Do Detectives Think?
About Do Detectives Think?
Judge Foozle sentences the Tipton Slasher to hang and adds, “And I hope you choke!” The Slasher swears he will cut the judge’s tonsils out, escapes, and with a pal waylays the new butler so he can take the job. The agency sends Ferdinand Finkleberry and Sherlock Pinkham — Laurel and Hardy, billed as the second-worst detective and the worst. Wind blows their bowler hats into a cemetery and they are too scared to fetch them. Inside the house Hardy’s pistol shot smashes a statue; Mrs. Foozle sees the Slasher with a knife; Laurel handcuffs Hardy by mistake. The Slasher finally freezes when the judge comes out of the bath wrapped in a sheet, and the pair turn him over to the police.
Cast & crew
More about Do Detectives Think?
Hal Roach produced and wrote the story; Fred Guiol directed (his name was pronounced Gill). H. M. Walker wrote the English intertitles. Pathé Exchange released the two-reeler on 20 November 1927, also called The Bodyguard and, in the AFI catalog, Body Guards.
Themes
In film history
Later sound remakes reuse the setup: Going Bye-Bye! (1934) and the team’s last American film, The Bullfighters (1945), made at 20th Century Fox.
Making
The short was made before Laurel and Hardy were billed as a team. Roach’s story and Walker’s titles set Finkleberry and Pinkham up as a detective-agency joke rather than as named stars.
Reviews
In a 2024 Il Cinema Ritrovato note, Andrea Meneghelli points to the cemetery walk — close-ups, their own shadows, a headless figure — as the pair’s first real try at black comedy and gothic parody.
Music
Silent, with English intertitles by H. M. Walker.
Preservation
AFI lists the film as extant. In 2023 Blackhawk Films restored it from a diacetate 35mm print at the Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé, a 35mm safety print in the Joe Rinaudo collection, and a reel-2 safety dupe negative in the Blackhawk Collection at the Academy Film Archive.
Notes
- AFI lists the negative length as 2,000 feet, two reels, and marks the film extant.
- Wikipedia and Glenn Mitchell’s Laurel and Hardy encyclopedia call this the first time the pair wear the crumpled suits and bowler hats later treated as their uniform.
- The same Cinema Ritrovato note credits the hat-switching gag, used when the cemetery wind takes the bowlers, to an idea of Leo McCarey’s.
- Canadian musician Nash the Slash took his stage name from the Tipton Slasher.
- Noah Young plays the Slasher. Viola Richard is Mrs. Foozle, Frank Brownlee the agency boss, and Wilson Benge the butler who is attacked.
- The sentencing title says the Slasher killed “two Chinamen, both seriously.”
Scenes
- The wind takes both bowler hats into the cemetery, and neither detective will go in after them.
- Hardy shows off his marksmanship and shoots a statue to pieces.
- Laurel snaps the handcuffs onto Hardy while the Slasher still has the knife.
- Judge Foozle steps out of the bath in a sheet, and the Slasher takes him for a ghost.
Influenced
- Going Bye-Bye! (1934)
- The Bullfighters (1945)
Also available
- Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé
- Academy Film Archive
- Wikimedia Commons (Do Detectives Think (1927).webm)
Quotes
And I hope you choke!
