Air Raid Wardens (1943) Laurel and Hardy

"Air Raid Wardens" is an amusing Laurel and Hardy comedy that has garnered an unfortunate reputation due to coming later in the duo's film career. They were older, the cultural zeitgeist had changed, and comedy was a bit more snappy and cynical than it had been a decade earlier.

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy left their long time home of the Hal Roach studios at the end of 1940. Roach realized that the style of comedy produced by the "Lot of Fun" no longer fit as comfortably as we moved out of the 1930s into this new decade. This was hangover stuff from the silent era that somehow remained remarkably successful for a decade after pictures learned to talk.

Comedy of the 1940s was very quick, very brash and outrageous, not so much the "quiet craziness" for which Laurel and Hardy had become famous. Jules White's unit at Columbia, featuring the popular Three Stooges, was leading the pack. Silent movie masters like Buster Keaton and Harry Langdon found work at Columbia, but were expected to maintain some connection to this brash new style. Some claim it to be a failure, but the talents of comedians at the level of Keaton or Langdon could not be overpowered by having to augment their methods.

Laurel and Hardy did not have to go to Columbia, because, unlike Keaton or Langdon, they were able to maintain their status as bankable stars of feature-length films. When the studios sought Laurel and Hardy upon their becoming available in 1941, it was for feature film productions with the majors. They notoriously landed at the prestigious 20th Century Fox studios, where they would remain until 1945, with a couple stops off at MGM along the way.

"Great Guns" (1941), their first film for Fox, was an attempt to capitalize on the success of the wildly popular military comedy "Buck Privates" (1941) starring the hot new team of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. "A-Haunting We Will Go" (1942) was an attempt to capitalize on the success of Bud and Lou's "Hold That Ghost" (1941). Putting Laurel and Hardy in films with similar contexts to Abbott and Costello would naturally net far different results. Laurel and Hardy maintained their usual characters to some extent, but were given much more dialog. These are transitional films in which the duo is placed in a more modern setting. Long stretches of pantomime such as Stan patiently eating a hard boiled egg while Ollie sits fuming in a hospital bed, as seen in "County Hospital" (1932) would never have worked in this new era. Both of these first two Fox films were box office hits.

After these first two films at Fox, Laurel and Hardy made "Air Raid Wardens" for MGM. Buster Keaton's old comrade Edward Sedgwick was placed in the director's chair, and allegedly Keaton himself was one of the gag men. This is all very promising, but this did not reset the change in how comedy movies were made in the 1940s. They would still have dialog, but because of being surrounded by those familiar with them and their work, their creative freedom improved. Several typical Laurel and Hardy routines are interspersed throughout "Air Raid Wardens," and the duo is the focal point of the narrative. They are again surrounded by a hostile world in which they must persevere, and they come out on top at the end. This is the usual narrative trajectory for any successful Laurel and Hardy movie. There are two different tit-for-tat sequences with the great Edgar Kennedy, with whom they'd worked several times at the Roach studios. It is obvious Sedgwick left the three of them alone to perform their back-and-forth slapstick battle. The pace is faster, but still leisurely. There is time for Edgar's slow burn and Oliver's looks to the camera.

In another highlight, Stan and Ollie help out a friend by putting up posters.

Painting the backs with glue and getting more on themselves, placing them upside down or in the wrong spot, and other such calamities ensue. They enter a town meeting late, followed by a stray dog that Stan fed earlier. They try not to make a commotion, but Stan squeaks with every step. "Take off your shoes," Ollie instructs. Stan does, but the squeaking continues. It is his feet, not his shoes. Stan blames it on rheumatism. The dog becomes a barking disruption and they do their comic best to quiet him. All of this comedy is performed in the Laurel and Hardy manner and it shows that the comedians could comfortably fit their methods into the new era with enough congruity to make their comedy successful despite changes in the culture.

There are a few drawbacks, however. This is an MGM wartime film, so it is very patriotic. A civil service representative was on the set and was critical any time the comedy seemed to be poking good-natured fun at the task of the wardens, thus hampering a lot of the fun. The context of the story is set in a classic MGM small town setting (e.g. the Andy Hardy series) but Laurel and Hardy fit well in these folksy surroundings, especially since the haughty ersatz society people are among their nemeses. Perhaps the biggest problem with "Air Raid Wardens" is MGM's penchant for having a scene where the leading comedians hit absolute rock bottom before finding their way back up by proving themselves. Stan and Ollie sitting around dejectedly, trying to think of ways to cheer up ("Wanna go to the park and feed the birds?" "Want me to read you the funnies?") has some manner of poignancy, but slows down the pace.

"Air Raid Wardens" is a pleasant comedy, but its importance goes beyond that. It is a return to elements of the traditional Laurel and Hardy style and set the pattern for their subsequent movies during the 1940s. Laurel and Hardy had to adapt to changing trends in comedy and filmmaking, cinema was not going to change (or refuse to change) for them. So, when given some creative input, they found a way to maintain their characters and their comic methods within this new context. After "Air Raid Wardens," they continued to have increasingly greater input on their films for Fox, more of an effort was made to allow for more traditional Laurel and Hardy comedy, and their movies steadily improved from this point.

Laurel and Hardy are the greatest comedy team in the history of motion pictures. It is not very objective or open minded to dismiss an entire portion of their career because of their adapting to the changing trends in comedy. Laurel and Hardy continued to enjoy box office success with their 1940s films, and as they were allowed greater input, their movies improved as well, as they successfully maintained their conventional style within the context of the more modern approach. Of all the silent movie comedians whose work extended as late as the 1940s, Laurel and Hardy's films come out best.