Berth Marks
About Berth Marks
Stan and Ollie, musicians booked in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, board a sleeper train. Stan drops most of the instruments on the platform. On board they walk in on a woman undressing; her husband blames another passenger, and a clothes-ripping fight runs through the car. They spend the night wrestling into pajamas in an upper berth. At Pottsville they leave the main instrument on the train, and Ollie runs after it down the track.
Cast & crew
More about Berth Marks
Lewis R. Foster directed. Leo McCarey and H. M. Walker wrote it. Hal Roach produced, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer released it on 1 June 1929. It is the second Laurel and Hardy sound film. A silent version was also made for houses not yet wired. Action and dialogue scripts were written in mid-April 1929; One production log dates the shoot 20–27 April. Len Powers photographed. Richard C. Currier edited. The English cut runs 19 minutes and 28 seconds.
Themes
Making
Both a talking version and a silent version were struck from the April 1929 shoot so the short could play in unwired theatres.
Look
Len Powers photographed the station and the sleeper, including the upper-berth struggle and the compartment they enter by mistake.
Music
The 1929 sound release has dialogue. A silent edition was issued at the same time. Marvin Hatley's music belongs to the 1936 reissue opening, not to the original track.
Preservation
The 1929 soundtrack and the 1936 reissue both survive. In 2020 both were included on Laurel & Hardy: The Definitive Restorations.
Notes
- Paulette Goddard rides as a passenger. Pat Harmon is the station master, S. D. Wilcox the conductor, Eleanor Fredericks the woman in the berth, and Sammy Brooks a short passenger. Charlie Hall, Harry Bernard, and Baldwin Cooke are also on the train.
- Train shots, including some left out of the English release, were built into the 1930 foreign versions of The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case: Feu mon oncle (French), Noche de duendes (Spanish), and Spuk um Mitternacht (German). The Spanish composite runs 49 minutes.
- A 1936 reissue added a Marvin Hatley score to the opening. That version went onto the Laurel & Hardy: The Essential Collection DVD set.
Scenes
- Stan drops the instruments on the station platform.
- They open a private compartment on a woman who is undressing, and the passengers tear one another's clothes.
- Ollie chases the train down the track after the instrument they forgot.
Also available
- Internet Archive (berth-marks_1929)
- Wikimedia Commons (Berth Marks (1929) by Lewis R. Foster.webm)
- Laurel & Hardy: The Definitive Restorations (DVD and Blu-ray, 2020)
