Duck Soup
About Duck Soup
Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are tramps running from forest rangers who are grabbing vagrants to fight fires. They hide in a mansion whose owner is away and whose staff is out. Hardy pretends to be the owner and offers the house to an English couple, with Laurel disguised as the maid. The real owner returns and exposes them. They run again, and the rangers catch them and put them to work on a fire.
Cast & crew
More about Duck Soup
Fred Guiol directed. H. M. Walker wrote the titles. The story comes from Arthur J. Jefferson's 1908 play Home from the Honeymoon. Hal Roach produced. Leo McCarey supervised. Richard C. Currier edited. Pathé Exchange released it on 13 March 1927. Laurel plays James Hives, who poses as the maid Agnes. Hardy plays Marmaduke Maltravers. James A. Marcus is Colonel Blood, the owner. William Austin and Madeline Hurlock are Lord and Lady Tarbotham. Bob Kortman is a ranger. It was remade in 1930 as Another Fine Mess.
Themes
Background
A Hal Roach comedy released by Pathé in March 1927, before Laurel and Hardy were a branded pair, and later remade with sound as Another Fine Mess.
Making
McCarey, supervising for Roach, pushed Laurel and Hardy into a double act in this short, two years before their official team billing.
Preservation
Treated as lost for nearly fifty years. A print surfaced in 1974. The BFI National Archive holds a 35mm nitrate print from a British reissue.
Notes
- Laurel and Hardy were not yet billed as a team. They are in tramp clothes together for the whole short.
- Until the 1974 print, accounts of the short underestimated how much of it they share. They play the pair from start to finish.
- McCarey later reused the title for the Marx Brothers picture Duck Soup (1933), which he directed at Paramount.
- The 1974 recovery was a cropped 9.5mm French reissue. A full-aperture 35mm nitrate print is at the BFI National Archive.
- A restored copy with a theater organ score aired on the Movies! channel in the United States on 26 December 2020.
Scenes
- Hardy rents out a house he does not own while Laurel serves as the maid.
- The owner walks in on the English couple, and the two tramps bolt.
- Rangers haul them off to a wildfire.
Influenced by
- Arthur J. Jefferson's play Home from the Honeymoon (1908)
Influenced
- Another Fine Mess (1930)
- Duck Soup (1933)
