning title didn’t work in the UK because it is an American idiomatic phrase meaning ‘You’re darn right’, which would lose the pun, so the film was released in the UK under its original working title of The Music Blasters.

It was filmed almost in sequence in 10 days, with the shin-kicking and pants-tearing sequence taking two days.

Because of a movie still that exists, it is known that a gag was filmed and dropped in which a old lady about to give some money to street musicians Laurel and Hardy but pulls a face on hearing their music and turns away.

The gag where Stan loosens the top of the salt and pepper shakers is re-used in The Hoose-Gow in 1929.

Ham Kinsey, billed as a musician, was also Stan’s stand in.

The chapters, called Tents, of The Sons of the Desert, the international Laurel and Hardy Appreciation Society, all take their names from Laurel and Hardy films. The You’re Darn Tootin’ Tent is in Mobile, Alabama.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7399

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