Flying Elephants
About Flying Elephants
A Stone Age ruler orders every male from 13 to 99 to take a wife or be exiled. Oliver Hardy goes looking and keeps getting hit by angry husbands. He and Stan Laurel end up after the same woman. They try, painfully, to fix the toothache of her father, Chief Saxophonus. Laurel lures Hardy to a cliff; a goat knocks Hardy off, and Laurel takes the bride. The title comes from a shot in which Hardy's character points at three animated elephants in the sky.
Cast & crew
More about Flying Elephants
Frank Butler directed. Hal Roach produced and co-wrote, with titles by H. M. Walker. Pathé Exchange released it on 12 February 1928. It was shot in May 1927, outdoors, before Laurel and Hardy were billed as a team. Some of the rocks were used again for Hal Roach's One Million B.C. (1940).
Themes
Making
Roach sent the company to Moapa, Nevada, for the desert rocks. The short sat until February 1928.
Music
Silent, with English intertitles.
Preservation
A print is on the Internet Archive.
Notes
- Jimmy Finlayson, Dorothy Coburn, Viola Richard, Fay Lanphier, Tiny Sandford, and Leo Willis are in the cast.
- Because it was shot before the team settled, most of the footage is solo work rather than the later partnership routines.
- The elephants are animated drawings, not costumes.
- A print is on the Internet Archive.
Scenes
- Laurel and Hardy try to pull the chief's tooth.
- A goat sends Hardy off the cliff Laurel had picked for him.
- Hardy points up at three cartoon elephants.
Also available
- Internet Archive (flying-elephants_1928)
